1. XML Steve Fisher/RAL

2. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL2 Warning Information may not be all completely up to date

3. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL3 XML, SGML and HTML XML is a mark-up language –i.e. you mark-up up your document to indicate where headings, paragraphs etc. start and stop –You say nothing about the appearance of document Like SGML it is extensible –You define your own tags –c.f. HTML which has fixed tags e.g. SGML is complex –most fancy features are not used –it was designed when storage was expensive –it was designed to be written by hand

4. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL4 The XML standard XML was defined to be almost a subset of SGML –conversion of an SGML source to equivalent XML can be almost automatic The XML "standard" is defined by the W3C who don't actually produce standard but recommendations.

5. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL5 XML for data interchange XML has since then become prominent as a general purpose data exchange format. –Can (optionally) define a DTD (as in SGML) description of the structure of a valid document. –Parsing is easy and the parsers are freely available –Some uses are unrelated to what we would normally think of as documents e.g. detector description –DTD (not XML format) is being superseded by XML Schema which also includes support for data types.

6. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL6 Style sheet languages: –CSS very simple not XML familiar from HTML –DSSSL powerful from SGML times a bit like LISP –XSL similar power to DSSSL it is itself XML any well formed XML document having been transformed by a style sheet will produce another well formed XML document. –well formed: with matching open and close tags to define tree structure.

7. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL7 Processing Tools xml ->.fo or.html XSLT is provided by a number of free tools: –XT (from James Clark) –Xalan (from Apache) XSLT is used to produce an intermediate format, known as formatting objects. –Formatting objects are also XML

8. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL8 To generate.pdf from.fo fop –from apache –incomplete –java xep –from RenderX –commercial –not tried –java PassiveTex –from Sebastian Rahtz –tricky to install –good output –heavy solution

9. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL9 DocBook DTD was originally written for SGML but there is an almost equivalent version available for XML. The DTD is quite big It is well documented Being steadily enhanced Has features to support complex manuals.

10. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL10 Editing XML For editing XML I use emacs. –with psgml from Lennart Staflin. This will read the DTD and help you to write valid XML as it knows, from the DTD which constructs are valid anywhere in the file. There are also Java editors which allow you to see the tree structure and edit it. A WYSIWYG editor needs some.css type of mechanism to produce some kind of layout quickly. –XML by its very nature is not WYSIWYG. Standard Framemaker: will generate “XML” but not read it. Framemaker SGML –heavy to use but if an XML version comes out, could be OK

11. 20 October 2000XML - Steve Fisher/RAL11 Summary XML has become very popular It is being used for a wide range of “documents” Not so good for high quality printed document preparation –Have not identified a set of tools I am happy with.