From: Ben Schumacher <ben@...>
Date: 2003-08-29T07:07:49+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] QuiXML 0.0.0

Sean O'Dell said:
> My reason for treating content as a single value is because I've only
> ever used XML for data, and never as a formatting stream, like HTML.
> That's basically all there is to it, really.  I used XML a lot for
> configuration files, blocks of data (such as for client accounts) and
> for passing commands/data between remote machines.
>
> I'm open-minded about it though.  Except for formatting streams, such as
> HTML and source XML documents for XSLT to transform into something else
> like PS or what-not, I couldn't think of a reason to NOT combine all of
> an elements data into one content property, so I did that.
>
> How would you like to see it changed?  Give me an idea of what I could
> do different.  Put each scrap of content data in a child element, and
> mark it as data instead of a node?

I think this could be done relatively easily. The children member variable
is a simple array, correct? And it contains hashes that map to name,
content and children, correct? Why couldn't it, then, just contain a Ruby
string if its CDATA, instead of a hash, for a node?

> It would be pretty easy to disable pretty printing, of course, and also
> stripping whitespace when parsing.  Very simple changes.

I don't really believe in stripping whitespace, necessarily, but I bet
some folks think its a fine idea. My personal preference is to have the
ability to get out exactly what I put in -- meaning if I have some
whitespaces in places, then they probably belong there. For my use, it
makes more sense, but I understand that some folks will disagree on this
issue.

Cheers,

bs.