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The XIFL Project

Announcing The XIFL Project

Well… you made it! You’ve stumbled across our little project headquarters; now that you’re here, we might as well tell you a little bit about what’s going on.

XIFL stands for the eXtensible Information Feed Language. In layman’s terms, it’s a language built to move many types of simple live content from the huge information highway to your computer, cell phone, or portable device.

In significantly less simple terms: XIFL is a totally original language, built from scratch, that isn’t dependant on any external parsers or compilers. It’s also a human-readable language, which makes creating and dynamically generating these feeds a breeze. Also, because of the way the language is written, website administrators won’t have to rewrite their XIFL content generators if there’s an update to the XIFL language specifications! The updates will only allow bugs and other issues to be fixed, and new features to be added.

Have a look! http://www.xiflproject.org/ Any suggestions you have are completely welcome. You can post them here if you like :)

EDIT: Fecking tags...

#345263

Xifl Pwnz Joo!

#345264

Well, it's not exactly a suggestion, but thanks anyway?

#345284

That's some interesting website code, to be sure. My only suggestion is to make the blue header a bit more distinctive--maybe a bit more of a distinctive gradient.

-NC

#345351

adam didn't launch this site to show off a design. the main focus of this project is the xiflanguage.

#345370

Cool idea. So I can use this to create a feed for my CMS?

Something along the lines of:

header("Content-type: text/xifl");

and echo out the markup for it? Would be cool to see XIFL readers... :)

#345371

XIFL stands for the eXtensible Information Feed Language. In layman’s terms, it’s a language built to move many types of simple live content from the huge information highway to your computer, cell phone, or portable device.

How does it differ from RSS?

In significantly less simple terms: XIFL is a totally original language, built from scratch, that isn’t dependant on any external parsers or compilers. It’s also a human-readable language, which makes creating and dynamically generating these feeds a breeze.

How do you not make it dependant on any external parsers?

Also, because of the way the language is written, website administrators won’t have to rewrite their XIFL content generators if there’s an update to the XIFL language specifications! The updates will only allow bugs and other issues to be fixed, and new features to be added.

Kinda like XML, but just a different structure?

Is there any formal language specification available in BNF format?

How is this going to be better than using RSS, which can use formally specified and on large scale used and implemented standards such as XPath, XSL and where the RSS format can be checked against a Schema document?

PS: the site doesn't seem to work properly in Opera 7.5 - it's missing some menu elements.

Quotes are ambigious in the 'language' also:

Consider:

feedName: "Message""""

// with some extra spaces for clarity:

feedName: " M e s s a g e " " "

You say, use 3 quotes to represent 2 quotes inside the 'value' -string:

So, this means that the " qoute used as end-indicator now just expands to 2 quotes, instead to 1 quote and one end-indicator.

#345395

@kgraphik: Absolutely. That's the general idea ;)

1. How does it differ from RSS?

2. How do you not make it dependant on any external parsers?

3. Kinda like XML, but just a different structure?

4. Is there any formal language specification available in BNF format?

5. How is this going to be better than using RSS, which can use formally specified and on large scale used and implemented standards such as XPath, XSL and where the RSS format can be checked against a Schema document?

6. PS: the site doesn't seem to work properly in Opera 7.5 - it's missing some menu elements.

7. Quotes are ambigious in the 'language' also:

Consider:

feedName: "Message""""
// with some extra spaces for clarity:
feedName: " M e s s a g e " " "

You say, use 3 quotes to represent 2 quotes inside the 'value' -string:

So, this means that the " qoute used as end-indicator now just expands to 2 quotes, instead to 1 quote and one end-indicator.

1. RSS is used for news. XIFL can be used for news, weather, messages, forums, sports, etc.. with a specific structure for each.

2. XIFL is a simple language. XML is much less simple; with XIFL it's easy to pick out the required information. With XML, external PHP parsers are generally used (AFAIK.)

3. Kinda.

4. Huh?

5. Working on the whole 'schema' thing :P Don't know what I'm going to do with that, remember the whole thing is still in development.

6. Designer notified :)

7. When parsing the XIFL feed, to see the end of a string, you would look for a quotation mark followed by a newline. That quotation mark wouldn't be counted as a displayable character, just as the opening quote wouldn't be either.

feedName:"""Message"""
feedName:""""Message""""

would show as 

"Message"
""Message""

#345404

how does the site look in opera 8?

the entire site is valid, and look fine in safari ff and ie :P (except for a javascript auto making list ;))

#345430

Looks ok in Opera 9. But no fade effects.

#345488

No fades? Make sure you have Javascript turned on.

#345545

Site suggestion, by the way: Make sure it's navigable when images are turned off...as it is, the text is white on a white background (again, when images are disabled), so not much luck there...

;)

Interesting technology. Look forward to a working example/parser...

-NC

#345547

not sure who turns images off besides dialup and blind people, but i don't think there is a way to change text color based on images are on/off [look at aquasoft]

#345668