[Mirrored from: http://www.berger-levrault.fr/BLWeb/c961119.htm]

AIS Software, the Software Development Division of BL/AIS, announces XML support in Balise.

AIS Software, the software development subsidiary of AIS S.A., announced today XML support in their Balise SGML processing software.

XML is a recent proposal to "simplify" SGML and enlarge its scope, especially with respect to World Wide Web applications. XML was developed by an SGML Editorial Review Board formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). One of the main conceptual innovations in the proposal is the notion of "well formed document" (WFD) as distinct from that of "SGML validity". In a few words, this means that it is possible to perform useful processing tasks on an XML instance without knowledge of its DTD.

Balise Release 3.1 Double-Byte Edition (DBE) is already able to process XML documents (providing a proper XML declaration), since it supports Unicode and URL-type system identifiers. A well-formed document scanner will be introduced very shortly, that will turn Balise into a "non-validating XML document processor".

"We are very enthusiastic about the XML idea", said François CHAHUNEAU, AIS General Manager. "We think that it is the once chance for SGML concepts and technology to escape the barriers inside which they are currently confined. Masses of XML documents could quickly become available as a result of legacy data conversion, because of the lower constraints XML puts on the resulting document structure. We believe that XML support is essential for SGML to significantly develop through a second decade!"

"Providing XML support in Balise is a child's play", explains Christophe Lécluse, AIS Software's manager. "We already have all the necessary technology and interfaces to make the move to XML. Double-byte support, one the trickiest aspects, is already there, along with the capability to support multiple parsing event sources. The XML WFD scanner will just be one of the available Balise parser modules, which can be selected at run-time as an alternative to the default SP parser".

XML support, combined with existing interfaces, makes Balise a unique solution for the most simple to the most complex SGML and Web applications.

Email :info@balise.com