I have this nutty idea that maybe SGML/XML DTD's can be used as a
kind-of corba-like IDL of sorts.  Has anyone pondered this, or know 
of any resources?

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To be concrete, here's an example:
OFX (Open Financial Exchange) defines some SGML DTD's that describe a
document that contains financial data.  An OFX document would look
vaguely like this:

<transaction>
   <date>March 10, 1998</date>
   <amount>$300.00</amount>
   <description>Buy new microwave oven</description>
</transaction>

Quicken and bank web sites send these things to each other to do on-line
banking.

I am involved in a project to create a GPL'ed Quicken look-alike /
work-alike personal-finance package.  Currently, our C++ classes 
look vaguely like:

class Transaction {
   public:
      void SetDate (time_t date);
      time_t GetDate (void);
      void SetAmount (double amt);
      double GetAmount (void);
      void SetDescription (char *);
      char * GetDescription (void);
   private:
      time_t date;
      double amount;
      char * description;
};

Lists of transactions form an account, etc.

I hope it is now obvious to the casual reader that our in-memory layout
of accounts and transactions vaguely resembles the ASCII layout of an
OFX document.  In order to provide on-line banking features in our app,
I'd like to get the in-memory layout resemble the ofx document as much
as possible.  Thus, the obvious should now be obvious:

Are there any packages that can
(a) take SGML/XML DTD's and turn them into C/C++ structs/classes?
(b) parse the incoming text document, and build the corresponding 
    C/C++ linked-lists/trees in memory?

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More specifically, given the DTD

<!ELEMENT transaction - - (date, amount, description) >
<!ELEMENT date        - - %datetype >
<!ELEMENT amount      - - %numerictype >
<!ELEMENT description - - %stringtype >

I want something that will read this, and *automatically* spit out the
following ascii stream:

class Transaction {
    time_t date;
    double amount;
    char * description;
};

---------------------------------------------------------------
James Clark's SGML/Parser (SP)  http://www.jclark.com/sp/index.htm
Jade

dssslist@mulberrytech.com

--------------------------------------------------------------
--linas

10 March 1998