Re: [sfbol-planning] SSD format

[<sfb...@cy...>]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, Devlyn Davis wrote:

> re: XML.  I, of course, defer to the opinion of the
> programmer(s) on the best form for the data to take. 
> Also, I've coded a few web pages in HTML via notepad
> and such so I don't think XML will be entirely foreign
> to me.
> 
> In terms of the tools you mentioned for manipulating
> XML, were you referring to tools to help encode the
> data into XML?  Or were you referring to manipulating
> the XML code after the data has been entered?  Or
> maybe both? ;)

I've attached an example of an SSD done in xml.  If you've got IE 5.0, you can open it with that to get an expandable tree view of the document.  The tools I was referring to are things like XMLSpy or Merlot that can take a document type definition and provide a graphical interface for data entry through dialogs and the like.  Then it outputs the completed xml document.  I figured that a graphical interface might be easier for people to deal with than a plain-text file with a ton of tags.  I personally use ViM.  I've gotten some scripts for ViM that complete tags, wrap tags around highlighted text, etc.  

I personally think that xml would be the best way to store the SSD's, tables, turn-mode charts, etc.  They are easiliy modifiable and extremely easy to convert to any other format.  We can use them to get a first iteration up and running.  And if we need to input the data into a database, it's cake to suck in the xml and populate tables.  Depending on the database, no coding would even be required to do it.

Aaron