$Id: concepts.html,v 1.11 1999/07/24 22:04:04 francis Exp $
An XML document is represented in doxml by a
doxml_document. It is
constructed by by the doxml doxml_parse(), and it will
return a freshly created doxml_document
representing the parsed document. For more
details, see the syntax details.
The central abstraction in doxml is the
Atoms are constructed by the doxml doxml_parse(), and it will return a
freshly created atom representing the parsed document.
An XML element may have one or more
<a href="foo.html">has one attribute, whose name is href and whose value is "foo.html".
A processing instruction (PI) is a piece of out-of-band information embedded in the XML document; it provides extra hints to the application. Why this is necessary is not actually clear to me; I suspect it was something that some members of the working wanted, and the rest could not come up with a strong reason against. For more details, see the syntax details.
A context represents an input/parsing session; it can be thought of
as an input stream amalgamated with working data for the parser. The
input stream, however, may be implemented via various techniques; the
current library provides contexts that read from files, FILEs, and
strings. A
context is obtained with one of the doxml_open_*()
functions and closed via doxml_close().