RE: [xml-dev] menuml -restaurant menu xml prototype app

["Sharma, Dhruv" <Dhruv.Sharma@PenFed.org>]

thanks for taking the time to provide input, Michael.  Going points as always.  It is an honor to get your input.

 I have always liked your input and am a big fan of Saxon.

 

I hope people do take in the direction as you suggested.

 

As in the write up this was meant to be a working sample which i should have attached outside the zip i think.

 

it was designed to  meet the basic/simple needs for a small restaurant like my parents had.

 

For a full blown standard it should have the things you suggested.

 

Perhaps from a human factors point of view making too comprehensive vocabulary can make  the XML too involved, and then people may not want to mark up to such a large extent and then people give up on the ending XML as being annoying.  Also i recall many times adding completeness which never got used in b2b formats.

 

That is why design is an art rather than a science.

 

This is just a small start so people can keep the effort going.

Also when i started if I had this code it would have saved me time.

 

 

best,

 

Dhruv

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From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com]
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 5:55 PM
To: Sharma, Dhruv; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] menuml -restaurant menu xml prototype app

Designing a vocabulary that can be used across a whole industry requires much more effort than a vocabulary that can be used in-house by one small company. Your analysis doesn't seem to have considered menus from many different establishments. Examples of things you don't cover:

 

* dishes that can only be ordered for a minimum number of persons

 

* attributes of each dish (vegetarian, contains nuts, hot/medium/mild, available as child's portion)

 

* options for a dish that can be specially requested (e.g. medium/rare, potatoes/rice) either at the standard price or at extra cost

 

* description of the dish in multiple languages

 

* pricing in multiple currencies

 

* meat or fish dishes where the price is per Kg

 

* wines, where there are typically different prices per bottle or per glass, sometimes with different sizes of bottle or glass

 

I would also expect to see an XSD or RelaxNG schema with extensive comments, not a plain uncommented DTD.

 

I'm afraid this looks more like a quick student exercise than a professional schema design informed by methodical data analysis.

 

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay

 

 

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From: Sharma, Dhruv [mailto:Dhruv.Sharma@PenFed.org]
Sent: 25 September 2009 17:43
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: [xml-dev] menuml -restaurant menu xml prototype app

Hi,

    This posting is about an XML menu application I designed for my parents restaurant years ago.

    The word document describes the design and the zip file contains the XML, and stylesheet to convert menu ml into PDF, HTML, and a JavaScript calculator.

 

    The idea is that even small restaurants can cheaply use XML to manage their menus and be able to seamlessly convert them into multiple formats.

 

    The design of menu ml is simple and could be used to develop a standard for restaurants to use help streamline operations.

 

    The calculator which can be generated from the menu in XML is handy as if waiters, used Personal digital assistants (pdas), they can take orders without having to mess up orders via handwriting and also the price is added in automatically by the calculator leading to more accurate order processing and operations.

 

    This should help anyone in need of XML for menu to do restaurant applications.  The code (XML,xslt, dtd) is all in the zip and easy to follow and change.

 

    There is not much on xml and restaurants so hopefully this will fill a niche or help others who wanted to do the same thing.

 

best

Dhruv

 

 

MenuML.doc