Way overhyped, I agree- but largely because it's misunderstood.

Istr once reading in a "quick explanation of XML" (can't remember where precisely it was, sorry) that the author made the point that programmers often design file formats without hardly thinking about it: configuration files, state files, document files...

The point is, XML allows for a common structure for most of these one-time formats that autmatically gives benefits such as:

• common parsers, with strong syntax (well-formedness) checking
• parsers in essentially every language out there
• handles character escaping, and specifying character sets
• well-defined way of expressing hierarchies
• a way of specifying semantics in a machine-readable manner for futher checking (DTDs)

( as an example (or indeed a shameless plug), I wrote make_photos which uses XML as an input file- and imho it's perfectly suited, and much better than the text file I used for the script's first incarnation)

I think that most of the "XML Powering YOUR Website!" stuff applies to technology built on top of XML, not XML itself. Which is misleading, but fairly typical marketroid-speak.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.