----- Original Message -----
From: "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com>
To: "Paul Robinson" <paul(_at_)iconoplex(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk>
Cc: <mail-ng(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 3:16 AM
Subject: Re: a few short notes
I wrote a program in C that takes a Netscape bookmark file and stores
the content in a database. This is just under 300 lines and it's pretty
stupid, it certainly can't handle all variations of HTML.
It could be lack of programming prowess on my part, but I find parsing
HTML / XML syntax incredibly inconvenient. The most troubleshome part
is that you can't just work left to right, you have to look for close
tags and so on.
Also, it just doesn't make any sense.
Why is it <input type=blah> but <title>blah</title> ? Something like
input="blah" title="blah" would be much better.
You raise a good point for simplicity, but allowing the experts to offer
the tools for you to this better is the way to go about it. :-)
I personally think XML can be used as a protocol/network control "wrapper"
for a data/format independent transport system. I don't think it is
appropriate to use it for the MAIL data component itself for the basic
reason that it imposes presentation and data processing related issues.
As a side note:
There are many XML parsers out there. Off hand, there is a public domain
light weight XML parser called PUGXML, very popular. It is written for
portability using ANSI C/C++. It is a single pugxml.h header file and it
has over 2500 lines of nicely written C++ class object code. We are
starting to use it ourselves. I'll be interested to know how this compiles
under a *nix system. You can google PUGXML and find the header and
information about it. The help file is written in Windows Help format, so I
don't know if that will help you. The documentation is pretty good I think.
--
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com