Clare

Looking at a job in the local paper that looks top but the one thing im not sure of in the job spec is that it asks for experience of writing & editing XML files.

What are XML files?

Jim Galbally

internet programming language.

i wouldnt expect anyone but n IT "techy" to be required to edit one tho!

maybe they means XLS (excel)? coz every sod uses that

CraigN

xml is a text data format that internet pages use

it is very similar to HTML except you can do funny things with it

it is mainly used to store large ammounts of info in text format arround each line of text is a tag system like html

it enables a correctly written web site back end or programme to instantly aquire text from a not so large file

i used to work for a stamp collecting company my job was to convert the written pages of there catalogues into digital system

i did this by scanning using OCR and then tagging all the data with xml tags i wrote a programme to define these

so for one stamp you would have a picture title a description and price

the way to define which was which was with tags

so i used

<title>title of stamp here<title/>
<description>description here<description/>
<Price>£3.99<price/>

very similar to the way this site uses img tags etc

very boring and very geeky

Clare

Ah I see, thanks Craig.

The job would be to assist and support customers who have an intelligent system installed in their trucks to monitor and maintain thier fleet.

Is it something that would take a while to pick up? ie condsidering I have not come across that type of data formatting before, would it take long to pick it up (im reasonably quick at picking up new software etc..)
or is it a littl emore complicated than that, and would take a while to use it competantly?

Stavros

If you dont know what XML files are then you obv have no experience of them, so you obviously couldnt get the job that requires you to have experience of them, so it defeats the whole point of the thread surely?

By the way i had no idea either, but idve just looked at the next advert, lol

Clare

Steve fook off and reply to a thread that you have something useful to contribute to

CraigN

xml is piece of piss

if you have a brain (which i know u have) :P

would be easy

it is very simple

Billabong

As Craig says. eXstensible Markup Language - effectively used to 'describe' data.

Lots of info here: http://www.w3.org/XML/ and here: http://www.w3schools.com/xml

Clare

Ahhhh you are both stars, thank you.

Im gonna do some swatting up on it this weekend, so if I can get to grips with the basics of it so I can at least sound like I know what im talking about lol

They annoying thing is I have experience in all the other fields they specifically ask for, but this was the one thing that left me stumped.

Stavros

Jesus chill the fuck out, was a joke

Clare

Billabong, thanks just had a quick butchers over those links and sites also recommended from those links.

I think I understand the basics of XML, but I got a little lost when it started talking about DTDs, and from what I can make out, it is important to understand DTD to make a valid XML document.

Hmmmm i'll have another go at it tmoz when my eyes aren't so tired.