Subject:
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Re: Inventory Helper app
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.db.inv
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Date:
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Fri, 6 Apr 2001 13:42:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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739 times
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In my ongoing quest to keep an archive of our discussion,
and with Dave's permission, I'm posting his response to the group.
Regards,
Hakan
Hello Hakan,
...
> The "inventory" format is a simple, tab-separated format that
> most people seem to have agreed upon (Quantity, Part number, Color,
> Name and Notes), with some additional headers like Theme, Set name
> and stuff like that.
> The "peeron" format is the HTML pages Dan has on his web site.
> I need to be able to import them into my database. In the meantime,
> Dan promised to make his data available in a more easily machine
> parsable format, but until this happy day, I need that script ;-)
> The "canonical" format is simply the tab-separated format
> above again, this time with some data manipulation that Jennifer
> explained in <URL:http://news.lugnet.com/db/inv/?n=658>. I hope
> that importing my sets will be even smoother that before ;-)
I like the tab-delimited format just fine, as output. But it's not
terribly machine readable when we inventory authors keep changing our
minds about what header fields to include or whether quantity should be
listed before color, or all the other variations we've seen! I was
thinking of some standard, portable baseline that *could* be assembled by
hand but could also more easily be compiled by an applet. Then the data
could be output/exported in whatever form we like, including the
tried-and-true tab-delimited style.
In its simplest form, the idea of a helper app could be just a simple
macro or script that analyzes a hand assembled tab delimited inventory to
make sure all the tabs are in the right places, etc. so that it would be
machine readable at Dan's end (or wherever the master database ultimately
resides).
> The "XML" format... I think that's what you meant by a "mark-up
> language" style format ;-) I'm quite proficent with XML myself, thanks
> to my work, but I wanted to gain some experience in the intricaties
> needed by the inventories before I propose a DTD.
> There are a few more scripts around the database that import
> information such as the PAUSE set listing, the Peeron picture list
> and stuff like that, but basically I use the database in the center
> because I'm just too lazy to do all the sorting/searching I need
> in flat text files.
My pseudo-markup tag language is not XML compliant. It was just a draft
of an idea that I used while making the app. It has worked relatively
well, but does have some limitations. With smart folk like you to help,
making something out of the XML spec could be achieved. The main thing I
like about using a text-based file format is that it could be included
inline in HTML pages and just commented out so that normal browsers would
not pick it up. Any pages that were known to include it, though, could be
run through the helper app to display and work with the inventory. I used
angle-bracket tags because they are easier for me to read in a text-editor
than some other markup language styles (like RTF for instance).
> Like Dan, I believe in a collection of tools that do their
> job as perfectly as possible and use some judicious amount of glue (like
> TkPerl or Curses if I need a GUI, a makefile if you need to automate
> your jobs). If you need more "cross-platform" ability than perl gives
> you, I'm inclined to use Java (another side-effect of my work ;-))
Yeah, cross platform is the goal. See my response to Dan.
> My above comments notwithstanding, I'd surely like to have a
> look at your code, since seeing different approaches to a problem never
> hurt ;-) If you like, I could make your source available on the
> sourceforge project I registered for this purpose.
Feel free to put any of the stuff I share up there on sourceforge. I'll
let you know the URL when I put the files up on my site shortly (within in
the next 48 hours I hope). See my response to Tobbe for a better
description of what my little app does in its current state.
> Then you should be able to send your replies to the mailing list
> shouldn't you? I'd rather like to have the discussion here in the news
> group so we have a permanent record of our ideas. If you don't feel
> comfortable with the LUGNET requirements, can I please have your
> permission
> to forward your comments to the group?
Actually, I think it's impossible to just post to the mailing list version
of the newsgroup. At the top of each digest edition I get is this bit:
"To reply to a message within this digest, visit the Message Archive URL
shown at the top of that message, then compose your reply using the web
interface to the newsgroups. Do not reply directly to this digest
message..."
If there is some other way that I'm not aware of, someone will have to
tell me what it is. So, you certainly have my blessing to quote me and
forward my comments to LUGNET.
Dave L.
immortus@iname.com
http://immortus.freeservers.com/
~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
"Too low they build, who build beneath the stars."
-- Edward Young
~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
--
"Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature"
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Message has 1 Reply:
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