XML by Example

For software, however, it’s exactly the opposite. Software needs to be told

which is what. It needs to be told what the name is, what the address is,

and so on. That’s what the markup is all about; it breaks the text into its

constituents so software can process it.

Software does have one major advantage—speed. While it would take you a

long time to sort through a long list of a thousand addresses, software will

plunge through the same list in less than a minute.

However, before it can start, it needs to have the information in a predi-

gested format. This chapter and the following two chapters will concentrate

on XML as a predigested format.

The reward ...