RE: [Bug-gnupedia] Bias and formatting

[Dave Kelly]

>-----Original Message-----
>I think we're confusing presentation of the data with storing the data. If
>we use XML (or SGML) for storing the data, then we can impose a strict
>structure on the document. There are a number of advantages to this.
>1) It's easy to translate to many various formats (HTML, plain text, etc).
>2) It's easy to validate (no version specific HTML tags etc).
>3) It's easy to build search engines and extract the data.
>
>Other commercial projects use a similar methodology, for example the Oxford
>English Dictionary keeps its data in SGML format, so it can just repurpose
>it at will.
>
>The data doesn't have to be entered in raw XML by the public. We can build
>different front ends. If the structure is well defined, anyone can produce
>an editing program to output data correctly. All we have to make sure of is
>that it's the XML that comes back to gnupedia for inclusion.

I agree here.  If we're thinking about using the power of XML, the time to
decide to use it is now, rather than start out with something that might be
considered easier to use for content submission early on, and then realizing
we need a more powerful tool and having to go back and retrofit XML (or
whatever) into already submitted content.

Even if for now it's as simple as:

<TEXTCONTENT>
blah blah blah
</TEXTCONTENT>

It's a better foundation for the long run.

-D