From J.C.Rougier@durham.ac.uk  Sat Mar  4 13:41:51 2000
From: J.C.Rougier@durham.ac.uk (Jonathan Rougier)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 13:41:51 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [Rd] StatDataML
In-Reply-To: <14527.58185.135296.986847@galadriel.ci.tuwien.ac.at>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.20.0003041325420.12572-100000@laplace>

Hi Fritz,

Interesting proposal!  If I may second your comment "Note: Move dimension
and/or dimnames to properties list?", which I think ties in with David
James's point.  My feeling is that it be better to operate at a slightly
lower level and represent array-type constructions as properties of simple
numeric or character vectors, ie very much the way that R does anyway.  
Presumably it would be possible to make a property a recursive structure,
such as a list of dimnames?  (I am not very XML-literate.)

If I might also comment on Paul Gilbert's point about existing alternative
standards.  Our experience with one of our commerical partners suggests
that parsers for R dput objects into XML will be written, if they do not
already exist.  Whatever its shortcomings, XML seems to be here to stay,
and I think the development of a set of R tools at this stage will allow
us to attempt some degree of standardisation.

Best wishes, Jonathan.

Jonathan Rougier                       Science Laboratories
Department of Mathematical Sciences    South Road
University of Durham                   Durham DH1 3LE
http://www.maths.dur.ac.uk/stats/people/jcr/jcr.html




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[Rd] StatDataML
Jonathan Rougier