Phillip Pearson - web + electronics notes

tech notes and web hackery from a new zealander who was vaguely useful on the web back in 2002 (see: python community server, the blogging ecosystem, the new zealand coffee review, the internet topic exchange).

2003-10-2

The tools will save us!

RSS-Data seems kinda weird to me. Quite a departure from RSS's ideal of being readable and easy to understand.

Here's an example of how it will look:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:mynamespace="http://example.com/mynamespace"
    xmlns:sdl="http://example.com/rss-data">
 <channel>
  <title>Testing RSS-Data</title>
  <item>
   <title>A Sample Item</title>
   <mynamespace:mydata>
    <sdl:struct>
     <sdl:member>
      <sdl:name>lowerBound</sdl:name>
      <sdl:value><sdl:i4>18</sdl:i4></sdl:value>
     </sdl:member>
     <sdl:member>
      <sdl:name>upperBound</sdl:name>
      <sdl:value><sdl:i4>139</sdl:i4></sdl:value>
     </sdl:member>
    </sdl:struct>
   </mynamespace:mydata>
  </item>
 <channel
</rss>

How is that easier to deal with than the following?

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:mynamespace="http://example.com/mynamespace">
 <channel>
  <title>Testing RSS-Data</title>
  <item>
   <title>A Sample Item</title>
   <mynamespace:mydata>
    <mynamespace:lowerBound>18</mynamespace:lowerBound>
    <mynamespace:upperBound>139</mynamespace:upperBound>
   </mynamespace:mydata>
  </item>
 <channel>
</rss>

Or the following, which is way shorter and very readable:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:myns="http://example.com/mynamespace">
 <channel>
  <title>Testing RSS-Data</title>
  <item>
   <title>A Sample Item</title>
   <myns:myrange myns:lowerBound="18" myns:upperBound="139"/>
  </item>
 <channel>
</rss>
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