Forum OpenACS Q&A: What XML checker do you use?

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Posted by Jun Yamog on
Hi,

What XML checker/validator do you use?

Since I was trying to debug some .xql files I needed have a command
line utility to tell me what is wrong with these xml stuff.

I found that RXP from http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp.html to
be ok.  But could not handle "<>" on the SQL statements well.  So I
had to make a temporary file and remove all lines containing "<>" and
run rxp againts the .xql file.

What guys do you use to help you out in this XML stuff?

Since we are already on the topic what guys do you use to develop?

Emacs, etc. what else?

Jun

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Posted by Don Baccus on
We haven't used any XML checkers - well, at least I haven't and I haven't heard of anyone else doing so.

The .xql files are mostly automatically generated by the query extractor (see the link from the porting HOWTO, reachable from https://openacs.org/).  So they're error free.

The query extractor also does a fair amount of the
translation of Oracle-specific queries to the Postgres or SQL92 equivalent, and flags many other that it detects but can't translate with a FIX ME tag.

So in practice mostly we haven't had to worry about the correctness  of the XML in the .xql files, just the actual queries themselves.

You've been looking at the CMS, though, and unfortunately the aD team that wrote the CMS used their own set of utility procs to do a bunch of stuff rather than those used by the rest of the toolkit.  This was due to the fact that it was developed in parallel with the ACS 4.x core, mostly.

The query extractor doesn't handle this custom API so the folks porting the CMS have had to do a lot of hacking on the queryfiles by hand.  So they've had to deal with a lot more potential for error.

As far as editors go, most folks here seem to use emacs.  I still use vi, but then again I'd probably still be using Unix V7 on our old PDP-11/45 if it hadn't been junked ten years ago :)

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Posted by Jun Yamog on
I guess that explains the typos on the CMS .xql files.  I will try to read more of the HOWTO is just browsed through it so I would know how ACS 4.2 classic is different from OpenACS 4.x.  After looking through the porting howto I though that OACS has will be able to run ACS classic modules.  Which you have then confirmed.  Thanks again Don.
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Posted by Jonathan Marsden on
Don, have you tried the PDP-11 emulators and running Unix V7 on them? If you want to spend some hours having fun of this sort, check out: http://www.tiac.net/users/mps/retro/

Note that you can get a free Unix V7 source licence 'for educational purposes'... 😊

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Posted by Louis Zirkel on
Don, have you tried the PDP-11 emulators and running Unix V7 on them? If you want to spend some hours having fun of this sort, check out: http://www.tiac.net/users/mps/retro/

Note that you can get a free Unix V7 source licence 'for educational purposes'... 😊

I have to say that I've been a lover of Unix History and I signed up for the 'educational license' you speak of the first minute I heard of it. I think it's cool to be able to look at code that is vintage in the way that V7 and things like that are. I'd like to find others of this same era as well.

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Uhhh ... I have a listing of the V7 kernel that I made on a Centronics
printer in 1974????  Something like that.  Maybe it is even older than
V7, I'd have to look.

Had to rewrite the terminal driver, as delivered it used the Multics convention of "#" to delete a character and "@" to delete a line, a
choice made back in the days of half-duplex modems (which, as a DEC afficianodo I never had to use, fortunately).  Had to change those character conventions to something reasonable :)