From: paul vudmaska Date: 2003-10-03T16:11:46+09:00 Subject: xml + ruby >>--------- James Britt I suspect it's the context. Many (most?) ECMAscripters are doing web development and are perhaps mainly focused on the data and markup; scripts are just another way to manipulate pointy-bracketed data, not manage complete business processes. So adding markup-centric syntax sort of makes sense. -----------<< My interest for it is for web stuff for sure and maybe that has led to the disconnect here. Good point. >>not manage complete business processes<< ecmascript is a class oriented general purpose scripting language just like Ruby and it is used (a lot!) supporting the entire business cycle - just like you would with java or language x or ruby. It is just not compiled. Witness the use of ECMAScript (as opposed to vbscript) with ASP/IIS. We used it in a large cororation for moderately large applications with great success because of it's simplicity and class orientation, which allowed us to protect our code. It is 'missing' cool things like interpolation and iterators - but it is quite sound, imo, and not some 'scripty' thing like you suggest. Much of m$'s site is written with this - some of it even works ;). Ecmascript if my favorite language on tues,thurs. Knock it if you want ;/ As for the conflict with characters in ruby names, unfortunately I can suggest no obvious solution - maybe use xpath where the easy way is not acceptable. Also someone mentions 'just getting to the element he wants' without using a long path. Again, xpath, would be the direct/best approach perhaps. :pv __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com