Tuesday, May 22, 2001

There’s been a lot of talk on the AtheOS developer list about my proposed document format for Clio (the AtheOS word processor I’m writing). I initially made it XML-like, and there are enough benefits to making it legal XML that I decided to make it conform to the XML standard.

However, I don’t plan on using a generic XML parser, or on following the principles behind XML too closely. It’s not that XML is bad; it’s just that obssessively following its underlying design philosophy is suboptimal for a word processor, I feel. Some things are just cleaner if I break with tradition.

An example? Breaking the document out into Chapter-like sections. I’ve decided to have a separate tag — <section/> — just for that purpose, which marks the beginning of the section. There’s no end tag. I could have an end tag, and make sure that each <section> is matched with a </section> tag that comes right before the next <section> tag, but why? </section> is implied by the position of the next <section> tag.

I received my cel of Mitsuki Sanada (Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure) from Anime Barn, so I’m happy with them. They have two other cels that I’m itching to grab, too. Can’t do it just yet, though; my VISA bill is still too high.

And it’s time for a new poll. Two-thirds of you thought that BeOS provides the best newbie user experience, while one-third thought that the title belonged to MacOS. The new poll is about war. Is it necessary?

Writing Thoughts

Tue

Added a new tutorial to AtheDocs, about implementing drop-down menus. It’s not exactly what I wanted to have written tonight, but it is writing.