Re: [Toad-devel] File format for tournament information

[Ben Finney]

On 02-Apr-2003, Garner, Robin wrote:
> > Any objections to defining an XML format, so that the DTD holds the
> > format description?
> 
> I'm not a subscriber to the point of view that XML is inherently good,
> so I'd need to be convinced of the benefits.  >From what I've seen to
> date, XML makes files harder to read, harder to parse and much much
> larger.  Yes, you can do cute things with XSLT, but if the file format
> is easily readable anyway ...   But if you have specific benefits in
> mind, I'm open to persuasion !

I don't think XML is the hammer for all nails, but it certainly has a
lot going for it.  How about:

  - All languages in current use have got an XML parser library already
    written and debugged.

  - Define the DTD once, and any program can put that together with the
    XML data and know whether it's valid, and what fields are which.

And:

> >  - Pick, and stick to, a delimiter for the fields; you're using space
> >    sometimes, comma sometimes.
> 
> The comma delimiter is there because there is a 2-level list.  The
> alternative would be to have grouping elements (parentheses for
> example) around the sub-group.  I don't think there's an objective way
> to determine whether one approach is better than another.

  - XML shines with defining hierarchical data :-)

I think XML is a good choice for defining a storage format for data that
is more complex than lines of text, and that you expect to be useful for
more than just a single user on a single program.  Tournament ranking
data certainly qualifies for both.

> >  - Use ISO date format
>
> Good idea.  Do you have a definition handy ?

Info on the ISO 8601 Date And Time Representation standard:

  
<http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Reference/Standards/Individual_Standards/ISO_8601/>

In short, though, the most common formats used for human-readable data
are:

    CCYY-MM-DD              for date only
    HH:MM:SS                for time only
    CCYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS     for date and time (literal 'T' character)

For your purposes, to represent a specific time range:

    CCYY-MM-DD/CCYY-MM-DD   for date range
    HH:MM:SS/HH:MM:SS       for time range within a single day

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