Re: [xml-dev] XML basics

[Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>]

On 1 March 2011 12:01, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:
> On 3/1/11 3:42 AM, Joe Fawcett wrote:
>>
>> Mukul
>> Possibly, I thought it was 'Entities'. The trouble with that is it might
>> be confusing as it's often used in general parlance for entity references.
>
> Just write about elements, attributes, and their contents, and try to stay
> away from node unless you're in an explicitly programming (DOM or similar)
> context.  "Information Items" is even worse.

Hmm, in my experience when people 'get' that xml is a tree of nodes,
and not a flat string, then everything else falls into place...

For xslt, I always draw out three boxes - the input xml, xslt and
serialised result, and three 3 trees for the parsed xml, parsed xslt
and result tree.  Seems to help a bit.

Also, when explaining the identity transform, visualising nodes helps
explain why copying attributes copies everything (name and value).


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com