[Pipet Devel] Re: Comment on Re: The Loci Project

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Guy Hulbert wrote:
> 
> NO NO NO.  You'll be reported to the XML police.  XML is for *DATA* the
> tag tells you what the data represents.  Style sheets are for presentation.

Maybe I misled you by not explaining the role of XML for graphics in Loci.  It
is not simply for specifying presentation or layout.  It actually works in
parallel with the biodata.  In Loci, GRAPHICS ARE DATA.  In fact almost
everything is data and treated as objects or widgets.  So Loci plug-ins pass XML
objects to other components.  Just as one component would pass biodata XML,
another would pass an XML object that contains a schematic to be drawn in vector
graphics.  The XML's aren't even mixed.  Biodata XML contains just biodata and
says nothing about layout.

Maybe this isn't the W3-ordained way to display XML in a Web browser, because
we're not using DOM or XSL.  But Loci has some unique uses of XML, and recall
that it is not even a Web browser-based program.  In a sense, we are using XML
more like SGML, but of course XML will be simpler for us.

For the biodata anyway, we are interested in using a standardized,
non-commercial XML, and even helping develop it.


:-)
Jeff
-- 
J.W. Bizzaro                  mailto:bizzaro at bc.edu
Boston College Chemistry      http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Chem/Bizzaro/
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