World: r3wp

xml is such bloat.. I am parsing xml these days and for two characters 
of data, I often have a 100+ characters of nested stupidity.

an empiric test (subjective to the xml structure and tag names obviously, 
but this IS a real world xml file)

693 kb in xml form   ==>  90 kb  in nested rebol blocks

I left the tabs at 2 spaces in the rebol output, so that the comparison 
is fair.

no need to convince us :-)

Agreed.  So, write a Rebol block ML that does everything as well 
as XML, and we will support it.

manual resync...

my god reading the w3c spec for XML is insane.

XML overcomplicates soooo many things.  its like the standard, for 
people who can't make up their minds:


You can do this, or that or this too, but only when this and that 
or this occur outside and inside that other thing.

XML was intended to be a simplification of SGML.

But they forgot to ask first "why is SGML apparently some complicated?"

So they ended up adding back in most of the complications in an ad 
hoc way.

XML was a simple 2 page spec originally.

I think that might be why the microformats are taking off. They  
use XML in its simplest, intended form.

I'm on a list discussing, inter alia, CCR .. which stands for continuity 
of care record. It's XML, and so guys are saying it's taken them 
50,000 lines to write the parsing code etc.

Possibly an exaggeration on their part.

I think not, Graham .... we have such a problem ... big corporation, 
we try to define xml formats. The trouble is, big products do wrap 
it for you, but what about smaller companies?

not to mention browser incompatibilities, because in the case of 
XML, browser is your "preview" interface ...

If you need a simple XML spec, don't forget my RebXML: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/rebxml/
(Only a couple of pages.)

It's an easy way to work with XML inside REBOL, and on the same page 
you'll find scripts for converting between XML and RebXML.

I think that current situation of XML world shows, that it is rather 
absurd situation .... the idea of automatic exchange of docs, their 
specs, without involvement of ppl, is naive ....

I remember talk a few years ago, that MS would make their .doc format 
XML based. And people thought, that would mean, it would become an 
'open' format, which could now be read and written by any wordprocessor. 
If you have somehing like:
#{78797A7138373837}
in binary, and choose to make it into XML:
<xyzq>8787</xyzq>

does that make you know, what it mean? No, of course not. Some MS 
employee later told in an interview, that MS of course would guard 
their IP - 'intellectual property'. I don't know, where the story 
ended, and I don't care much, as I keep away from MS formats.

If you choose to have your doc formats in something like the XML-based 
OpenDocument, where every tag is explained in an open specification, 
then it can be used. (Only problem then is XML itself with it's problems.)

saved out a 15 cell spread sheet in microsoft xml yesterday...  58kb 
of data HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

geomol, does RebXML handle namespaces and unicode?

Geomol, just looked over rebxml...  I've build a similar engine, 
even simpler actually.  but it might become a little bit smarter 
in a few weeks... maybe supporting more of the XML 1.0 specs like 
&chars conversion and such.

maxim - have you used Gawain's xml parser, or is it your own one?

my own  when I started the project I did not have many days to "get 
on with it" and for various reasons all the tools I tried didn't 
properly load the specification I was trying to load.

but there where some errors in the datafile itself, in the begining.

it had to do with http dowloading of the chunks...

my tool currenctly loads 1MB of xml tags in under a second.  its 
almost as fast as load/markup.

yet builds a nested block of blocks much like RebXML.

does it work SAX way or DOM way? I mean - load first, then parse, 
or parse while reading way?

it does all in one shot.  I read through the string once and have 
a nifty recursion with tail handling.

I want to try out with rebcode one day.  it would probably go about 
10 times faster or more.

hmm, I think that our problem is not lack of speed, but lack of fully 
compliant xml parser at first....

yep.

reading the xml spec... its no wonder.

no wonder what?

pekr: no wonder there's still no fully compliant xml parser

my god reading the w3c spec for XML is insane.
 LOL

I always thought the c in W3c meant committee not consortium.  ;-)

Maxim yes, RebXML can handle namespace tags and unicode.

Geomol,  you might just have made yourself a new user :-)  I'll try 
to stress-test RebXML next week, gauging speed, features and stability.

anyone know if any XML Schema integration has been done in REBOL?

We have done a little in Qtask.  WE save the tasks as XML (and call 
it XLS so that Excel can load it).
We will be writing an RSS reader soon.

there's a new script in the library %rebelxml.r ( not sure why it 
isn't rebolxml.r )

what's the difference between RebXML, and rebelxml and other implementations?

which is best to use?

( I know nothing really of XML .. just know I have to parse some 
data, and rewrite out my data as xml )

I'm using rebxml as the loader and then write a dialect over it to 
convert to my preffered (easier to use) block format.

what do think of this new script ?

Its news to me, but in my useage, Its easier for me to have rebol 
loaded blocks, cause I can use path notation directly, in order to 
access the data, just as if they where objects.