Re: macos sherlock
Walter Ian Kaye (walter@natural-innovations.com)
Tue, 25 May 1999 10:04:59 -0700
At 1:25p -0700 05/23/99, christopher paul wrote:
>just wondering if anyone has come across MacOS's xml interfaces
>to parsing search engine results, available with the recentish
>Sherlock application.
>
>of particular interest to me was the <interpret> tag, refer below.
>
>it seems like a pretty nimble way to grab what you're wanting from a
>page. does any body else see value in this? or have i missed a
>similar interface in html::parse?
Well all this is, really, is a *ML-formatted settings file.
(It's not XML since quotes are not strictly required.)
As for its value, I suppose if you have a fast enough *ML parser, it
makes for a convenient way of storing settings/preferences.
Umm... what exactly were you looking for?
Aside: Mac OS X [Client] will reportedly use XML for storing Key/Value
settings/preferences, built into the foundation APIs.
BTW, if you write your own Sherlock plug-in, be sure to check out
<ftp://ftp.stairways.com/stairways/sherlocktester-10.sit.bin>. This
app checks the syntax of your plug-in's code. It's somewhat of an
unfinished app (the About box shows a different name), but it'll
catch things like embedded quote marks of the wrong type, etc.
-Walter
>= = = = = = = =
>
> <search
> name = "AltaVista"
> action = "http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query"
> update="http://si.info.apple.com/updates/AltaVista.src.hqx"
> updateCheckDays = 3
> method = get>
> <input name="pg" value="q">
> <input name="what" value="web">
> <input name="fmt" value=".">
> <input name="kl" value="en">
> <input name="q" user>
> <interpret
> bannerStart="</layer>"
> bannerEnd="<BODY>"
> resultListStart="RealName (sm)"
> resultListEnd="Pages: <b>"
>
> resultItemStart="<dl><dt>"
> resultItemEnd="</dl>"
> >
> </search>
>
>
>
>
>
>christopher paul
>cpaul@fastmedia.com