Point, Please?

[jarrett000]

Ok, i took my self through the XML tutorial again and again, but i still don't understand the usefulness. If toy type <table> it displays, in text <table>. Seems like some pointless crap to me, but if someone could please explain to me what the point of a text-displaying language is please do.

[Ingolme]

It's a way to store information.A programming language can extract data from XML files.

[jesh]

Yeah, direct from the tutorial:

XML Does not DO AnythingMaybe it is a little hard to understand, but XML does not DO anything. XML was created to structure, store, and transport information.

[boen_robot]

If the "store and transport information" definition doesn't exactly sound intuitive to you either, here's another one:It's a set of rules for defining markup languages. XHTML is based on those rules, SVG is too, MathML, XForms, and even less popular languages like my favorite XSLT. By defining a single set of rules (XML), programmers can write a single kind of a program that would read out any kind of an XML file.Being able to read a file however is different from interpreting it. That's why IE doesn't have SVG support (for example), but it has XML support - it is able to read out XML files, but if the XML file was SVG, it won't interpret it (i.e. render the graphic), but instead, it would just read it.What XML provides you with is the ability to create your own markup language, and create an interpreter for it. The interpreter can be on the server side (PHP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, etc.) or on the client side (JavaScript, XSLT, compiled native code add-on, etc.). The language could be used for whatever you can come up with. Most people use it to store arbitrary data or application specific data, such as user preferences or the response from an XMLHttpRequest() object (which FYI doesn't require the use of XML as a response), but your imagination is the only real limit. You could also go one step further, and write an interpreter for another existing XML vocablulary. For example, create an SVG plug-in, XForms renderer, MathML renderer, etc.... of course such plug-ins exist already, so your efforts on those particular ones may be sort of redunant.