Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: File-tpye plug-in architecture for Arch?

[Aaron Bentley]

On Mon, 2003-12-22 at 10:51, Tom Lord wrote:

> 
> I've no doubt that a proper XML-diff/patch will produce a
> syntactically valid XML file given syntactically valid XML inputs  --
> that is not the issue.

You've put your finger on an important distinction here.  In XML terms,
this is "well-formed" vs. "valid".  What you mean here is "well-formed";
it obeys the syntax rules.

> The question is whether they will produce (a) valid and then (b) sane
> OO documents given valid and sane OO document inputs.

Your "sane" ~= XML's "valid".  The XML definition of "valid" is
"conforms to the DTD".  If oo has a DTD, the XML diff can use that DTD
to either:
- to produce a valid document
- to fail appropriately if it cannot produce a valid document.

This is theoretical and off-the-cuff.  If oo has format requirements
beyond the DTD, "valid"!="sane", and a generic XML diff cannot solve the
problem.

Aaron

-- 
Aaron Bentley
Director of Technology
PanoMetrics, Inc.