Hi a.l.e
I patented my database so can claim that it is unique. It is a connectionist NOSQL multi-dimensional database which stores all meta data and user data in one integrated contextual database. It is not a flat file - all attribute iterations are indexed. Both customer and product may have an attribute "name". The database stores separate contextual definitions for the two attributes called "name". In XML, you could have <customer><name>smith</name></customer><product><name> etc. and I guess that a script could be written to handle this if, say, customer name was to be in bold, etc. But there are an unlimited number of possibilities and a script to handle these could not be universal, and, as far as it went, it would be duplicating the information already in the database. The database is universal and new entity types, attribute definitions and application definitions can be created without any coding as the definitions are stored in the database, rather than in program code. The database is designed for massive data volumes and enormous numbers of concurrent users, and the almost zero second response time does not noticeably change as data volumes increase.
I need to find a way, if possible, of putting style values into the XML - I cannot imagine any other solution, other than importing the XML into Scribus and then doing all the work on styles etc. manually, within Scribus, but this would be very time consuming and a waste of time.
Does anyone have any ideas please? It seems to me that sla is so basic to Scribus that it is hard to believe that there is no documentation of its structure.