Extending XML

Adam M. Donahue (adam@cyber-guru.com)
Sun, 7 Jun 1998 23:17:57 -0400


Has there been any discussion regarding using XML to extend XML
itself? Let's see, how can I put this? For instance, say I want to be
able to represent the grammar of C in an XML document. I could do
that, I suppose. But how would I use this grammer to write a
program? Obviously I don't want to turn a statement like:

while (*a++ = *b++);

into a series of elements. (Hmm. I just tried an example but this is
definitely non-trivial!) Or something of this nature. Wouldn't it be
nice to be able to use XML to define a structured format without
having to use tags?

Maybe this is not a good example. How about a way to encode all
elements in fixed length fields, depending on the size of language?
That way instead of having to parse for <XML> I could mask eight
bits and do I quick comparison, for example. Do you see what I
mean?

Just some thoughts...

Adam

mailto:adam@cyber-guru.com