XML convertor generator

[James Robertson]

At 11:21 25/03/1999 , Steve Oldmeadow wrote:

  | >At 03:08 25/03/1999 , JPA wrote:
  | >  | Hello,
  | >  |
  | >  | I'm currently working on an xml convertor-generator. When
finished, the
  | >  | tool will, if you take the bother to type the structure of your input
  | >  | format and mappings on entities and attributes, construct a convertor.
  | >  | There's no documentation as yet, and some stuff missing (escaping, for
  | >  | one thing), but if there's enough interest I'll put it on a website as
  | >  | is.
  | >  |
  | >  |
  | >  | Paul Janssens - paul.janssens at skynet.be
  | >
  | >Paul,
  | >
  | >Not wishing to rain on your parade, but aren't
  | >you re-inventing the wheel here?
  | >
  | >Will your solution do anything that Perl or
  | >Omnimark can't already do?
  | 
  | With that sort of attitude XML would never have gotten off the ground.
Perl
  | and OmniMark???  You must be a masochist.

Why?

I can think of two situations:

1. You want to develop a new conversion tool, either for
   the kudos, or for the money. If so, go for it. 

   But be warned, conversion tools need to be powerful in order
   to be useful (I should know, I spend most of my life
   converting to and from SGML/XML).

2. You have a practical problem to solve that involves converting
   files to XML. 

   If so, why on earth wouldn't you use existing off-the-shelf tools
   to do the work? Especially if they are freely available.

Now, from the original e-mail, I assumed case 2, but I
could be wrong.

Cheers,

James


-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
SGML, XML & HTML Consultancy
http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr at steptwo.com.au

"Beyond the Idea"
 ACN 081 019 623

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