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<title>Mini-XML Programmers Manual, Version 2.6</title>
<meta name='copyright' content='Copyright 2003-2009'>
<meta name='author' content='Michael R. Sweet'>
<meta name='keywords' content='XML, C, C++, library'>
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<h1 align='right'><a name='INTRO'><img src="0.gif" align="right"
hspace="10" width="100" height="100" alt="0"></a>Introduction</h1>
<p>This programmers manual describes Mini-XML version 2.6, a small
XML parsing library that you can use to read and write XML data
files in your C and C++ applications.</p>
<p>Mini-XML was initially developed for the <a
href='http://gutenprint.sf.net/'>Gutenprint</a> project to replace
the rather large and unwieldy <tt>libxml2</tt> library with
something substantially smaller and easier-to-use. It all began one
morning in June of 2003 when Robert posted the following sentence to
the developer's list:</p>
<blockquote><em>It's bad enough that we require libxml2, but rolling
our own XML parser is a bit more than we can
handle.</em></blockquote>
<p>I then replied with:</p>
<blockquote><em>Given the limited scope of what you use in XML, it
should be trivial to code a mini-XML API in a few hundred lines of
code.</em></blockquote>
<p>I took my own challenge and coded furiously for two days to
produced the initial public release of Mini-XML, total lines of
code: 696. Robert promptly integrated Mini-XML into Gutenprint
and removed libxml2.</p>
<p>Thanks to lots of feedback and support from various
developers, Mini-XML has evolved since then to provide a more
complete XML implementation and now stands at a whopping 3,441
lines of code, compared to 103,893 lines of code for libxml2
version 2.6.9.</p>
<p>Aside from Gutenprint, Mini-XML is used for the
following projects/software applications:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href='http://www.cups.org/'>Common UNIX Printing
System</a></li>
<li><a
href='http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net'>ZynAddSubFX</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Please email me (mxml @ easysw . com) if you would like your
project added or removed from this list, or if you have any
comments/quotes you would like me to publish about your
experiences with Mini-XML.</p>
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<h2>Organization of This Document</h2>
<p>This manual is organized into the following chapters and
appendices:</p>
<ul>
<li>Chapter 1, "<a href='#INSTALL'>Building,
Installing, and Packaging Mini-XML</a>", provides
compilation, installation, and packaging instructions for
Mini-XML.</li>
<li>Chapter 2, "<a href='#BASICS'>Getting
Started with Mini-XML</a>", shows how to use the
Mini-XML library in your programs.</li>
<li>Chapter 3, "<a href='#ADVANCED'>More
Mini-XML Programming Techniques</a>", shows additional
ways to use the Mini-XML library.</li>
<li>Chapter 4, "<a href='#MXMLDOC'>Using the
mxmldoc Utility</a>", describes how to use the
<tt>mxmldoc(1)</tt> program to generate software
documentation.</li>
<li>Appendix A, "<a href='#LICENSE'>Mini-XML License</a>",
provides the terms and conditions for using and distributing
Mini-XML.</li>
<li>Appendix B, "<a href='#RELNOTES'>Release Notes</a>",
lists the changes in each release of Mini-XML.</li>
<li>Appendix C, "<a href='#REFERENCE'>Library
Reference</a>", contains a complete reference for
Mini-XML, generated by <tt>mxmldoc</tt>.</li>
<li>Appendix D, "<a href='#SCHEMA'>XML Schema</a>", shows
the XML schema used for the XML files produced by
<tt>mxmldoc</tt>.</li>
</ul>
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<h2>Notation Conventions</h2>
<p>Various font and syntax conventions are used in this guide.
Examples and their meanings and uses are explained below:</p>
<dl>
<dt><code>mxmldoc</code><br>
<code>mxmldoc(1)</code></dt>
<dd>The names of commands; the first mention of a command
or function in a chapter is followed by a manual page
section number.<br><br></dd>
<dt><var>/var</var><br>
<var>/etc/hosts</var></dt>
<dd>File and directory names.<br><br></dd>
<dt><tt>Request ID is Printer-123</tt></dt>
<dd>Screen output.<br><br></dd>
<dt><kbd>lp -d printer filename ENTER</kbd></dt>
<dd>Literal user input; special keys like
<kbd>ENTER</kbd> are in ALL CAPS.<br><br></dd>
<dt>12.3</dt>
<dd>Numbers in the text are written using the period (.)
to indicate the decimal point.<br><br></dd>
</dl>
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<h2>Abbreviations</h2>
<p>The following abbreviations are used throughout this
manual:</p>
<dl>
<dt>Gb</dt>
<dd>Gigabytes, or 1073741824 bytes<br><br></dd>
<dt>kb</dt>
<dd>Kilobytes, or 1024 bytes<br><br></dd>
<dt>Mb</dt>
<dd>Megabytes, or 1048576 bytes<br><br></dd>
<dt>UTF-8, UTF-16</dt>
<dd>Unicode Transformation Format, 8-bit or 16-bit<br><br></dd>
<dt>W3C</dt>
<dd>World Wide Web Consortium<br><br></dd>
<dt>XML</dt>
<dd>Extensible Markup Language<br><br></dd>
</dl>
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<h2>Other References</h2>
<dl>
<dt>The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0, Addison-Wesley,
ISBN 0-321-18578-1</dt>
<dd>The definition of the Unicode character set which is
used for XML.<br><br></dd>
<dt><a
href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204/'>Extensible
Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)</a></dt>
<dd>The XML specification from the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)<br><br></dd>
</dl>
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<h2>Legal Stuff</h2>
<p>The Mini-XML library is copyright 2003-2009 by Michael Sweet. License terms
are described in <a href='#LICENSE'>Appendix A - Mini-XML License</a>.</p>
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