Re: [xml-dev] XML Redux

[Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com>]

Not visited xml-dev for a long time, quite funny this is a prominent
thread - over a long time span, build it up then knock it down...

If the aim is a simple syntax for arbitrary data, you could do worse
than Turtle [1], e.g.

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.
@prefix contact: <http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/pim/contact#>.

<http://www.w3.org/People/EM/contact#me>
  a contact:Person;
  contact:fullName "Eric Miller";
  contact:mailbox <mailto:em@w3.org>;
  contact:personalTitle "Dr.".

(lifted from [2], tweaked rdf:type to its abbreviated form 'a')

That doesn't look simple, but that's namespace prefixes for you. If
you don't care about data reuse outside of your own domain, you could
drop it down to:

@prefix : <http://example.org/dummy> .

:me a :Person;
  :fullName "Eric Miller";
  :mailbox <mailto:em@w3.org>;
  :personalTitle "Dr.".

For XML-shaped data in general, various mappings could be used, e.g. :

<parent attribute="value"><child>content</child></parent>

=>

[
   a :parent;
   :attribute "value" ;
   :child
      [
         :text "content" .
      ] .
]

Ok, I'm posting partly tongue-in-cheek, after all the travails of
RDF/XML. But seriously, if you want to put arbitrary data on the Web,
this is a good way to go :)

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TeamSubmission/turtle/
[2] http://www.w3.org/2007/02/turtle/primer/


-- 
http://danny.ayers.name