Perhaps "Standard" was a bad term, but rather, "Boost accepted". While perusing the Boost.Bimap docs, I found that the following syntax is allowed for defining a Bimap: typedef bimap<int,std::string> bm; bm b = list_of< bm::relation > (1,"one") (2,"two") (3,"three"); http://cablemodem.fibertel.com.ar/mcape/boost/libs/bimap/boost_bimap/bimap_a... And I found that this felt like a natural way to define pairs. Looking over my syntax again, it doesn't appear to have any specific advantages over your proposal (except alternative syntax, which I won't list as an advantage). It does strike at my major concern, which is the ability to generically parse XML documents. I feel the proposals that set up compile-time invariants for building XML documents would require a lot of thought in this area.. how is the document tree best represented during a read? Does the compile-time check exist solely to build the document, and have a different internal structure? Or can it be used to validate an article that is read (to use the above example)? Consider my example an expression of support for either a declarative syntax, or a C++ map/push_back() syntax as Phil Endecott suggested. My opinion is that if the writer has specific needs as far as document structure is concerned, they can make a class that uses its own compile time invariants for building a document (using Boost.XML to literally write the document), and can use runtime checks when parsing a document. To me, requiring that "authors" exist under "articleinfo"s, for instance, is a member of a problem domain more restrictive than XML worries about, so Boost.XML should not worry about it. Jake On 7/12/07, David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote:
on Wed Jul 11 2007, "Jake Voytko" <jakevoytko-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
Splitting the difference (or so I hope) between easy trees/expressiveness and standard syntax, how about something like this?
root.push_front ( tag("Article Info", (title ? (comment("This title was moved"), title) : NULL) (tag("author", (tag("firstname", "Joe")) (tag("surname", "Random")) )) ) );
How does that improve things? What do you mean by "standard syntax?"
-- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting http://www.boost-consulting.com
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