Example 5: Fiction – Short Story Fragment - Page 7
December 19, 2002
This example (shortstory01.xml) shows a fragment of a short story:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<content type="fiction" subtype="short">
<title>The Great Lake</title>
<authors>
<author>
<fname>aeric</fname>
<mname>sir stinkybutt</mname>
<lname>halfacat</lname>
</author>
</authors>
<page url="/stories/fiction/short/thegreatlake.html"/>
<body>
<p>The small rowboat rocked violently from the wake of the large
speedboat that passed. Brent waved with one hand, the other still
holding his fishing rod. Joe harumpphed. \"Damn idiots. No
respect for others.\"</p>
<p>\"What now, Dad?\" Brent asked.</p>
<p>\"Did you see how close they came, son?\" Joe responded. \"They were
too close by at least 15 feet.\"</p>
<p>\"Yeah, I guess you're right,\" Brent agreed. \"But what can we do
about it?\"</p>
<p>\"Do? We can't do nothing, boy. If the harbor patrol wasn't so damn
busy making sure the lake was full of water, they'd be paying
attention to stuff like this. But we can't do nothing. Not one
thing.\" A distant look came into Joe's eyes.</p>
<p>\"Dad?! What are you up to now?\" Brent asked. \"I know that look,
Dad. You're thinking of some form of revenge.\"</p>
<p>\"Nothing that shouldn't be done, son. Did you happen to catch the
name on that boat? Never mind, I got it. Give me that pen over
there…\" Just then, Joe's fishing line gave a mighty tug. \"Whoa. I
think I caught a big one!\" Joe reeled in his line as fast as he
could, fighting the tugging, only to discover that he'd bagged an
old tire. \"Just what the hell would a car tire be doing in the
middle of the lake? I never understand people. It's bad enough
that they pollute. But some seem to go to great lengths to do
so.\"</p>
<?timechange ?>
<p>Joe and Brent made their way in to shore. Brent jumped out and
tied up the boat to their small berth, then helped his father to
unload the gear. \"Wait a minute, son. I want to talk to the harbor
patrol.\"</p>
<p>Brent stood with the gear while Joe made his way down the docks to
the little boathouse office that the harbor patrol maintained. Joe
had a way with people, despite his general crotchety composure,
which made people laugh and agree to more things than they might
normally do. In the distance, he could see the on-duty
harbormaster <?check term?> laughing away with his father.
Whatever Joe had said, the harbormaster had given him a salute and
re-entered the boathouse.</p>
<p>\"I know you're up to something, Dad,\" Brent said when his father
returned.\"</p>
</body>
</content>
Note that this is not necessarily the best way to represent the content of a short story. To allow for later
update in batch mode, the appropriate <? processinginstruction ?> PIs would have to be defined.
However, such instructions would need a means to reference paragraphs for adding, editing, or deleting. One
possibility is to change the tagset slightly. For example, we could number the paragraphs by adding a num
attribute to each start <p> tag. This would provide the short story application component a means of
numbering paragraphs. Then we could insert several paragraphs, after the first one above, as follows:
<?selectdoc type="fiction" subtype="short" title="The Great Lake" ?>
<?insertpara after="1" ?>
<p num="1.1">...</p>
<p num="1.2">...</p>
<p num="1.3">...</p>
<p num="1.4">...</p>
This is simply one possible method. The database is a very simple and open starting point for building a
variety of content management systems using XML.
Example 4: Recipes - Page 6
Professional PHP4 Web Development Solutions
Example 6: Resume - Page 8
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