XML

So, I went ahead and started the foray into XML. Thus far I've determined that it would be pointless to convert most of my site into XML - prose fiction, for the most part, is more than adequately served by XHTML and CSS. The page I did convert to try it out was the works list. (It ended up looking... well, pretty much the same - which is, I suppose, what was supposed to happen.)

I've had aspirations for making the works list easier to update and whatnot for a while; I've actually made a working .asp page for it and everything. Unfortunately I don't think our web host does ASP, or at least not in the hosting package we have. I could probably figure out something in PHP, which I've also played with. (At some point I made a test form with that, too, mostly to avoid having to learn CGI scripts just for an email form. Which I'm not actually using right now, anyway.) I think my main motivation for not going that route was the necessity of converting the database to MySQL. In the long run, for my purpose, the data entry just isn't worth it.

Regardless, for my little site, I'll probably hold off on further XML until I get to the point of actually cataloging my books (in the general sense; just to get a list of everything I have). My first instinct is to do it as another database, since it will have built-in SQL querying, but when it comes to putting that list online, it will probably be born of XML, instead of an HTML table.

I have approximately six 6-foot bookcases' worth of books right now. So getting to that project will... take a while. Given that I still have 2400 pages in the scanning project... I need fewer hobbies. >.<