On Monday 13 September 2004 13:36, Ben Coffman wrote:
> Other then having to completely different systems speak with each other.
> What would be the reasons to use XML?
>
> Ben

For "re-purposing" the data.

Here are three examples that come up in my work (writing training materials):

My training materials are presented as 1) hardcopy and 2) web pages (html). In 
the master (XML) documents, hyperlinks have two parts, a web address and a 
text description. In the printed documents, the text description appears 
"in-line" in the text and the hyperlink appears as a footnote. But in the web 
pages (html), these two parts become the contents of the HTML '<a 
href="....">text</a>'. (NOTE: "Lecture bullets" also look different in the 
printed versus the web copy -- font and size changes.)

Secondly, the instructional materials contain special notes that are just for 
the instructors. Those notes appear only in the instructor's "version" of the 
training materials, somewhat like "conditional sections" but with a lot more 
flexibility.

Third, for a class at a univeristy in the P.R.C., I was asked to provide a 
"Final Examination". For the master copy thereof, I wrote the questions and 
the answers into a single file (document) but then used XSLT to "extract" 
just the questions, and used XSLT to "extract" just the answers, and deliver 
those two documents to the "customer."

-- 
Ed Skinner, ed@flat5.net, http://www.flat5.net/

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change  you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss