21 May
Isn’t XML brilliant?
I’m not normally given to extolling the virtues of a plain technology, what you can do with it is much more important. But I think an exception might be in order.
If you’ve not heard of XML it stands for eXtensible Markup Language, and if that sounds similar to HTML, the language of the web, you’d be right. XML is designed to be more flexible as you can define what XML is used for, so it is equally at home handling a home CD collection, or organising songs in OpenSong.
There’s my link to what you can do with it. The creators of OpenSong decided to use XML for the songs, which was a very good decision in my opinion. Someone on the OpenSong forums asked if it is possible to convert songs to Word or PDF. Actually conversion isn’t strictly speaking necessary because Word can open the files without any extra help. Well, baring renaming the files to songname.xml because the OpenSong files don’t have a file extension. One small detail I would change.
It’s not just Word either, OpenOffice Writer opened the song too. In fact in some respects slightly better because the XML tags are represented as plain text so a simple find and replace macro will remove them.
So why the praise for XML? Well, because of the way it was created it is possible for two programs (OK three OpenSong, Word and Writer - I’m lumping the latter two together) to share information without any kind of modification. Even if they couldn’t, because XML is text based it’s human readable. In theory at least, though OpenSong files are very clear and easy to read.
So it’s a great format in my opinion, and one that I hope thrives.
