Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
Ok, well i have done that and they do open but the content makes no sense really.
Can I expect to find anything else in this jumbled mess of words etc, like for example properly constructed text, sentences, and/or possible statements of deleted invoices.
Could these XML files hold information that i might need to recover the stuff that has been lost, so to speak.
Or am i just wasting time with these files. 
Leon  |
Hi Leon,
You are probably wasting your time.
XML files are data files.
Though a program might use them for storing the information in an invoice, XML structures
the data in an application-specific way that typically can only be easily reinterpreted by the
original program itself.
Though an XML file is plain text and human-readable, typically you will only be able to glean
snippets of information by eyeballing them because the tags that are used to help organize the data
tend to get in the way.
There is no universal organization of XML data and it is application specific.
So there is no magic program out that you can open them with and suddenly
say a complete human-readable invoice will pop out.
The XML file really needs to be opened by the actual specific application - say a piece of
accounting software - that it was designed for to make much sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZeroID
They are text based files mainly used by the PC for actioning instructions.
|
Hi Brent. Sorry, this is not correct.
XML files are not used for actioning instructions. They are not executable
nor do they provide a form of interpreted scripting.
They are just structured data.
The text in the <angular brackets> are known as tags. They look
similar to HTML tags.
The author of an XML file defines the structure of the data for their own
purposes.
So for example, if we wanted to create a list of phone contacts we might
concoct something like :-
<contact>
<last_name>Blogs</last_name>
<first_name>Fred</first_name>
<phone>555 123 456</phone>
</contact>
We might then write our own contacts list program that opens an XML
data file like the above and uses its tags to locate data.
Though their are "rules" governing the syntax of a valid XML file,
we can define whatever tags we want and they may be unique to our
program and to no other.
So wanting to open an XML file by anything than the associated program
that can interpret its structure and internally uses it makes no
practical sense.
Another example of the practical use of XML files is that some programs
might use them to store user define setups.
Though XML files are designed to be human readable - that is they
are plain text files - that intent is really just meant to be a convenience
to the developer of the program. In practice, programmers tend to
handcraft their first XML files when first debugging their programs but
after that it is usually the program itself that reads and writes them.
An XML file might be vital to a program correctly running if it required the
data within it.
Some programs might look for the presence of an existing XML file and
if it is not there be able to automatically create a default one if it is say
for setup preferences.
But if the XML file contained information such as the current postal rates
for letters and parcels, then its loss will typically be more problematic.
Best Regards
Gary