XML books

[Martin Baehr]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 03:01:42PM -0800, Joshua Penix wrote:
> I always start off best on a project like this with a good reference book.
> Any suggestions for beginner XML books that might have specifics about my
> planned usage?  I found 4 pages of books at FatBrain and have no idea where
> to start.

the xml-in-5-minutes crash course:
you know html: 
containers: <table></table>,<ul></ul>
tags: <br>,<hr>

now invent your own tags and containers:
<something><another></another>

now here is a piece of new markup:
<foo>
  <bar> ... </bar>
...

now, tell me, is <foo> a tag or a contaier?

oh, you can't tell?

ok, now, lets look at xml:
containers: <something></something>
tags: <one/>, <another/>

notice the difference?

now again the above piece of markup:
<foo>
  <bar> ... </bar>
...

<foo> must be a ...
... container!

here is the full piece:
<foo>
  <bar><awk/></bar>
  <sed/><grep/>
</foo>

if you understood that, you understand xml.
there is nothing more to it, the rest is knowing the exact syntax:
casesensitivity, 
all arguments must have values which must be quoted...

the rest depends on the parser you are using works, 
there seem to be different understandings on how a 
parser should work, and some are unusable imho.

greetings, martin.
-- 
"the lake provides all the fish we need, leave the prairie to the indians"
--                                                                    (mb)
pike programmer            On The Verge          |    www.hb2.tuwien.ac.at
                           San Diego             |     db.hb2.tuwien.ac.at
unix systemadministrator   iaeste.or.at                iaeste.tuwien.ac.at 
                           www.archlab.tuwien.ac.at   black.linux-m68k.org
Martin B"ahr               stuts.org          bahai.at              mud.at 
http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/