XML

[liralen]

What's a good primer/reference material for XML and what have people used it for? Is there a book anyone would recommend for it? Or are the websites just that much better? Has anyone found any particular parsers better or more problematic? Are there any tools related to XML that anyone's found that's just that much cooler than any others?

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

It's not really a reference at all, but for a good introductions and maintaining the proper attitude about it, I do recommend starting here (http://xmlsucks.org/but_you_have_to_use_it_anyway/).

[tenzil.livejournal.com]

XMLSpy doesn't suck. http://www.altova.com/.

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

I'm currently using XML to describe a table of contents in an online help system. My third-party help authoring tool spits out a file, and I modify it to fit the needs of my help viewer. My perception of XML, therefore, is 'it's only as good as the thing you're feeding it to.' It's kinda like HTML, only the tags that are allowed vary widely, and the nesting handling is pretty strict.

My two centavos:
-Traveller.

[mallen.livejournal.com]

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlxml/

I found O'Reilly's Perl & XML to be a vastly useful resource to work with XML data in perl. There's a quick sketch of what XML is, but the book basically assumes you have a basic understanding of what XML is and why it's a useful thing.