Well, thats all i have time for. What have i learned?

It was good to implement DTDs. I have used them before, but always working from templates. Never having to add the tags for internal or external DTDs. My XML book (XML for Dummies) does cover writing DTDs. Although i've read it, and believe i understand it, I've never had to write one. Now knowing the structure, and extact tags to be included in the XML and DTD file, i should be able to figure out how to write DTDs from scratch quickly in the future.

I was dissapointed with the apparent lack of docs for processing XML in python. I'd always found plenty of information available for python, although its a few years since i've looked. You would think though there would be more available now.

I actually had practial exposure to XSL a few days before starting the workshop. I used it in adding a feature to BashPodder to save files in a folder according to channel name (from RSS) rather than a folder named with the current date.

I will most certainly be using XML again. It has become one of the foundation open standards in modern IT. I have no immediate cause to use XML at a higher level than i do currently, although i'm sure i will be able to learn whatever may be required with minimum hassle when i have cause to.

Completed Assignment 3 here.

Didn't quite follow what some of this workshop was asking, spent some time writing a pulldom and minidom parser for the xml files, to print a similar output to the provided sax parser (only prints lines though).

I found it suprisingly hard to find good examples for XML handling in python. The manual only seems to give an overview of the objects, but doesn't go into detail about methods etc. Maybe i'm looking in the wrong places, its a long time since i've had to look up information on python, but i remember the online manual being a very valuable resource. I thought google would have been more help, but failed me this time round. My python "bible" (James R. Curran, Notes for Building a Python Search Engine) does not mension xml, its a few years old (2002), and is not intended to cover such material.

Worked on an XSL. Its minimalistic, but its nice and easy to see how different parts of it work.

Got both the internal and external DTDs to parse. Took a while to get the external one working, realising that the DOCTYPE tag:

<!DOCTYPE airports [
>

need not be included for external DTDs.

Second one done. Had white space being inserted in my output for the SAX parser for native_plants.xml. Found that characters() handless all white space in the XML file. This could be fixed by setting flags in startElement and endElement, but need to find a better solution.

Gone through the first workshop, already had python insatlled on my debain box. Cant find an equivilant to Idle, but this is no problem. I have Eclipse with a php editor installed, a very nice IDE to work in. Example program runs fine.