XML Java API Standardization

W. Eliot Kimber eliot at isogen.com
Fri Jun 20 04:18:06 BST 1997


At 11:49 PM 6/19/97 GMT, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>I do not want to have a say in this (I don't even know what a grove *is* - 
>even after having had it explained more than once), 

A grove is nothing more than a directed graph of objects whose classes and
properties are formally defined in a "property set", where a "property set"
is nothing more than an object schema definition defined according the
(small set of) rules defined in the Property Set Definition Requirements
annex of the (very soon to be released) HyTime standard (Second Edition).

The only thing that distinguishes a grove from any other graph-based object
representation is a few unique object characteristics that happen to make
representing SGML documents a lot easier.

So saying "you should have a grove" is really saying "you should make your
in-memory data structures follow the object schema defined by the SGML
property set."  There's really not that much to it.  There's no reason to
duplicate the person years of work that have gone in to defining the SGML
property set, unless you enjoy the exercise of beating your head against
that wall.

The *only* reason groves are called groves, instead of "the directed graph,
in-memory representation of a parsed SGML document" is that we didn't want
to have to keep saying the latter.

If it helps, substitute "parse tree" for "grove" and you'll be close enough
to the truth that it won't matter for the purpose of discussion.

Cheers,

E.

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