Embedding XML In Docs?

An anonymous reader writes "Now that XML is the de facto standard (for good or ill) for doing message passing, I find that I need to give XML examples in the documentation that we produce. We're stuck with Word and up till now I've just been doing the examples as cut and paste from the log files. We include schemas in the appendix but it seems that the clients like the 'readability' of the raw XML over other approaches we've tried. I'm wondering what everyone else is doing in the world of XML documentation."

Comments

Use 'raw' XML examples *too*.

[mrjb]

No trolling intended, but just having the schemas is like just having the UNIX man pages without examples.

Let me clarify, bear with me- The man page for 'ping', for instance, is all-encompassing but rather intimidating when it comes to every-day use:

NAME
          ping - send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts

SYNOPSIS
          ping [-dfnqrvR] [-c count] [-i wait] [-l preload] [-p pattern]
                    [-s packetsize]

DESCRIPTION
          Ping uses the ICM... etc

Okay, enough. At that point, they've more than lost me. All I want to know is, How do I use it?
A simple example gives much more 'instant gratification' style information:

user@host:~$ ping www.google.com

PING www.l.google.com (64.233.183.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from nf-in-f104.google.com (64.233.183.104): icmp_seq=1 ttl=245 time=11.3 ms
64 bytes from nf-in-f104.google.com (64.233.183.104): icmp_seq=2 ttl=245 time=69.3 ms ...

This is enough for everyday use. No need to bother with the gritty details at first. Once the users get to that point, they won't mind the schemas and full help descriptions.