Tim Hunter
11/8/2006 12:01:00 AM
Christo wrote:
> Hello,
> Any suggestions as to practical ways ahead for this situation:
>
> 1. I have little programming experience
> 2.a. I have begun teaching and have information that structures itself
> around the lesson plans for a term (semester)
> 2.b. This information needs to get presented with a different focus on
> it for different parts of the job (individual tutorials, college
> documentation, the lesson itself, scheme of work for the term...etc.)
> 3. I have about two months during which I can put in some time into
> this thing, after that my workload will (hopefully) go up and time
> available for computer stuff be severely reduced.
>
> To save time for myself, it seems like I should be able to create
> structures to save the information to, create nice ways of getting the
> information into these structures, and then manipulate the ways that
> the information gets displayed according to the need. Sometimes I need
> hard copy, other times not.
>
> Somebody said 'Ruby's a nice language to learn', so I looked into it a
> bit and in my own fashion can do basic things. But I've read bits about
> XML and it sounds like what I want to do fits with what XML is designed
> for. Except that it's not just XML but XSLT and perhaps even X-path and
> other stuff too that needs to get learnt.
>
> So, here's the question:
> Should I press on with learning Ruby to create a solution or does the
> XML route fit the bill better?
>
> Thoughts and insights please
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
Well, Ruby's a programming language and XML is a general markup
language, two very different things. You can store your information in a
file, marked up with XML and then use Ruby to get information into and
out of the file, if that's what you want to do.
But to be honest it sounds to me like what you want is a database, and
not a very fancy database, either. Something like Kirbybase, which is a
very simple and EZ-to-use Ruby library. Then you write Ruby programs to
add information to the database and get information out of the database
and convert it to some kind of display format. Maybe just typing it to
the terminal, maybe making web pages that display your information.
Depends on how much work you want to put into it.