Re: XML

["boardgamesbook" <dhohls@...>]

--- In piecepack@yahoogroups.com, Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@l...> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 06:17:16AM -0000, boardgamesbook wrote:
> > --- In piecepack@yahoogroups.com, Nick Moffitt <nick@z...> wrote:
> > > begin  Ed Thorn  quotation:
> > > > What's wrong with TXT?  Plain old text, anybody remember text?
> > > > Everyone can read it, everyone can edit it.
> > > 
> > > 	What's more, you can keep yourself to strict formatting
> > > guidelines in a sort of wiki-esque way to make automatic 
> > reformatting
> > > easier.  Just look at the format the original Fudge rules were 
> > posted
> > > in, or the documentation format for the LNX-BBC project at
> > > http://lnx-bbc.org (we use an awk script included in the source
> > > tarball that translates each .txt file into a collection 
of .html
> > > pages).
> > 
> > Sorry to keep harping on my theme, but the problem with both 
plain 
> > text and wiki (and don't get me wrong - I love the wiki concept 
and 
> > am pushing its use in our company too) is that they don't create 
> > truely structured data and, again, it becomes quite difficult to 
> > convert to other formats.  The converse is NOT true - given an 
XML 
> > document, one can quite easily create a text file or even a wiki 
page.
> > 
> > Lets make a long term choice and not a short term fix.
> > 
> > Derek
> 
> "Let's"? Whom are you addressing, Derek?  Piecepack High Command?
> You're barking up a nonexistent tree.  There is no centralised
> authority over the piecepack, which is in the public domain, unlike,
> say, Icehouse (even if Looney Labs has as much right to their patent
> on coloured plastic pyramids as British Telecom does to their patent
> on hypertext).
> 
> You've also completely ignored Nick's point, which is that given
> sufficiently intelligent parsing (with an awk or Perl script, etc.),
> you can pull data out of almost any unstructured format with minimal
> cleanup afterwards.  If you doubt this, I recommend you read the
> recent book _Spidering Hacks_ published by O'Reilly, which discusses
> scraping useful data from unstructured data sources on the Web in
> great detail.
> 
> <http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/spiderhks/>
> 
> You're welcome to convert any games of ours (Marty's and mine) that
> you see fit to XML; after all, they're GNU FDLed, and therefore 
freely
> modifiable and redistributable.  I'll be interested to see what you
> come up with.  However, in my opinion XML is an immature technology,
> and I will not be spending any of my time (my scarcest resource) on
> converting our games to XML in the foreseeable future.  
> 
> Thanks for your apology for harping on this issue.  I think most
> people on the list now know how you feel about XML.  Perhaps we can
> move on to a more fruitful topic.


Ron

I find the somewhat belligerent tone you've adopted here a little
strange.  The issue under discussion was that of a suitable longterm
format for piecepack rules.  I am not sure what you mean 
by "addressing Piecepack High Command?" (or were you just trying to 
be sarcastic?) It was reasonably clear to me (and everyone else, I 
hope) that I was  raising the suggestion for anyone interested in the 
issue of how that format might look and work.

If you have no interest in the conversion process, clearly that is 
your choice and you can save yourself your "scarce" time in future by 
not  participating in this debate any more either and can discuss any 
other topic that you think is "fruitful".  

There are two technical points you have raised. The point you make 
around the use of (awk and Perl) misses what I am trying to say.  The 
issue is not whether or not one can write "intelligent" scripts to 
extract from "unstructured" data - but that the whole effort of 
writing such scripts can be avoided if a common, structured format 
can be adopted from start. I have suggested XML because I have found 
it to be an extremely useful  and usuable technology. Many others in 
the information processing field happen to think so too.  Again, not 
the place for a long debate about it.

As for my opinions - no, I am not apologetic about them at all (my use
of the phrase was more in form of common speech); not when they are 
offered  in the spirit of trying to make a contribution to the 
community - I know and appreciate the effort you have made in setting 
up the wiki - why belittle or be dismissive of the efforts others are 
making?

Derek