REBOL and XML

[Gavin McKenzie]

Yes...I've been hooked on REBOL for a couple of months now.

It truly is a different (in the good sense) and very powerful scripting
language.

That, plus the rebol mailing list and developers have been very responsive.

However...and this is a biggie...it doesn't do XML like you would expect, or
at least like I expected.

The people at REBOL will tell you that REBOL has a built-in XML parser.
True enough, it does have the capability to parse XML -- and it has some
nifty features for composing HTML or XML, and a truly great type system
where things like URIs and XML tags are first class datatypes built into the
language.

But, the result of parsing an XML file is that it is loaded into a tree
structure in memory.  No, it isn't loaded into a DOM, it is loaded into a
REBOL 'block structure' which I've not found very easy to use.  Blocks are
just simple nested lists, and they're easy enough to deal with on their
own...but, trying to work on an XML document that has been put into a block
is very non-intuitive and tedious.

I've asked the REBOL folks whether they are considering an add-on or another
flavour of REBOL that exposes either a real SAX-style callback interface or
a real DOM to the scripter.  They have said that they are aware of the
requirement, and do plan to build it...alas I expect they have *alot* of
other work on their plate.

Gavin.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl at simonstl.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 17, 1999 1:18 PM
> To: XML-Dev Mailing list
> Subject: REBOL and XML
> 
> 
> Is anyone doing work using REBOL[1] with XML?  The 
> 'everything is data'
> approach of REBOL seems both like a good fit and perhaps a 
> conflict with
> the XML approach.  I'm just getting started with this, but if 
> anyone has
> opinions or stories, I'd love to hear them.
> 
> [1] - http://www.rebol.com  (and yes, it's pronounced like rebel)
> 
> Simon St.Laurent
> XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
> Building XML Applications
> Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
> Sharing Bandwidth / Cookies
> http://www.simonstl.com
> 
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