Re: XML tag usage question

["Cathy MacDonald" <camacdonald -at- core -dot- com>]

> Eric wrote "My guy is using the word "prop", short for property.

>Well, IMO, your "guy" and the rest of his department have some explaining
to do.

I totally agree with Eric; your guy's got some real 'splainin' to do.
Perhaps somebody told Mr. Guy that XML allows the user to make up his own
tags as well as change the "carved in stone" terminology (elements,
attributes, attribute lists, notation, etc.) that is immutable in XML.

A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of one of my useless speeches to my
former boss (as I'm delighted to refer to him), and tried to show him for
the nth time what tagged XML looks like.  I gave him several examples of
start and end tags, and made a simple three-column chart for him that looked
vaguely like this:

<Last name>  	Smith  	</Last name>
<First name> 	John   	</First name>
<Street Address>  500 Elm St. </Street Address>
<City>  		Chicago   	</City>
<State>  		Illinois  	</State>
<Zipcode> 		60601  	</Zipcode>
<License Plate>	FRB208	</License Plate>
<Car model>		Honda		</Car model>
<Car color>		Blue		</Car color>
<Parking spot #>	67		</Parking spot #>

I thought this was a simple example that most sixth graders could understand
without much knowledge of XML.  Instead, the boss started barking (as was
his wont) that it required too much "typing" and it was "hard to read."  All
my efforts to simplify this information fell on deaf ears.  "I ain't gonna
do it that way!" he bellowed.

About ten minutes later he showed me his own hand-written version which
looked like this:

<XML>John Smith 500 Elm St. Chicago Illinois 60601 FRB208 Honda Blue
67><XML>

"See how much easier that is, honey?" he asked.

I didn't have the patience to tell him about parsing.






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