The XML FAQ

A.

Running a search facility on this FAQ has produced some interesting results from the notifications of both matches and non-matches. Sex has dropped to 10th place.

• The most frequent request (5% overall) is now individual characters, either as character entity names or as numeric values, or one of the markup characters (< or &).

• In recent months the second largest category has stabilised as the word dtd (3%).

• Third comes CDATA at 2% (hardly surprising given the abuse so widespread).

• Fourth equal at 1% come XSD and XSL, neither of which is dealt with in detail here as they have their own FAQs.

The entertaining bits are deep in the tail, like the user from Broomfield, CO, who typed in ‘How can I analyze a telephone to understand it better?’ (taking it to pieces is probably a start); the one from the Phillipines who wanted to know how to ‘describe the five fundamental interactions between X-rays or Gamma rays with matter’ (try DS9); the one from Culver City, CA, who asked ‘how are echinodermata organisms different from lower invertebrates?’ (like I care?); and the one from Lexington, KY, who asked ‘How do I add two text fields?’ (got me there, d00d, how do you multiply a lettuce and a cucumber?).

B.

 
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 14:26:17 -0500 (EST) 
From: The Internet Oracle <oracle@cs.indiana.edu> 
Subject: The Oracle replies!
To: <address-removed> 
X-Planation: X-Face can be viewed with ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces. 

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question
deeply. Your question was: 

> Oh Oracle most wise, all-seeing and all-knowing, 
> in thy wisdom grant me a response to my request: 
> 
> Is XML really going to cut the mustard? 

And in response, thus spake the Oracle: 
Well, since XML is a subset of SGML, and SGML 
has a <cut mustard> tag, I'd have to say yes.

You owe the Oracle a B1FF parser. 

For the SGML-curious among our readers, that's:

 
<!element cut - o empty>
<!attlist cut mustard (mustard) #required> 
<!-- :-) -->