[Nexus-developers] NXtranslate, again

[Mark Koennecke]

   High,

   I thought some more on the NXtranslate conversion program. I'am
   now looking at this from a slightly different angle: any translation
   from one file format to another is actually a program! A program
   where the bulk of the code for the NeXus case will be simple 
   statements like:
       copy this from here to there
   This, and the need to define a structure, leads to the currrent 
   confusion where we have XML structure definitions and programming
   constructs mixed together.

   If we accept that we actually specify a conversion program with the
   input for NXtranslate where do we go from there?
   - We can start thinking how to make such a translation program easy to
     write for the user. 
   - I have seen programming constructs being expressed in XML. See, for
     example: http://xplusplus.sourceforge.net or 
     http://xl.informatik.uni-heidelberg.de/index2.shtml There are others 
     too.Perhaps this is a way forward.    

                            Have a nice weekend,

				 Mark Koennecke