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From: Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Use of XML for config files
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 14:52:28 +0000 (UTC)
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Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:
: On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 10:24:12 +0000 (UTC), Georg Bauhaus wrote:
:>         <setting key="master" value="all"/>
: 
: Why do you use meta-data through arguments. Why not:
meta-data?
arguments? I'm not sure I understand.
: 
: <setting>
:   <key>master</key>
:   <value>all</value>
: </setting>

1) This loses type information on allowable key data ("master"
in this case), and as the discussion has shown, it might be
desirable to restrict keys to a few sensible characters, that
is NMTOKEN.

2) The idea is to use attributes as properties.  If you have

  foo := bla some value blub

this maps nicely to

  <setting key="foo" value="bla some value blub"/>

This is what attributes are for, there is one thing (a setting,
if someone finds a better word, that would be nice, I'm not English)
which is a key-value mapping.
It is concise, and it circumvents the necessity to add key- and
value-children to the content model of setting:

If you think of this as nodes in the grove, there is only one
node concerning one adjustable thing in an application. 
The node has the setting for one application-thing keyed "master" in
this case, using attributes present in this node.

Otherwise you would have three element nodes in a subtree, where the top
node (setting) isn't used, except as a container for two other 
child nodes, key and value, which have the key name in the first
child and the value in the second child. The element content
of the second child is to be used as the value of the setting
keyed by the element content of the first child.

I find the attribute way a lot more pleasant.

-- Georg
---