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Subject:Documenting an XML format -- how much detail? From:Jon Jacob Jinglehymerschmidt <techwritersf -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:07:30 -0800 (PST)
Has anyone here had to document an XML interface?
The product in question is an XML library, magic value
pair inputs (via HTTP) and it spits out XML. The
product also provides XML Schema (for electronic
parsing) and XMLT files (for HTML export).
that's nice and all, but some (10-30%) of the users
will need to read/parse the XML data directly.
The question is: how much should the "developer
documentation" document? One could argue that anyone
who cares should just read the XML Schema. On the
other hand, maybe it's good to give a
works-for-most-people walk-through of the likely
return results.
What do you folks think?
Are there "standard practices" for this? I'm delighted
to write a lot or a little (I get paid either way).
But what's the ***expectation*** in the XML community
with respect to documenting the XML other than just
handing them the XML schema file?
