Talk:OML

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Why does the attribute-list for the outline-element not include an "id"-attribute?

How is one supposed to reference a certain outline within the OML-file?

Why is the "data"-element used instead of an "item"-element with a "name"-attribute of "data"?

Braindead specification, even more so than OPML.

Stick to OPML, people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.161.196.189 (talk • contribs) . (edited by 84.161.200.243 and 210.228.188.254)

You're asking wrong people. Please ask the OML spec authors. This is an encyclopedia, not a file format advocacy site, and talk pages are meant for discussion about the articles, not the subjects of the articles. If you have problems with the article, please do tell. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 13:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

It seems someone attempted to remove pro-OML POV text and in the process inserted a lot of pro-OPML/anti-OML text. I wouldn't have thought there would be much "controversy" over simple outlining formats, but I guess that's the case here. I'll modify both OML and OPML articles later to be more extensive, clean, consistent in style and less POV. Nathan J. Yoder 16:34, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

You would be surprised to hear how annoyed people can get over the formats. I tried to clean up the mess a little bit and removed the NPOV tag. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 13:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OK, some criticisms...

I'm dealing with criticisms in this article thus:

"By storing the content in the <text>-attribute, OML makes it impossible to save line-breaks (or you have to use your own, application-specific encoding, which is contrary to the supposed goal of becoming a standard)" -- Well, regrettably, this is XML we're talking about, which doesn't think whitespace is relevant at all. Same criticism could be said of any XML format. Want to parse linebreaks? Write a parser that handles them. Or ask the OML folks to add an attribute that explicitly asks to preserve whitespace.

"By allowing both the text-attribute and the <data>-element to store the main-content, it is always unclear which one to use: text, data, or a concatenation of both" -- If they're equal alternatives, and if you can't decide, stick to something and use it. Duh.

"The artificial distinction between <item> and <data> is completely unnecessary; one could easily use <item name="data">foo bar</item> instead of <data>foo bar</data>, which would be more consistent" -- Yeah, just like HTML has <em> and &em;strong&em; who needs them when we have <span>. See above.

I don't really see them as criticisms of OML. The best I can say about that would be something I came up for this article now: "Critics of OML point out OML doesn't have a mechanism to preserve whitespace. Some have also found the distinction between <item> and <data> unnecessary." Any better? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 09:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)