[thelist] XML developer question

[PeterV]

Hi,
I'm defining an XFML format - a major design goal is ease of
implementation. We have two possibilities of implementing trees. My
question is: which one is it easier to write implementations (export,
import, ...) for, in a variety of languages (from JAVA to Perl to
Moveabletype's template system)?? The language we are designing is
http://xfml.org

<facet id="12">
  <title>Things to do</title>
  <description>Activities, events, etc</description>
  <topic id="camping">
    <name>Camping</name>
    <topic id="rough">
      <name>roughing it</name>
    </topic>
    <topic id="wimpy">
      <name>Comfort Plus</name>
    </topic>
  </topic>
  <topic id="sightseeing">
    <name>Sight Seeing</name>
  </topic>
  <topic id="eating">
    <name>eating</name>
  <topic>
</facet>

Or alternatively:

<facet id="12">
  <title>Things to do</title>
<description>Activities, events, etc</description>
</facet>

  <topic id="camping" facetid="12">
    <name>Camping</name>
  <topic>
    <topic id="rough" facetid="12" parentTopicid="camping">
      <name>roughing it</name>
    </topic>
    <topic id="very_rough" facetid="12" parentTopicid="rough">
      <name>very rough camping</name>
    </topic>
[and so on ...]

Peter