"Must Ignore vs. Microformats"

On Jul 19, 2006, at 10:55 AM, Tantek Çelik wrote:
> On 7/19/06 10:34 AM, "Charles Iliya
Krempeaux" 
> <supercanadiangmail.com>
> wrote:
>> One "good" thing about XML, IMO, is
that for certain simple markups
>> based on XML, it's easier for a beginner-level or
intermediate-level
>> developer to write a parser for it (as compared to
writing a parser
>> for Micrformats... since HTML is more difficult to
parse).
>>
>> (For example, writing a parser in C, C++, PHP,
Java, C# or whatever.)
>
> [...]
> This is why the supposed "easier to parse"
aspect of XML is incredibly
> misleading.  It ignores both the need to be easier to
publish, and the 
> fact
> that XML, in fact, is *harder* to publish.

Also, the Babel aspect of XML means that you always do need
to write a 
parser, if not of the XML itself but to transform the 
plucked-from-the-air schema and arbitrary choices of what is
an 
attribute and what an element to the data structure you are
using.

A key part of Microformats is converging the schemas so this
becomes 
much less necessary.


>> One example of such a simple format based on XML is
RSS.
>
> You're kidding right?
>
> It is certainly *not* pretty easy for someone to write
a parser for 
> RSS that
> actually works with real RSS on the Web.

Have a look at the Universal Feed Parsers 3000 test cases...

http://feedparser.org

_______________________________________________
microformats-discuss mailing list
microformats-discussmicroformats.org
http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microforma
ts-discuss