[gurps] Building a VehicleML

Tue Feb 17 13:26:43 CST 2009

> That having been said, if you were to embark upon teaching a little about
> what is involved with XML, what it can do, and how it might be generally
> helpful not only to someone such as yourself or Tom, but to someone like
> myself - you might generate enough interest for me to start looking into
> what is involved and trying to deal with it myself ;) 

XML is a very structured way of writing text into files.
On the one hand, XML is clear enough to be written and 
read by humans, and on the other hand it is structured
enough to be processed by computers.

XML consists of nodes, which may be nested. Consider a 
book consisting of one or more chapters, which in turn
consist of one or more sections. 

book
  chapter
    section
    section
  chapter
    section

To make the nesting clear, each node is represented by 
two parts, the opening tag and the closing tag. Opening
tags are <name> and closing tags are </name>. So the 
book above would be 

<book>
  <chapter>
    <section>
    </section>
    <section>
    </section>
  </chapter>
  <chapter>
    <section>
    </section>
  </chapter>
</book>

Which nodes can appear, and where, depends on the dialect
of XML. For example, in html one of the first nodes must 
be <html>, and it contains a <head>. html is a well known 
XML dialect, used by web browsers (and web designers) all 
over the world. 

Tom and I are thinking about our very own XML dialect for 
GURPS vehicles and starships. It won't be as powerful and
influential as html, of course, but I hope to do a halfway 
professional job :-)