comment: XML as ASCII data format

[Moreton-Smith, CM (Christopher)]

Hi all,

Just to add a comment to this, I fully agree with what Joern is saying but
for NeXus, we do at least have one storage format (HDF4) which we can use
already - so HDF-5 and XML are simply nice options to have as alternative
file formats.

What we _don't_ have at all is a description language for writing instrument
definitions in.  This is where we really can benefit from the XML effort by
using XML DTDs or Schemas and industry strength tools for creating editing
and validating them (see http://www.extensibility.com and the Turbo-XML
toolkit for example).

There is a sort of corollory to this, being an API based format, converters
to other _file_ formats are essentially trivial to write once the API has
been implemented for them.

Chris


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joern Beckmann [mailto:Joern_Beckmann at FRM2.TU-Muenchen.DE] 
...
> 
> On Fri, 6 Apr 2001, Tanya Maria Riseman wrote:
> 
> > If you have to use tools to use XML in a reasonable manner,
> >  I don't think that it is worth the effort. Chose either HDF or XML 
> > for  both raw data and treated/reduced data so the users only have  
> > one set/style of tools that they absolutely must learn.
> 
> The point is, that XMl will not only be used by scientific 
> data but will become a common data format also used by 
> spreadsheets, text processors, internet applications and 
> stuff. So users will have to learn XMl anyway and scientfic 
> data will be just another area to use XML knowledge. I think 
> this is the right way to look at things. NeXus can easily 
> live without XML but the adoption of XML will allow easy 
> transfer to the outside world.
> 
> Joern 
> 
> 
> 
> Joern Beckmann			    |	Tel: (089) 289 14682
> Technische Universitaet Muenchen    |	Fax: (089) 289 14666
> ZBE FRM-II Bau			    |
> Lichtenbergstrasse 1, 85747 Garching|	
> Email:Joern_Beckmann at frm2.tu-muenchen.de
> 
>