[PP-main] Technical/implementation matters

[Nick Lothian]

> I'd like to see this embedded in the same file as the actual content,
though.
> It's a lot easier, and less susceptible to network
>

Do you want to include more than one story in a file? How does a client get
a list of stories from a client?

> > I think I agree with that. What do you mean by "a format for the actual
> > data", though? Do you mean the formatting of the story or something like
> > that?
>
> Yes, at least it will need *a* format. Plain text is insufficient, you'll
at
> least need the standard trappings of the journalist trade, like boldface,
> italics, etc., and also a way to specify links. Maybe a simple table
syntax,
> and a way to reference images that go with the story (possibly without
> setting the position in the text, though, that should be up to the
formatting
> on the site side).
>

Ehw! You're right of course - we do need it, but it's going to be a
significant barrier to people using the system - A publisher needs to write
software needs to write to transform their stories to the format they use on
their site, and to our format as well.

We don't want "boldface" and "italics", though - we want tags to define
their meaning - otherwise you can bet people will start trying to use the
tags to define the look of their stories.

Isn't their already a XML linking syntax?

> So we don't want full HTML, but we want something richer than plain text.
> That means an XML DTD, and that means it might as well be in the same file
as
> the RDF-type stuff. Actually, that's quite efficient, since for shorter
news
> items, the metadata is likely to be at least as many bytes as the actual
text.
>

Of course it has to be XML - because the client sites need to be able to
automatically format the stories to the look of their site.