Scripting and XML

[Rasmus Lerdorf]

> It certainly makes sense to include scripts in compound documents, but
> I cannot see the advantage of mixing them in with the XML markup
> itself -- they are a lot cleaner and easier to maintain when they are
> in a separate file.

The advantage is when the script is extremely simple, having to put a
little script snippet in another file is a hassle.

ie.

   <input type=text name=field value=<?php echo $value?>>

This $value might be coming from an SQL engine, LDAP, a socket connection
or just about anything imaginable, but all I need to do at this point in
my HTML is display the $value variable.

This might be a long HTML file with only that one single tag.  In
traditional web development you would write the entire thing in Perl and
have perl print out lines and lines of straight HTML just so you could
display that one dynamic variable in the right place.  This means that
when changes to the HTML needs to be made, you need to have your HTML
editing person understand Perl as opposed to just have the person use an
HTML authoring tool.  

There is obviously a delicate balance between the two methods.  If the
page is mostly scripting, then you would be better off writing it directly
in the scripting language and have the language output the required HTML.
But when it is mostly HTML with the odd bit of scripting needs, then it
makes most sense to a lot of people to just toss the magical scripting
tags directly into the HTML file.

-Rasmus


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