I read your contributions with interest and started to compare the model with those by Mike Lake, Devin Kouts, and Richard Knapp. Frankly, I got bored with deciphering DTDs at the stage represented at http://wwww.laverty.freeserve.co.uk/XML/elAtComp.htm but think that the abbreviated way of comparing suggestions shown there provides a way forward which is perhaps more accessible than looking at detailed syntax. (The approach was inspired by discussion elsewhere of 'Examplotron' and 'The Hook').
Since then, I've been looking at:
1) A way of translating tag names so that the fact that different groups of cavers use different terminology for the same data won't matter. So Americans who measure in meters don't need to bother than others use meters to measure length in metres; people who prefer azimuth to bearing can use that (I was interested in view of previous correspodence to see that azimuth does not appear in the UIS cave surveying dictionary, and also that Brucker's account of The Longest Cave (ie Mammoth) uses bearing...). The greatest advantage, However, should be to non-English speakers and users of non-Latin alphabets so maybe we can involve a wider range of nationalities.. An XSLT implementation is at http://www.laverty.freeserve.co.uk/XML/XSLT.htm
2 XML Schemas came very close to completion on 16th March, with a W3C Proposed Recommendation. Microsoft are supporting this (and have already provided some very good documentation). I have therefore recast the schema I did for Mike Lake last year in updated syntax (at http://www.laverty.freeserve.co.uk/XML/XSD.htm ).
3 I have begun to write some sample Java code to demonstrate:
i) reading XML
ii) validating XML
iii) processing XML (including XSLT)
iv) writing XML (including SVG)
v) displaying SVG
An application which uses the Xerces parser now reads a file of survey data, validates it against an XML Schema (and in fact also validates the XML Schema as an unexpected bonus) and does a limited amount of processing is now working (while not in a state for general use, the source, schema and some examples are at http://www.laverty.freeserve.co.uk/XML/XSD.htm ).
Comments welcome..
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