> We also plan to branch out into rich data *reprocessing* i.e. > downloading publicly available data and bundling it up in rich data > structures (Ruby's or Perl's, as easily as Python's). This group > undertaking is for inhouse development mostly, not for retail pricing > (let others rush to shrink wrap).
For rich data structures, you might want to look at JSON. The structures are suitable for reading directly with Javascript and Python (being a subset of those languages' notations for dicts and lists), but there are libraries for reading it in Perl, Java, C, etc. Super-simple to use and extremely portable. XML is also an option, but lots of people are XML averse these days. The two biggest wins with XML are that it uses unicode and provides structure, and JSON (which I believe is specified as UTF-8 encoded unicode) gives you both of those without all the other baggage XML brings with it. http://json.org/ --Dethe _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig