XML For The Average Monkey

["Len Bullard" <cbullard@hiwaay.net>]

The years and archives are littered with the theory of parsing, direct and
indirect addressing and the scree of what and how are semantic and identity
best related.

The Average Code Monkey sees stringbuilder, textwriter, textreader, doc.load
XPath find, and the validator callback among others.  We speculate the deep
mysteries but day to day work is learning and scripting in a framework.  MS
blows it in XML by not understanding it as a composable format so relegates
it to the limits of the code editor.  Pobrecito.  The utility of XML is
standing up project publishing systems that deliver complex data in final
fixed formats.  From XML to PDF, it's a smooth breeze.

I don't mean to belittle the joys of character catching, but the beauty of
XML is just how easy it is to build complex linked documents.   Work out a
namespace that you data editors either create correct by construction or
validate and both, get your gridviews and treeviews chatting and leaving
stuff on your editors, lay in some scripts for common tasks like batch file
validation and hand it off to the renderer and it just works.   

Complexity of speculation exceeds necessary complexity of implementation for
what is basic data plumbing.

len