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[March 31, 1999] XML Thesis Project at the College of Wooster: Link - An XML/XSL/XLL Browser. Justin Ludwig completed an independent study project in Computer Science at the College of Wooster on the W3C's XML, XSL, and XLL markup specifications. He has also implemented a general XML browser application in Java for this project; it allows a user to traverse the simple and extended links of the first XLL specification. The author hopes that this application might add a little insight into how XLinks and XPointers might actually be implemented. The tool is 'Link - an XML-XSL-XLL browser'. "Link is a simple application written in Java that allows a user to view XML documents with XSL stylesheets and XLL hyperlinking. It uses several third-party Java libraries, including the Docuverse DOM implementation, James Clark's XP parser and XT XSL processor, and the XML-DEV mailing list's SAX API. The paper portion of this project ("An Investigation of XML with Emphasis on XLL") describes the markup details of XML, XSL, and XLL, as well as some of the workings of Link's Viewer class. Link renders documents with XSL stylesheets that contain HTML formatting only, and not the formatting objects described in the XSL specification. It allows traversal of both simple and extended XLinks, recognizing the xlink:form, xlink:href, and xlink:title attributes. It treats all links as if they had xlink:actuate="user" and xlink:show="new" attributes." The Link tool is available for download. For other XML Linking software, see "XLink/XPointer Software."
[March 31, 1999] XTAL - General Conversion Tool for XML and SGML. Oliver Zeigermann has implemented XTAL (XML Translation for AntLr) as a general conversion tool for XML and SGML. Its goal is 'making complex XML transformations easier and more structured'. ANTLR and Java serve as the basis and description language. Principal features of XTAL: (1) XTAL is fully in the public domain; (2) the declarative part is implemented as tree transformation facilities of ANTLR; (3) procdural elements use Java and some custom classes for XML data; (4) XTAL can be used to convert from: XML, SGML [using sx], all text formats like MIF, RTF, plain text, etc. by generating XML using ANTLR's lexer generator; (5) XTAL can be used to convert to: XML, SGML [using XTAL's SGML backend], PDF and PS using the TeX backend, HTML using the SGML backend, theoretically all text formats." The advantages of XTAL, according to Zeigermann, are that it is "declarative and flexible (all known transformation types are possible - it's very good for complex up and cross translations, providing very powerfull and general tree transformation); its disadvantages are that it has high memory requirements and it can be 'hard to learn'." Similar general transformation tools for SGML/XML include XSLT, OmniMark, Balise, and Metamorphosis; see their comparison to XTAL. The second beta release of XTAL is available for download.
[March 31, 1999] Edifecs Introduces gXML for Open Exchange of E-business Schemas. Kevin R. Benedict of Edifecs Commerce recently announced the availability of a technical specification entitled 'eCommerce Guideline XML (gXML)'. Guideline XML is "an open XML based model for storing schemas and achieving interoperability between schema consuming applications." Guideline XML is described as a "file structure that allows the open exchange of electronic commerce guidelines, otherwise known as EDI Transaction Sets / Messages and Schemas. Guideline XML (gXML) is the world's first XML standards-based exchange format specifically designed to simplify the integration of EDI translators, validation engines, forms builders, and specification tools." The gXML specification "provides a means for companies to publish their EDI specifications database directly to the Web and thus make them more readily available to trading partners. Guideline XML was first and foremost designed to be simple; each document is completely self-contained and follows the logical structure of the message to be exchanged. As a result, vendors standardizing on gXML can load schemas directly into their e-business products and users can open and edit guidelines directly in a web browser or XML editor. As an increasing number of applications publish their XML-based interfaces, gXML can be used to convert those schemas into products like mappers, schema editors, and validators. Using gXML as the format for exchanging schemas between organizations makes it's easy to bring the schema in to different tools. Already, there are converters which go between gXML and other standard formats. In addition, Edifecs and others are currently working on converters, to convert gXML into DTDs, DCDs, and other formats. Because gXML is based on XML, many of these conversions can be implemented simply by writing XSL (Extensible Style Sheet Language) style sheets." For references to the draft specification and the DTD, see "Guideline XML (gXML)."
[March 30, 1999] Position Papers for XML-DSig '99 Now Available. Several position papers submitted in connection with the W3C Signed XML Workshop (XML-DSig '99) are now available online. This W3C workshop will be held April 15 - 16, 1999 at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts. The XML-DSig work addresses issues of data integrity: 'the usefulness of structured information is dependent on how trustworthy it is. [For example.] is the authenticity of an assertion or the integrity of a price list assured?' The goal of the XML-DSig workshop, according to the published Call for Participation , "is to explore current work on XML, metadata, and machine readable semantics in the context of digital signatures. A result of this workshop may be a W3C activity that produces a specification for assuring the authenticity and integrity of Web data. The workshop is an open event; space is limited and preference will be given to W3C members and experts in the field of metadata and digital signatures. Groups expected to contribute to the workshop include (1) Members of W3C working groups that are concerned about the integrity and authenticity of metadata structures and applications, such as the XML, RDF, and P3P working groups; (2) Organizations addressing Web information and capability management, and (3) Organizations addressing trust management on the Web." For other references to current work on signed XML, see also "Signed XML (W3C)."
[March 30, 1999] Release of fxp Version 1.1. Andreas Neumann (University of Trier, Abteilung Informatik) has announced the public availability of fxp Version 1.1. 'The Functional XML Parser' fxp is a validating XML parser written in Standard ML (SML). "It has a programming interface allowing for production of XML applications based on fxp. It comes with four example applications: (1) fxp, the pure parser. It parses a document and finds well-formedness errors, validity errors and other problems; (2) fxesis adds a backend to fxp, producing an output similar to nsgmls's ESIS (Element Structure Information Set) output; (3) fxcopy reproduces the document parsed by fxp. The copy can be generated in a different encoding than the input, and can be normalized in different ways concerning, e.g., expansion of entity references; (4) fxcanon produces an equivalent canonical XML document. Canonical XML was invented by James Clark for testing XML parsers. It contains only the information a processor is required to pass to the application." The new release of fxp provides support for XCatalog and contains a new sample application fxcanon, the canonicalizer. A more complete description of 'The Functional XML Parser' is provided in the news item of February 24, 1999: fxp - A Validating 'Functional XML Parser'. See also "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits."
[March 30, 1999] New XMI Mailing List. Simon McBride (Distributed Systems Technology Centre DSTC, University of Queensland) has announced a new public forum for discussion of the OMG's XML-based Metadata Interchange specification (XMI). Postings to the XMI mailing list will be archived. The forum at xmi@dstc.edu.au is one of two Meta-Object Facility (MOF) Related Mailing Lists hosted by DSTC. The second mailing list, at mof@dstc.edu.au, "provides a forum for discussion on the MOF specification, products and prototype implementations, meta-modeling and any other topic relevant to the Meta-Object Facility. For more information on XMI, see "Object Management Group (OMG) and XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI)." For other public mailing lists, see "SGML/XML Discussion Groups and Mailing Lists."
[March 30, 1999] XML Conversion Tools from Sema Group Belgium. Albert Bruffaerts (Principal Software Engineer,Sema Group Belgium ) recently announced the availability of several tools for doing XML <<-->> RTF conversions. The tools are available for Linux and the Win32 platforms. Note: The Sema Group Belgium Markup Technolog Centre has made a number of interesting SGML/HyTime/XML/DSSSL papers available online.
[March 29, 1999] GMD-IPSI Announces Java-Based XQL and W3C-DOM Implementations. On behalf of GMD-IPSI (German National Research Center for Information Technology) and the XML Competence Center at GMD, Ingo Macherius has announced Java based XQL and W3C-DOM implementations. "The engine consists of two main parts: (1) A persistent implementation of the W3C-DOM, and (2) A full implementation of the XQL language. The XQL engine implements the W3C-QL '98 workshop paper syntax of XQL. It uses a novel indexing algorithm for XML (publication pending), which indexes the document while processing the first query. Subsequent queries to the same document are considerably accelerated. The persistent DOM implements the W3C-DOM interfaces on indexed, binary XML files. Documents are parsed once and are stored in this form, accessible to DOM calls without the overhead of parsing them first. A cache architecture additionally increases performance. At this time only read access is possible, support of the full W3C-DOM API is work in progress. Note: The GMD, a member of W3C, "conducts active research on XML-based information systems. The current focus of [its] work in XML is on (1) the XML standard and XML architecture, (2) XML data management, (3) Application of XML in Electronic Commerce, and (4) Application of XML for Digital Libraries." For additional information on XQL, see the Web site maintained by Jonathan Robie. For XML query language design in general, see "XML and Query Languages."
[March 29, 1999] W3C Working Draft for International Layout in CSS. A new W3C Working Draft document on International Layout in CSS specifies a means of extending CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) to support East Asian, bi-directional, and other multilingual text formatting. This WD has been edited by Marcin Sawicki as part of the W3C Internationalization Activity, and is related to the W3C Style Activity. The draft addresses issues like types of layout flow (horizontal, vertical, vertical-ideographic, horizontal-ideographic), bi-directional character content, document grids (for East Asian languages), line breaking in non-Latin scripts, justification behaviors, punctuation-wrap, etc. The WD also touches on 'Ruby', which is addressed more completely in a separate specification (see below). For historical reasons, this Working Draft focuses on CSS, but it is "the intention of all the groups involved for the model presented in this document and the model being developed by the XSL group to converge. The end result of this convergence is expected to form part of the common and XSL syntaxes."
[March 29, 1999] New W3C Working Draft for Ruby. The W3C Internationalization Working Group has published a revised Working Draft document for Ruby (22-March-1999). The document is edited by Marcin Sawicki (Microsoft) and is also "largely inspired by the work done by Martin Dürst (W3C i18 Coordinator). The Ruby specification "extends HTML to support ruby text typically used in East Asian documents." The extensions are intended to address some requirements from East Asian typography, which "contains structural elements that are not yet exposed in HTML and thus impossible to achieve on the Web without using special workarounds or graphics." Ruby text is a "run of text that appears in the immediate vicinity of another run of text ('ruby base') and serves as an annotation or a pronunciation guide associated with the base. Ruby, as used in Japanese, is described in JIS-X-4051. This working draft supplies a 'DTD' for proposed Ruby elements: "Two DTD versions are given for each tag. The first one is in SGML (HTML4). The second one is in XML-ized HTML (XHTML). Note that in the SGML DTD, elements and attributes are intended to be case-insensitive, however, in the XML DTD, elements and attributes are case-sensitive. And also, start and end tags are always required in XML." The editors of this Ruby specification envision that a future version will be submitted to the HTML Working Group for inclusion into the next version of HTML.
[March 29, 1999] Brown University Women Writers Project Textbase Now Available Online. Julia Flanders of the Brown University Women Writers Project posted an announcement indicating that the WWP textbase is now freely available online in a beta-test version. The Women Writers Project textbase "is a collection of pre-Victorian women's writing in English. The initial publication will include over 200 texts from the period 1450-1830, with 50-100 more being added in the first year. The texts cover a huge range of genres and topics, and represent an unparalleled resource for the study of women's writing and history, and of English literature generally." Features of the current system include: "(1) The texts are richly encoded in SGML, using the full TEI Guidelines. The transcription preserves the text of the original document in full, including all front and back matter, with original pagination, typography, spelling, and rendition. Title pages, signatures, catchwords, and other bibliographic details are transcribed in full. (2) The textbase will be published over the web using Inso's DynaWeb software, giving the user full access to the SGML tagging for searching and navigation. (3) Varied style sheets will allow the user to view the text with its original typography and errors intact, or in a corrected and regularized form. (4) Users may search the entire textbase or individual texts for words and phrases, either on their own or within specified contexts, using the SGML markup. Users may also search for sets of texts which meet certain criteria such as date, genre, place of publication, and so forth. (5) The primary source material will be accompanied by topic essays and biographical information for each author." For other information, see the WWP Web site and "The Brown University Women Writers Project."
[March 29, 1999] Revised Making of America Project. Maria S. Bonn (Digital Library Initiative, University of Michigan) announced a program of major revision and enhancement to the University of Michigan Making of America Project. The Making of America (MOA) project is one of several UM digital library efforts which uses TEI SGML encoding. MOA "is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection contains approximately 1,600 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. The project represents a major collaborative endeavor in preservation and electronic access to historical texts." The Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) at UM has now "redesigned and improved several aspects of the Making of America system, including adding search possibilities, improving navigation, and making available the plain text of the page images that make up the MoA collection. . . [Maria writes:] The redesign of the system is an important step in preparing for the addition of another 7500 volumes to the collection over the next two years, so we are particularly anxious to get feedback from users." The UM MoA resources have been encoded in a simple SGML form (a 40 element DTD conforming to the TEI Guidelines. For further description and references, see "Making of America (MOA) Project."
[March 26, 1999] Debian Touts Integrated SGML Environment. A communiqué from Adam Di Carlo describes the "integrated SGML, XML, and DSSSL infrastructure and packages" featured in version 2.1 of the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution. Debian is "a free, or Open Source, operating system which uses the Linux kernel, a free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by (probably over 1000) programmers worldwide. A large part of the basic tools that fill out the operating system come from GNU, which are also free." Debian 2.1 was released on March 09, 1999 for several architectures (Sun SPARC, Intel x86, Alpha, Motorola 680x0). "Debian's innovotive SGML subsystem positions Debian as a premier platform for SGML and XML developers, offering a complete, working toolset for documenters and markup programmers, with no manual setup required. It supports: (1) James Clark's jade 1.2.1 and SP suite version 1.3.3, enabling validation and formatting of SGML or XML; (2) SGMLOpen shared system catalog integration - no need to manually register SGML Public Identifiers or set with environment variables; (3) docbook (v3.0) and docbook-stylesheets (v1.13) available, providing an industry-standard markup convention; (4) psgml, which in conjunction with Emacs19, Emacs20, XEmacs19, or XEmacs20, provides a profession SGML editing environment; (5) jadetex, combined with jade, facilitates the conversion of SGML to PostScript or PDF, for high quality printed output; (6) a host of other SGML, XML, and DSSSL software packages are available, including but not limited to sgml-tools, expat, sdc, perlsgml, sgmlspm, and dsc." See also the earlier announcement from Adam Harris, and the Debian free software social contract.
[March 26, 1999] XQL Mailing List. Jonathan Robie (Software AG) announced on XML-DEV that he has "set up a mailing list for XQL (XML Query Language)." This new list "is intended to answer questions about the definition of the language, how to implement it, who has implemented it in what products, and whatever else seems to be of interest. [Also, Robie] will use this list to try to reach consensus in the XQL community if decisions need to be made, e.g., to add new extensions." XQL was presented at the W3C QL'98 - The Query Languages Workshop (December 3-4, 1998), along with some 65 other position papers; this workshop drew over 98 participants, and the associated mailing list now has some 211 subscribers. No formal XML 'query language activity' was established by the W3C when the W3C XML Working Groups were re-chartered in late 1998, but query language syntaxes already abound. Features currently designed within XSL, XPointer, XLink, DOM, DSSSL, and related specifications provide mechanisms for specifying locations/addresses, for tree traversal, and so forth. A current challenge, arguably, is to unify some of these expression/querying sub-languages as a basis for building generalized query facilities that are applicable to a broad range of requirements within different user communities. Interest in 'Query Languages' within the context of XML and RDF has steadily grown over the past year, and some expect that the W3C will eventually charter an XML-Query Working Group. Robie wrote: "There will be a W3C XML Query Language Activity, and it will develop its own query language, and nobody can say how similar or different it will be to any existing query language for XML." [XML-DEV, 25 Mar 1999] For more on QL proposals, see "XML and Query Languages." For other XML-related discussion lists, see "SGML/XML Discussion Groups and Mailing Lists."
[March 26, 1999] XML Resources and Tools from Groveware. Ian Graham and Liam Quin have prepared a number of online XML resources in conjunction with their new book The XML Specification Guide. This "Supplementary Resources and Tools" is a collection of additional resources, not found in the book, that are useful for understanding the XML specifications and using XML. These include, as of 1999-03-26: (1) A searchable index of all XML specifications which supports searching for words or numbers used in the 'Official XML Specification Documents'; (2) A searchable index of EBNF production rules; (3) A set of XML design patterns -- based on the approach of the same name introduced in object oriented design -- applied here to modeling document architecture; (4) Extracted EBNF for XML which defines, along with the well-formedness and validity constraints, the rules for writing well-formed or valid XML documents; (5) A list of useful online resources." See also the main bibliographic entry for the book.
[March 26, 1999] DB2XML Version 0.7 Released. Volker Turau posted an announcement on CTX for the release of DB2XML Version 0.7. "DB2XML is a tool for transforming relational databases into XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents. DB2XML provides two main functions: (1) Transforming the results of database queries into XML documents. (2) Providing attributes describing characteristics of the data It is written in Java. DB2XML can be used as a servlet or as a standalone tool. The DB2XML tool comes with an easy to use graphical user interface and accesses databases using JDBC drivers. It requires JDK 1.1.6 (or higher) and a database with a JDBC driver (or a ODBC driver using the JDBC-ODBC bridge). DB2XML is well documented and can be used freely. The DB2XML servlet tansforms the results of database queries into XML documents which are delivered to the client. Two online demos show how to use DB2XML in conjunction with XSL stylesheets." Changes in the latest version: introduces the attribute NAME; is a java servlet version; provides support for stylesheets; and offers a new GUI for the main panel.
[March 25, 1999] MDServlet Released. Simon St.Laurent released a first version of MDServlet. "MDServlet provides a highly configurable Java servlet interface for the MDSAX toolkit from JXML.com, distributed under an open source (BSD-type) license. Using MDServlet, developers can build sites that serve XML and transform XML documents using components, without ever needing to learn about the internals of the Simple API for XML (SAX). MDSAX provides a framework for working with SAX-based parsers and parser filters, describing their structures using simple XML documents. MDServlet provides a servlet-based interface that makes those documents and processing structures readily available to developers (and users, to some extent.)" MDServlet requires A Java Servlet Development Kit 2.0-compliant servlet engine that can run under the Java 2 JVM and MDSAX. MDServlet is managed through the use of parameters set in the servlet administration tool. MDServlet can be configured to accept configuration information through GET and POST queries, or locked down to use a preset group of parameters." [1999-03-26: see also now the author's announcement.]
[March 25, 1999] Cocoon XML/XSL Publishing Framework HTTPServlet. On March 10, 1999, the Java Apache Project released Cocoon Version 1.0. Cocoon is an "XML/XSL publishing framework servlet that allows complete separation of content, logic and style - a pure Java publishing framework HTTPServlet that relies on new W3C technologies (such as DOM, XML, and XSL) to provide web content. Based on latest web technology, Cocoon introduces you into a new world of design and content reuse, being able to apply different rendering XSL stylesheets to the same XML content based on the requesting browser. . . The Cocoon project is able to create virtually any well-formed XML document. For this reason, its most common use is the automatic creation of well-formed HTML through the XSL rendering of statically or dynamically generated XML files. The Cocoon model divides the development of web content in three separate levels: (1) XML creation: the XML file is created by the content owners. They do not require specific knowledge on how the XML content is futher processed rather than the particular choosen DTD. (2) XML processing: the requested XML file is processed and the logic contained by the logicsheet is applied. The processing instructions and defined active tags are evaluated at this time. (3) XSL rendering: the created document is then rendered by applying an XSL stylesheet to it." As a Java servlet, Cocoon will run on any 2.x compliant servlet platform. Cocoon uses the W3C Document Object Model to specify the documents it handles and it's not based on any particular XML parser implementation using a modular and pluggable interface. These are the XML parsers currently supported: IBM XML4J, OpenXML, and Sun ProjectX. XSL processors currently supported include the Lotus XSL Processor and the Koala XSL Processor. For other XSL software, see XSL Software Support."
[March 25, 1999] Open Applications Group (OAG) Releases Updated XML DTDs. The Open Applications Group XML Team has issued a new release of its XML DTDs, reflecting recent XML work. The Open Applications Group, Inc. is a 32-member "nonprofit consortium of enterprise application software developers, formed in February 1995 to create common standards for the integration of enterprise business applications." The Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) incorporates an extensive set of Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Type Definition (DTD) files which "define interoperability APIs for Financials, Human Resources, Manufacturing, Logistics, and Supply Chain components." The recent XML DTD updates include: "(1) Additional information on segment qualifiers; (2) Deterministic rule models; (3) XML DTDs for all specification chapters; (4) Miscellaneous bug fixes." The XML development team may be reached via email at xml@openapplications.org. Further description and references for OAGIS are provided in "Open Applications Group (OAG)."
[March 24, 1999] Wireless XML. As the technical specifications for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Wireless Application Environment mature, an increasing number of industry applications are using the WAP's Wireless Markup Language (WML). The draft specification for WML describes WML as "a markup language based on XML and is intended for use in specifying content and user interface for narrowband devices, including cellular phones and pagers. WML is designed with the constraints of small narrowband devices in mind. These constraints include: (1) Small display and limited user input facilities (2) Narrowband network connection (3) Limited memory and computational resources." See: WAP WML. Proposed Version 3-Feb-1999. Wireless Application Protocol. Wireless Markup Language Specification Version 1.1. Recently, for example, the SABRE Group, IBM, and Nokia announced that "they are working on a real-time, interactive service -- delivered via mobile phone utilizing the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), a new open industry standard for mobile Internet -- that will allow travelers to initiate flight changes and even receive updates from airlines anywhere, anytime. The service will combine SABRE Business Travel Solutions, the company's online corporate travel purchasing system, IBM e-business technologies and the latest mobile communications technology and terminals from Nokia." Oracle also announced 'Project Panama' at CeBit '99 recently ("Oracle's Project Panama First to Enable Dynamic Web Content for Mobile Devices"): "Project Panama will remove the limitations of retrieving Web-based material by automatically translating the HTML- or XML-based format of Internet content to the languages understood by wireless devices. Utilizing protocols including Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), Project Panama will enable access to all existing Web content through mobile devices." In February, OANDA and Nokia unveiled a WAP pilot service in conjunction with a new NOKIA 7110 media phone; "this service, which provides OANDA Internet content (its currency exchange rates) to the wireless domain, is formatted especially for the small screens of mobile devices using Wireless Markup Language (WML). . . The cell phone is gradually evolving into a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with a telephone hook-up. Equipped with a WAP-capable (Wireless Application Protocol) microbrowser, it can even access information on the Internet." See "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification (WML)" for additional references.
[March 23, 1999] Summer Institute on Creating Electronic Texts and Images. Alan Burk (Director of the Electronic Text Centre, University of New Brunswick) has posted an announcement for the Third Summer Institute on 'Creating Electronic Texts and Images', to be held at the University of New Brunswick. The one-week course will be held August 15 - 20, 1999. It will be taught by David Seaman, Founding Director of the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia. The course is sponsored by the Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick Libraries and the Department of Archives and Special Collections. It is "designed primarily for librarians and archivists who are planning to develop electronic text and imaging projects, for scholars who are creating electronic texts as part of their teaching and research, and for publishers who are looking to move publications to the Web. Course participants will create an electronic version of a selection of Canadian literary letters from the University of New Brunswick's Archives and Special Collections. They will also encode the letters with TEI/SGML tagging, tag an EAD finding aid and explore issues in creating digital images. Topics to be covered include: (1) SGML tagging and conversion; (2) Using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines; (3) The basics of archival imaging; (4) The form and implications of XML; (5) Publishing SGML on the World Wide Web; (6) EAD - Encoded Archival Descriptions." See the main conference entry for other references.
[March 23, 1999] Topic Maps Implementation. Geir Ove Grønmo of STEP Infotek as has announced a 'first release' of tmproc, intended as a technology preview. tmproc is an implementation of the new international standard ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps. tmproc is written in Python, and it should work on any platform to which Python have been ported. tmproc is a set of classes that represents a framework for doing topic map processing in Python. Features in this release: (1) Import, export, query and manipulation of topic maps; (2) Full set of extensible topic map classes with clearly defined interfaces. Association, AssociationRole, Facet, FacetValue, Locator, Occurrence, Topic, TopicMap, TopicMapFactory and TopicName; (3) Access to data in topic map objects using getter and setter methods; (4) Get types including transitive types of topics, associations and facets; (5) Get objects [e.g. topics, associations and facets] that are of given types or more specific types; (6) Get objects [e.g. associations] that exists in a scope or in any of the scopes' subscopes; (7) Optional architectural processing [requires xmlarch]; (8) Introduction and reference documentation." Note, in this connection, that Grønmo has also released a new version of xmlarch [0.25] - An XML Architectural Forms Processor. "The xmlarch module contains an XML architectural forms processor written in Python. It allows you to process XML architectural forms using any parser that uses the SAX interfaces. The module allow you to process several architectures in one parse-pass. Architectural document events for an architecture can even be broadcasted to multiple DocumentHandlers." For more on Topic Maps, see "Topic Navigation Maps"; for references on architectural processing, see "Architectural Forms and SGML/XML Architectures."
[March 23, 1999] XSA Client Available. Lars Marius Garshol has announced the availability of a new XSA client - a Java client for automatically monitoring XSA documents. "The client that comes with the kit can be used to automatically discover changes to a set of XSA documents (addresses, new versions, new products etc). The kit also contains an API that can be used to build custom clients or other kinds of XSA-aware software." See the XSA information page for additional information.
[March 23, 1999] TransformXML. Frank Boumphrey posted an announcment for an experimental version of TransformXML. TransformXML "is a simple ('alphaware') tool hat carries out batch transformations of XML files under windows 95, 98, or NT. It may be used to transform XML files written to one DTD to another DTD."
[March 23, 1999] TclXML version 1.1.1 - An All-Tcl XML Parser. Steve Ball (Zveno Pty Ltd.) announced the availability of an "All-Tcl" XML parser. TclXML is a non-validating, event-based parser that is plug-compatible with TclExpat, a Tcl interface to James Clark's expat XML parser. This parser can be made more forgiving of broken XML than expat, by using the -errorcommand option. This parser works with Tcl 8.0 or later, and is best used with Tcl 8.1 (which supports Unicode). Since it is pure Tcl, no compilation or extensions are required. TclXML will run on any platform where Tcl runs." Note that Steve Ball is currently "working on a range of specifications and tools for processing and manipulating XML documents using Tcl. Collectively these tools are known as TclXML. A specification for a programming interface to manipulate XML (and HTML) documents based on the DOM is called TclDOM. TclXML [also includes] a Tcl interface to James Clark's expat XML parser, known as TclExpat. See the Tcl XML Parsers documentation for other information.
[March 23, 1999] Online Tutorials for Java and XML Development. Nazmul Idris announced the availability of several tutorial resources for Java and XML developers, located on the Web site at developerlife.com. "The site contains one of the first XML and Java2 Tutorials available on the Web - we show you how to use Java2, XML, Swing, Servlet, JDBC and RMI APIs to create real world applications using XML and Java2. Complete source code files are available for download in all the online tutorials and articles. . . [the materials include] a new tool to help you learn DOM 1.0, called DomView. This is a Swing based tool that can view any XML document and it is designed to help you see exactly how any (DOM 1.0 compliant) parser implements DOM; (2) a new comprehensive test report on the new Sun, IBM and OpenXML parsers . . . We test drive the new HotSpot Java VM and we also do part of the testing on a dual processor machine. (3) an article to show you how to use the new parsers and fix the older code to work with these new parsers. (4) an article which highlights the differences between the DOM1.0 implementation in the IBM and Sun parsers."
[March 23, 1999] Production Release of MDSAX 1.0. Bill la Forge has announced the availability of a production release of MDSAX 1.0, issued as open source. MDSAX is an open framework for building XML applications using SAX filter components. MDSAX now supports multiple document types, document webs, program composition, document update, two alternative implementations of namespaces, and more. MDSAX ('Multi-Document Simple API for XML') "is a set of tools for working with Java SAX parsers and parser filters. MDSAX provides developers with considerably more control over the creation and arrangement of SAX filters, and makes it easy to specify different filter stacks for different types of documents (as identified by their root elements.) MDSAX also provides access to a number of services, allowing filters to communicate amongst themselves and with the application. MDSAX originated as a part of Coins4, a BSD-licensed open source project that supports a flexible mapping between XML documents and JavaBeans. No understanding of Coins is needed to use MDSAX, however - just an understanding of the SAX model for event-based parsers. MDSAX will work with any SAX-compliant parser or parser filter. (Filters must implement the MDFilter interface and have a related factory class which implements MDFilterFactory.)"
[March 22, 1999] TESS: The Text Encoding Summer School. SGML/XML training is available in a week-long 'Text Encoding Summer School' offered by the Humanities Computing Unit of Oxford University. TESS 1999 will be held in Oxford on July 11-17, 1999. Upon completion of the course, students will: "(1) have had hands-on experience of digitizing texts using OCR; (2) understand the principles of document analysis; (3) understand the basics of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and XML (the eXtensible Markup Language); (4) have gained hand-on experience of marking-up an electronic text using the Text Encoding Initiative's TEI Lite Document Type Definition; (5) have hands-on experience of SGML/XML authoring and browsing software; (6) understand the issues involved in distributing SGML/XML documents; (7) have gained basic knowledge of the range of SGML/XML-aware software products; (8) have a clear basis for proceeding to implement an SGML/XML solution appropriate to the needs of their particular project; (9) have discussed their work with experts in the field of text encoding." For further references, see the conference entry.
[March 22, 1999] tdtd Version 0.7 - Emacs Major Mode for SGML and XML DTDs. Tony Graham (Mulberry Technologies, Inc.) has released an updated version of his tdtd package - an Emacs Major Mode for editing SGML and XML DTDs. Features in revision 0.7: "(1) Standalone mode for editing DTDs; (2) dtd-etags function for creating Emacs TAGS files for easy lookup of any element, parameter entity, or notation's definition using Emacs's built-in tag-lookup functions; (3) dtd-grep function for searching files that shares a file history with dtd-etags for easy searching of the same files with both functions; (4) Specific font lock highlighting of declarations in XML DTDs, SGML DTDs, SGML Declarations, and System Declarations so that the important information stands out; (5) XML-specific behaviour that, at user option, is triggered by automatic detection of the XML Declaration; (6) Functions for writing and editing element, attribute, internal parameter entity and external parameter entity declarations and comments to ease creating and keeping a consistent style; (7) Elements and parameter entity names referenced in declarations are stored in minibuffer history to minimise retyping in new declarations." The distribution includes a tutorial on the use of the tool. For additional information on tdtd, see the 0.7 README document.
[March 18, 1999] Microsoft Delivers Internet Explorer 5. The release of Internet Explorer Version 5 was accompanied by several announcements from Microsoft and from other companies who plan to support the new XML-capable browser. The new browser is characterized as the "World's Fastest Modern Browser Available Today." In detail: "Internet Explorer 5 improves the ease and speed with which developers can create powerful Web-based applications and content because of its support for new technologies like Dynamic HTML Behaviors, as well as its unparalleled support for XML 1.0, XSL, HTML 4.0, CSS 1.0 and 2.0, Document Object Model, and ECMA-compliant scripting. In addition, the componentized architecture of Internet Explorer enables developers to easily take advantage of portions of the Internet Explorer 5 browsing code to incorporate Web-related functionality like HTML rendering and editing into their own products. With Internet Explorer 5, users can experience page-rendering performance improvements of up to 60 percent in comparison with Netscape Navigator 4.5 on top sites; average start-up is an average of 39 percent faster with Internet Explorer than with Netscape Navigator 4.5. . . Even before the release of Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 5 browser today, more than 2 million people had answered that question by downloading the beta version of IE 5. Now, with the official launch of IE 5, a key group of Internet service providers, portal sites and content providers are adding their endorsement of this fast, flexible, easy-to-use browser. More than 140 Internet service providers, seven of the top nine portal sites and more than 300 radio stations worldwide have chosen Internet Explorer 5 technologies as the best way to serve their customers." See "XML Industry News" for a few related announcements from other software companies.
[March 18, 1999] STG XML Validator Updated. Richard Goerwitz (Brown University Scholarly Technology Group - STG) posted an announcement for experimental support of XML namespaces in the online STG XML Validator. The STG XML Validation Form is available at http://www.stg.brown.edu/service/xmlvalid/. In the revised HTML form interface, elements and attributes in namespaces must be unless the checkbox relax namespace checks box is checked, which turns off strict validation for undeclared elements and attributes in namespaces. The announcement contains some developer comments on XML validation in connection with namespaces. Note that the source code for the XML parser used on STG's website is available for download; see the references in the technical report accompanying STG's XML 1.0 Reference Validator. The STG's XML validation tool is one of several such online tools now publicly accessible to users and developers.
[March 18, 1999] XML Mailing List in Chinese. An XML Mailing List in Chinese Language (XML_ZH) has been set up by Jian Luquin (Polo di Didattico di Crema, Universita degli Studi di Milano). To subscribe, send the message 'subscribe xml_zh' in email to majordomo@ml.crema.unimi.it. Postings may be sent to xml_zh@ml.crema.unimi.it. See also the list's mail archive. In this connection, note also the rapidly-growing collection of resources on the Chinese XML Web site managed by Rick Jelliffe (Academia Sinica Computing Centre), Chinese XML Now!; see also is description. For a full listing of XML discussion groups (including lists in Spanish, French, Italian, German), see "SGML/XML Discussion Groups and Mailing Lists."
[March 18, 1999] News Markup Language (NML) May Merge with the News Interchange Text Format (NITF). An informational report by Glenn Cruickshank (The Salt Lake Tribune) on the status of the News Markup Language (NML) describes industry work that may lead to the merger of NML with the NITF. "In January of 1999, the American Press Institute hosted a Media Center Grammar Conference in Dallas TX to discuss the need for a news markup language within the newspaper industry. This group, consisting of representatives from a number of US newspaper chains, universities and API, developed a list of forty (40) tags which they felt were needed to identify journalistic content in news stories. Members of this first group, called the API Grammarians, enlarged on this tag set and developed a preliminary tag proposal and partial DTD." According to the report, "a collection of news representatives, system vendors, members of the NAA Wire Service Committee, representatives from API and attendees from the earlier Dallas Grammarians meeting gathered Tuesday, February 16, 1999 in Atlanta. During the all day session, the attendees discussed the reason for a news markup language, NML, and how it relates to the News Interchange Text Format (NITF)." The Grammarians Working Group plans to present a draft proposal on March 27, 1999 at a NAA/IPTC meeting in Windsor, UK, and to release the revised markup language proposal to the industry more broadly after a comment period. "By incorporating the NML tag set into NITF and creating a complete industry standard, organizations have no reason to create their own custom markup schemes." A longer report provides a draft NML - NITF mapping. For further information on the two initiatives, see "News Industry Text Format (NITF)" and "News Markup Language (NML)."
[March 17, 1999] Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Uses XML for Common Data Formats. The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), chiefly through the leadership of Microsoft, is being developed as "a blueprint for educational software interoperability and data access." (SIF) is "an initiative that draws upon the strengths of the leading vendors in the K12 market to enable schools IT professionals to build, manage and upgrade their systems. It has been endorsed by close to 20 leading K12 vendors of student information, library, transportation, food service applications and more. The SIF specification is based on open-standard Extensible Markup Language (XML). It defines common data formats and high-level rules of interaction and architecture, and is not linked to a particular operating system or platform. The key elements of SIF include: (1) XML to define the common data formats, high-level rules, and mechanisms that enable applications to interact independently of the underlying software platform. (2) Implementation guide to explain how to deploy SIF using software architecture based on Windows NT and related technologies. Because SIF is an open process, implementation guides based on multiple platforms are possible. (3) HTTP and TCP/IP to enable communications between software platforms. (4) Compliance criteria and tests to ensure full applications interoperability." A draft document Schools Interoperability Framework - Specification Document presents the proposed XML encoding model: Appendix A contains the XML tag documentation; Appendix B provides a tag reference (organized alphabetically by element name); Appendix C supplies a draft XML DTD for the 'K12Framework'. "The Schools Interoperability Framework Deployment of the first pilot sites will begin by the summer of 1999, and the first SIF-based products likely will be available by the spring of 2000."
[March 17, 1999] OASIS Forms Registry & Repository Committee for XML. "OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, has formed an XML Registry and Repository Technical Committee for XML-related entities such as schemas relevant to the growing field of e-commerce, business-to-business transactions and tools and application interoperability. The new committee will actively investigate technology for registering XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and related materials and make them available for search by developers and users. It will also research technology for serving DTDs on-demand. OASIS intends to develop specifications to support these functions and to implement a trial service, with a target date of Fall 1999. Terry Allen of Commerce One is chairperson of the OASIS XML Registry and Repository Technical Committee, and 'encourages interested industry members to join in this effort to make XML on the Web in real time a success.' According to Allen, the goal of the OASIS XML Registry and Repository Technical Committee is to prevent XML developers from 'reinventing the wheel,' by facilitating discovery of XML DTDs available for use and reuse. OASIS also desires to assist users of XML -- both those serving XML documents and those receiving them -- by developing interoperable mechanisms for rapid resolution of pointers to XML DTDs and similar objects. As more and more DTDs (and other schemas) for XML are being developed, the market clearly demands a place to store, categorize, locate and distribute entities that are essential for next generation data interchange. OASIS does not intend to be the one and only provider in this area, but rather the consortium hopes to define a profile that enables interoperability between such services." See the full text of the press release and a reference collection for related work, "XML Registry and Repository."
[March 17, 1999] Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems. The W3C Micropayment Markup Working Group has issued a draft document Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems (W3C Working Draft 15-Mar-1999), edited by Thierry Michel. The Draft specification "provides an extensible way to embed in a Web page all the information necessary to initialize a micropayment (amounts and currencies, payment systems, etc). This embedding allows different micropayment electronic wallets to coexist in a interoperable manner." In the context of this document, produced under the W3C Electronic Commerce Activity, a "micropayment system" is designed to "minimize the cost overhead of a single transaction. Most of these micropayment systems try to save costs, both monetary (bank and transactions) and network (packet round trips). To do so, systems embed vital information in hyperlinks, using proprietary encodings. . . Micropayments provide an alternative revenue source for content providers (initially of text and pictures, presumably multimedia later on) beyond advertising and subscriptions. Micropayments may also provide revenue streams for service providers (database lookup, proxy services etc.)." Embedding micropayment information using RDF and an encoding using XML ('Embedding micropayment information in XML') remain open issues in this draft: an RDF encoding of the micropayment information is currently under design within the Working Group.
[March 17, 1999] XML Spy Editor Version 2.0 Released. Alexander Falk has posted an announcement for the release of XML Spy Version 2.0. XML Spy is a shareware XML editor developed by Icon Informations-Systeme GmbH. The Windows-based editor is now available for download. XML Spy with its structured approach "allows you to quickly view and edit any XML, XHTML, XSL, 3DML, or DTD document on your PC. A rich tree and enhanced grid view provide instant access to all elements of these documents with structured in-place editing capabilities." New features of XML Spy in the 2.0 release include: "1) Full Unicode support - UTF-7, UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-10646-UCS-2, ISO-10646-UCS-4; 2) Enhanced character-set encodings [all ISO-8859-x, Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, ISO-2022-JP, GB2312, Big5, etc.] with auto-detection and auto-correction; 3) XML Namespaces support; 4) XHTML 1.0 (HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0 reformulation) support."
[March 16, 1999] XTech '99 Tutorial and Presentation Materials Online. Several instructors and presenters at the GCA's recent XTech '99 Conference have made their presentation materials available online. Titles recently brought to attention include: (1) Steve Newcomb's "Vocabularies: Opportunities for Efficiency and Reliability"; (2) "Extending Mozilla or How to Do the Impossible,", by Heikki Toivonen and Johnny Stenbäck; (3) "Rapid XML Prototyping with Perl and XML::Parser," by Clark Cooper; (4) "Metadata Registries: Averting a Tower of XML Babel,", by Frank Olken and John McCarthy. Brief abstracts and URLs for these materials are provided in the XML articles listing. Authors are invited to send candidate URLs for online versions of their presentations for incorporation into a master reference listing.
[March 15, 1999] Public Release of SAXON Version 4.1 Michael Kay has announced the release of a new version of SAXON. The SAXON package "is a collection of tools for processing XML documents. You can use SAXON by writing Java applications, or by writing XSL stylesheets, or any combination of the two. SAXON provides a set of services that are particularly useful when converting XML data into other formats. The output format may be XML, or HTML, or some other format such as comma separated values, EDI messages, or data in a relational database." Version 4.1 "focuses on support for XSL: SAXON now supports about 85% of the XSL transformation language draft." In connection with the new release of SAXON, Michael Kay has created an updated version of his DTDGenerator tool. SAXON DTDGenerator ". . . generates a DTD from a specimen document. The new version attempts to detect patterns in the ordering of child elements for a given parent, and also examines the syntax of attribute values in greater detail." Among the new features in SAXON version 4.1: "1) Support for multiple output files - SAXON allows you to split a single input document into lots of linked output documents; 2) Close integration of Java and XSL code. You can invoke Java element handlers from XSL, and XSL element handlers from Java. You can also use the full XSL syntax for match patterns and select patterns from within your Java code; 3) SAXON Stylesheets produce a text file, not a tree. This means you can use them to produce CSV files, EDI messages, SQL scripts, or any number of formats that don't use angle-bracket syntax. Of course you can also produce XML and HTML output; 4) SAXON Stylesheets can process the source document in serial mode. This means the document doesn't have to fit in memory, and output can start appearing before the input is all available; 5) SAXON Stylesheets are extensible - By writing Java element handlers you can define additional elements that extend the standard XSL vocabulary, and then use these in any stylesheet."
[March 15, 1999] Sun and Adobe Offer $90,000 Cash Bounty for XSL Implementations. A news report from the San Jose XTech '99 Conference describes three prizes being offered by Sun and Adobe as cash incentives for XSL development. The prizes have not been announced formally, but were outlined at the XML conference: "In an attempt to jump-start XSL development, Sun Microsystems and Adobe are putting up $90,000 in bounties for independent developers who come up with specific XSL implementations. Sun's Jon Bosak, chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) XML Coordination Group, alluded to the prizes during his keynote presentation at the XTech 99 conference." According to the report, Sun Microsystems will "put up $30,000 for implementations of XSL to be added to the Mozilla.org open source effort, developing the source code to Netscape Communications' Communicator browser. . . [Adobe will offer $60,000 in prizes] for a print-oriented batch formatter written in Sun's Java programming language and that supports Adobe's portable document format (PDF). The batch formatter will let a printer process information from style sheets when printing batches of data." According to the report, the prize-willing applications would be put into the public domain; 'The idea is to put the code out there so that people can use it,' Bosak said." See also: "Sun, Adobe Offer Cash for Creativity, via XML Development Competitions." By James C. Luh. In Internet World (March 15, 1999).
[March 12, 1999] New XML Books. Two new books on XML recently came to attention, serving as reminders that XML offerings are now becoming increasingly visible in bookstores. A volume entitled XML Specification Guide has been written by Liam Quin and Ian S. Graham of Groveware Inc., and is published by John Wiley & Sons (ISBN: 0-471-32753-0). The authors, both well-respected in the SGML/XML field, "provide an in-depth, annotated specification guide, complete with sample applications. . . Beyond comprehensive coverage of the XML specification, the book discusses the new 'namespaces' technology from W3C, the Tiny XML subset, databases and object-oriented models, etc." [1999-03-26: See now also the Web site for the book.] The volume Informationsmodellierung in XML und SGML is written in German, authored by Henning Lobin of Universität Bielefeld - Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft (Springer-Verlag, ISBN: 3-540-65356-2). Lobin endeavors "to describe the field from a somewhat distinct perspective, with a strong emphasis on architectures and some other SGML extended facilities definied in the HyTime standard. There are chapters dealing with the grammatical restriction of PCDATA and CDATA content using architectures or the use of LINK for a flexible architectural mapping." A short list of XML Books is provided in the main XML document; a longer listing is maintained by Charles F. Goldfarb in "All the XML Books in Print."
[March 12, 1999] Alexandria Digital Library Project Uses XML. The Alexandria Digital Library Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara is representative of a growing number of digital library projects which use SGML/XML encoding for "metadata" description. The Alexandria Digital Library project "has developed three prototype digital libraries for georeferenced information. [. . .] the most recent of these efforts is a three-tier client-server architecture that relies heavily on a middleware layer to present a single uniform set of interfaces to multiple heterogeneous servers. These standard interfaces, all of which are implemented in HTTP, support session management, collection discovery and evaluation, metadata searching, metadata retrieval and online holding retrieval. An XML-based metadata encoding scheme and a simple Boolean query language have also been developed. The architecture described by these interfaces has been implemented at the University of California, Santa Barbara. See the project description for references to the XML DTDs. Another DL example? The Simple Digital Library Interoperability Protocol - SDLIP (used by clients to request searches to be performed over information sources) encodes data in XML formats. SDLIP has been developed by researchers at the Stanford Digital Libraries Project - "one participant in the 4-year, $24 million Digital Library Initiative, started in 1994 and supported by the NSF, DARPA, and NASA. . ."
[March 10, 1999] ICCC/IFIP 1999: Third International Conference on Electronic Publishing. Peter Linde (University of Karlskrona/Ronneby) has posted an announcement for the third ICCC/IFIP Electronic Publishing Conference, May 10-12, Ronneby, Sweden. "The ICCC (International Council for Computer Communications) in conjunction with IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) is pleased to announce the Third ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing to be held in Ronneby, Sweden 10-12 May 1999. The title of this year's conference is Electronic Publishing '99 - Redefining the Information Chain - New Ways and Voices." The Conference Keynote Speaker is David Seaman, Founding Director of the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia -- where much pioneering research and development on the application of SGML/XML to academic domains has taken place. The ICCC/IFIP Conference "will be concerned with electronic publishing both for specialist audiences and for the general public. There will be two parallel tracks. The first track will include case studies, presentations of projects and presentations of implemented electronic publishing in public and scholarly libraries, publishers, museums, etc. It will also include electronic provision of local community or tourist information, government information, and the like. The second track will concentrate on technical issues such as file formats, retrieval issues, etc." Several of the presentations will address the use of SGML/XML in electronic publishing. For additional information, see the main conference entry.
[March 10, 1999] Topic Navigation Map Standard Passes Its Ballot. Steve Pepper (STEP Infotek AS, and Acting convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34, WG3 [Information Association]) reports that the Final CD Text for ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Navigation Maps which went out for vote in late October 1998 has now passed its ballot. Comments will be resolved before the publication of the IS. This ISO standard is being co-edited by Michel Biezunski, Martin Bryan, and Steven R. Newcomb. "Topic navigation maps enable multiple, concurrent views of information objects. These views may be object oriented, relational, hierarchical, a combination of these, and/or other views. An unlimited number of topic navigation maps may be overlaid on a given bounded object set. The TNM notation is defined as an SGML Architecture, and this Standard takes the form of an architecture definition document expressed in conformance with Normative Annex A.3 of ISO/IEC 10744:1997, the Architectural Form Definition Requirements (AFDR). The formal definition of the TNM notation is expressed as a meta-DTD. The base notation of TNMs is SGML; an interchangeable Topic Navigation Map always consists of at least one SGML document, and it may include and/or refer to other kinds information resources. As the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a World Wide Web Consortium recommendation, is a subset of SGML, as explained in annex K of SGML (1997), also known as WebSGML. XML can be also used as a base notation for TNMs." For other information on Topic Maps, see "Topic Navigation Maps" or Michel Biezunski's Web site.
[March 09, 1999] DOM Level 2 Working Draft Published. An early release of the W3C Document Object Model Level 2 is now available in a Working Draft document, Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification Version 1.0. References: WD-DOM-Level-2-19990304, W3C Working Draft 04 March, 1999. This Working Draft has been been published by the DOM Working Group chaired by Lauren Wood (SoftQuad Software Inc.) as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The document is available in Postscript, PDF, XML, HTML, and plain text formats. The new specification "defines the Document Object Model Level 2, a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents. The Document Object Model Level 2 builds on the Document Object Model Level 1. Level 2 is expected to add interfaces for a Cascading Style Sheets object model, an event model, and a query interface, amongst others. This release of the Document Object Model Level 2 does not have all of the interfaces that the final version will have. It contains interfaces for associating stylesheets with a document, the Cascading Style Sheets object model, the Range object model, filters and iterators, and the Events object model. The DOM WG wants to get feedback on the interfaces that are in this version of the DOM Level 2 specification. The other interfaces will be added in future versions of this specification." See other references in "W3C Document Object Model (DOM)."
[March 09, 1999] XML for Internet-Drafts and RFC Series Documents. Marshall T. Rose (Invisible Worlds, Inc.) has authored an IETF Network Working Group Internet-Draft Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML which presents a technique for using XML as a source format for documents in the Internet-Drafts and RFC series. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Document reference: draft-mrose-writing-rfcs-00.txt, Date: February 1999; Expires: August 02, 1999. The draft memo has three goals: "(1) To describe a simple XML Document Type Definition (DTD) that is powerful enough to handle the simple formatting requirements of RFC-like documents whilst allowing for meaningful markup of descriptive qualities. (2) To describe software that processes XML source files, including a tool that produces documents conforming to RFC 2223, HTML format, and so on. (3) To provide the proof-of-concept for the first two goals."
[March 09, 1999] XML DTD for Standard Phone Books. A recent 'Standards Track' Internet-Draft document from an IETF Network Working Group bears the title XML DTD for Phone Books. The document (draft-ietf-roamops-phonebook-xml-00.txt) was authored in February, 1999 by Max Riegel (Siemens AG) and Glen Zorn (Microsoft Corporation). In addition to providing an XML DTD, the document "describes the information to be included in the standard phone book for roaming applications. All data is described in XML (Extensible Markup Language) syntax leading to a concise XML DTD (Document Type Declaration) for the phone book. The goals of [the draft IETF] document include: 1) Creating a flexible, extensible and robust framework upon which to build a standard phone book; 2) Promoting a standard phone book format, to enhance interoperability between ISPs and roaming consortia."
[March 09, 1999] OpenXML Publicly Available. On March 5, 1999, OpenXML.org announced the "general availability of OpenXML, an open source, pure Java, commercial-grade, fully featured framework for XML-based applications. OpenXML covers the entire cycle of XML documents production, processing and delivery for dynamic content publishing and application to application communication. OpenXML is distributed under an open source license that encourages distribution, integration and modifications, and is supportive of both open source and commercial applications. Collaborative work and volunteer contribution is coordinated through the OpenXML.org Web site. The OpenXML parser is capable of reading XML version 1.0, DTD and HTML 4.0 documents, offering a wide range of options to suit different needs. In performance, OpenXML is comparable to alternative parsers from IBM and Sun. OpenXML provides in-memory document caching for improved performance, and XCatalog support for mapping remote documents to local copies. Supported document sources include network, file system, ClassLoader and database servers." Additional detail may be found in the press release, OpenXML Publicly Available: Open Source JAVA/XML Application Framework. OpenXML Provides First Open Source, Commercial-Grade Framework for Java/XML Applications."
[March 09, 1999] An XML Version of SAE J2008. A communiqué from Dianne Kennedy reports on recent design work by the DTD Working Group for SAE J2008. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J2008 DTD Working Group met on March 3, 1999 in Detroit. Among the work items was the development of an official" XML version of the SAE J2008 DTD for posting automotive service information on the Web. The XML version of the DTD can be found at the XMLXperts Web site along with a description of how the XML version was created and sample data with a CSS style sheet as a prototype for Web viewing. See also "XML for the Automotive Industry - SAE J2008."
[March 09, 1999] IBM alphaWorks Announces Xeena XML Editor. The IBM alphaWorks lab has released Xeena - a new Java-based XML editing environment. Xeena is a generic Java application for editing valid XML documents derived from any valid DTD. The Xeena editor "takes as input a given XML DTD, and automatically builds a palette containing the elements defined in the DTD. Users can thus create/edit/expand any document derived from that DTD, by using a visual tree-directed paradigm." The two key features of Xeena identified by the developers are 'syntax directed editing' and 'self configurability'. "Xeena is aware of the DTD grammar, and by making only authorized elements icons sensitive, automatically ensures that all documents generated are valid according to the given DTD. The config file that is used to fix various parameters such as which elements to put in the iconbar for instance, is itself defined in XML. Users that work frequently according to a given DTD, can thus configure Xeena, but invoking Xeena on the config DTD, so as to generate a valid config file for Xeena to use afterwards." Other Xeena features: "1) Intuitive viewing and editing of XML documents in a tree control view; 2) Editing of multiple XML documents; 3) Includes XML source viewer; 4) Restricts adding and editing of features according to the DTD, and checks validity of produced documents; 5) Easy customization of display." How does it work? "Xeena is a Java application built on top of Swing and TRL xml parser. The XML attributes of the elements are edited via a table. Each attribute value is entered using an editing GUI component (e.g., combo-box, text-field) which is also derived from the DTD. The editor guides the user in inserting elements into the tree in a correct order (according to the DTD) by making the elements palette sensitive to the current selected tree node and by not allowing to insert elements in an invalid order. The editor is a Multiple Document Interface application (MDI) with full fledged support to edit multiple XML documents and copy, cut and paste from one document into another. Xeena ensures XML validation in two phases. Some constraints are enforced constantly (e.g., Xeena will not let the user insert an element in a place which is not allowed by the DTD). Other constraints are checked and enforced only when the user attempts to save the edited file (e.g., Xeena will inform the user of invalid attribute values, enforcing the insertion of valid values before saving the file)." Xeena is available for download from the alphaWorks Web site. For a list of other XML editors, see 'XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools.'
[March 09, 1999] OASIS Welcomes New Executive Director. Simon Nicholson (Chrystal Software, and OASIS Board Chairman) announced the selection of Laura Walker as the new OASIS Executive Director. Laura Walker brings over thirteen years of experience in the publishing industry to her new position. She comes to OASIS from Proxima Corporation, where she served as Senior Product Marketing Manager, leading the development of an e-commerce-based accessories business unit. She also held management positions at Chrystal Software, XSoft (a division of Xerox) and Intergraph Corporation, where she worked with many OASIS members. Laura's responsibilities as Executive Director will include the management of the day-to-day operations of the consortium, developing new programs for user members, growth of the consortium membership, ensuring the equal representation of all consortium members' interests and will serve as an objective resource for the press. OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is a nonprofit, international consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of product-independent formats based on public standards. These standards include SGML, XML, HTML as well as others that are related to structured information processing. Members of OASIS are providers, users and specialists of the technologies that make these standards work in practice. For additional details on Laura Walker's recent appointment, see the OASIS press release.
[March 08, 1999] XML Version of Timing Diagram Markup Language (TDML) Released. The Timing Diagram Markup Language Working Group, formerly known as the 'Waveform Markup Language (WML) Working Group,' has published a new XML-compliant version of TDML. TDML, the Timing Diagram Markup Language, is an industry-backed effort to establish an open, industry standard language for the exchange of interactive timing diagrams. The language is currently being defined by the TDML Working Group of the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) organization as part of the Electronic Component Information Exchange (ECIX) project, with members from component vendor and EDA companies. The TDML language allows persons to exchange interactive timing diagram information in a standard form. Having a standard form for the information promotes sharing between different organizations and allows interested parties to develop tools for generating, editing, browsing, etc. the diagrams." Note also from ECIX: the 'Component Information Dictionary Standard (CIDS)'. "(CIDS) is an SGML DTD that defines markup conventions for detailed information about the key words and phrases used in a datasheet. The aim of the Component Information Dictionary Specification is to provide authors and users of component information with a computer sensible dictionary of characteristic properties of components, allowing for a common and unambiguous understanding of those characteristics. CIDS is an SGML application integrated with PCIS, that will initially be based on the contents of the IEC1360 dictionary." See the recent announcment "Lucent Technologies Joins Si2 ECIX Project. PTAB Accepts New Customer Advisory Board Proposal, Moves to XML". See: "Timing Diagram Markup Language (TDML)." and further information in Electronic Component Information Exchange (ECIX) - [Pinnacles Component Information Standard (PCIS)].
[March 08, 1999] New Versions of James Clark's Expat and XT. James Clark has announced the availability of a new Expat test release. Expat ('XML Parser Toolkit') is an XML 1.0 parser written in C (currently a non-validating XML processor). Expat has built in support for utf-8, utf-16, iso-8859-1, and us-ascii encodings. This test version "adds handlers for namespace declarations: when namespace processing is enabled these provide information about xmlns attributes; the release also fixes a few bugs." Clark has also authored an Expat FAQ document, "Frequently Asked Questions about Expat." A new release of James Clark's XT is also available. XT is a Java-based implementation of the tree construction part of XSL (WD-xsl-19981216). The new '19990307' version of XT includes bug fixes and a 'clean, simple SAX-based interface (com.jclark.xsl.sax.XSLProcessor).
[March 08, 1999] XML Canonicalization Requirements Document Published. The W3C XML Syntax Working Group has released a first draft version of an XML Canonicalization Requirements document. The NOTE (W3C Note 07-March-1999) is edited by James Tauber. This requirements document "lists the design principles, scope and requirements for the Canonicalization of XML being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Syntax Working Group. The 'canonical XML' design work is motivated by fact that it is possible for "logically equivalent XML documents to differ in their physical representation. In particular, two equivalent XML documents may differ on such issues as physical (i.e., entity) structure, attribute ordering, character encoding and insignificant whitespace. This means that equivalence testing cannot be done at the byte level for arbitrary XML documents. Such equivalence testing is useful in a number of domains including digital signatures, checksums, version control and conformance testing. The Canonical XML specification [thus] aims to introduce a notion of equivalence between XML documents which can be tested at the syntactic level and, in particular, by byte-for-byte comparison. It shall describe the canonicalization of XML documents such that logically equivalent documents will have the same byte-for-byte representation. This form is referred to as the canonical form of the document." Compare, in this context, "Signed XML (W3CActivity)", the "Digital Receipt Infrastructure Initiative", "Digest Values for DOM (DOMHASH)", and "Signed Document Markup Language (SDML)."
[March 08, 1999] 'Last Call' Working Draft Issued for XHTML Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0. The W3C HTML Working Group has published a revised, 'last-call' working draft version for XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0 (WD-html-in-xml-19990304). The last call ends 24-March-1999. The working draft XHTML 1.0 specification proposes a "reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application, and three namespaces corresponding to the ones defined by HTML 4.0. The semantics of the elements and their attributes are defined in the W3C Recommendation for HTML 4.0. These semantics provide the foundation for future extensibility of XHTML. Compatibility with existing HTML user agents is possible by following a small set of guidelines."
[March 05, 1999] W3C Proposed Recommendation for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema Specification. As part of the W3C Metadata Activity, the W3C RDF Schema Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema Specification (W3C Proposed Recommendation 03-March-1999). The document editors are Dan Brickley (University of Bristol) and R.V. Guha (Netscape). This PR constitutes a revision of the last-call working draft (1998-10-30). The goal of the Resource Description Framework "is to produce a language for the exchange of machine-understandable descriptions of resources on the Web. A separate W3C specification describes the data model and syntax for the interchange of metadata using RDF." The RDF data model, as specified in Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax thus "defines a simple model for describing interrelationships among resources in terms of named properties and values. RDF properties may be thought of as attributes of resources and in this sense correspond to traditional attribute-value pairs. RDF properties also represent relationships between resources. As such, the RDF data model can therefore resemble an entity-relationship diagram. The RDF data model, however, provides no mechanisms for declaring these properties, nor does it provide any mechanisms for defining the relationships between these properties and other resources. That is the role of RDF Schema. The [RDF Schema Specification] document does not specify a vocabulary of descriptive elements such as 'author'. Instead, it specifies the mechanisms needed to define such elements, to define the classes of resources they may be used with, to restrict possible combinations of classes and relationships, and to detect violations of those restrictions. Thus, this document defines a schema specification language. More succinctly, the RDF Schema mechanism provides a basic type system for use in RDF models. It defines resources and properties such as Class and subClassOf that are used in specifying application-specific schemas. The typing system is specified in terms of the basic RDF data model - as resources and properties. Thus, the resources constituting this typing system become part of the RDF model of any description that uses them. The schema specification language is a declarative representation language influenced by ideas from knowledge representation (e.g., semantic nets, frames, predicate logic) as well as database schema specification languages (e.g., NIAM) and graph data models. The RDF schema specification language is less expressive, but much simpler to implement, than full predicate calculus languages such as CycL (The CYC Representation Language) and KIF (Knowledge Interchange Format). RDF Schemas might be contrasted with XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs). Unlike an XML DTD, which gives specific constraints on the structure of a document, an RDF Schema provides information about the interpretation of the statements given in an RDF data model."
[March 05, 1999] Production Release of Oracle's XML Parser for Java. Mark Scardina (Server Technologies - Oracle Corporation) has announced the production release of Oracle's XML Parser for Java. Binaries, documentation, and online support are available from the Oracle Technology Network. The source code is not available currently, but will be made available in a future release. The parser runs under any OS with Java 1.1.x support, and requires JAVA JDK 1.1.x. or above. The Oracle XML parser is an early adopter release and is written in Java. It will check if an XML document is well-formed and, optionally, if it is valid. The parser will construct a Java object tree which can be accessed. XML Parser for Java is a standalone XML component that enables parsing of XML documents through either SAX or DOM interfaces using validating or non-validating modes. Written to be compliant with all current standards, the XML Parser also supports documents in most U.S., European, and Asian character sets. Features in this version: 1) supports validation and non-validation modes; 2) has built-in Error Recovery until fatal error; 3) supports W3C XML 1.0 Recommendation; 4) intergrated Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1.0 API; 5) integrated SAX 1.0 API; 6) supports W3C Proposed Recomendation for XML Namespaces; 7) supports documents in many encodings (UTF-8, UTF-16, BIG 5, GB2312, ISO-10646-UCS-2, EUC-JP, ISO-10646-UCS-4, EUC-KR, US-ASCII, KOI8-R, EBCDIC-CP-*, ISO-2022-JP, ISO-8859-1-to-9, ISO-2022-KR, Shift_JIS. UTF-8 is the default encoding if none is specified. Any other ASCII or EBCDIC based encodings that are supported by the JDK may be used. However, they must be specified in the format required by the JDK instead of as official character set names defined by IANA. Support is available in the XML Forum on OTN to provide a collaborative area for bug reporting, technical support, and discussing other Oracle/XML issues. This forum will be used for external as well as internal beta testers." For other XML parsers, see "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits"; for interactive/online validation and checking tools, see "Check XML!" [Note 1999-03-29:] see now also Oracle's PLSXML Utilities and Demos."
[March 04, 1999] Microsoft Announces BizTalk Framework as Part of Its E-Commerce Strategy. Several recent industry announcements (e.g., SAP, PeopleSoft, DataChannel, webMethods, Level 8 Systems, Vitria Technology) highlight the importance of Microsoft's new "comprehensive e-commerce strategy to make it easier for companies and consumers to conduct business over the Internet." According to today's press release, Microsoft Corp. has "announced Microsoft BizTalk, a new cross-platform e-commerce framework that makes it easy for businesses to integrate applications and conduct business over the Internet with trading partners and customers. The BizTalk framework is based on new Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas and industry standards that enable integration across industries and between business systems, regardless of platform, operating system or underlying technology. Microsoft also announced plans to incorporate the BizTalk schema into the Microsoft Commerce Platform, initiatives for the MSN network for Internet services, and future versions of Office, the BackOffice family and the Windows family of operating systems. Microsoft BizTalk Server is new technology that will make it easier for companies to take advantage of BizTalk. By supporting BizTalk and underlying XML technology, it will enable companies to exchange data and integrate applications over the Internet. BizTalk document-handling schema will be based on industry standards such as electronic data interchange (EDI), borrow from object-based industry initiatives such as the Open Application Group (OAG) in manufacturing, and will be defined in concert with ISVs, customers and industry consortia. As new XML standards emerge, contributors to the BizTalk framework will evaluate and support standards that deliver value to customers. The BizTalk services architecture will be supported natively in Microsoft products and tools. The Microsoft Commerce Platform, Office, BackOffice and Windows will use BizTalk XML schemas to store additional information about documents and to integrate BackOffice- and Windows-based applications." See "Microsoft Announces BizTalk Framework for E-Commerce, Lets Software Speak the Language of Business. SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Other Leading Industry Vendors Endorse New Cross-Platform E-Commerce and Application Integration Initiatives" and "Microsoft Announces E-Commerce Strategy, with New Software and Services Designed to Transform the Web into a Bustling Marketplace."
[March 03, 1999] First Working Draft of W3C XML Fragment Interchange Published. Paul Grosso (ArborText), Chair of the W3C XML Fragment Working Group has announced the publication of the working group's first Working Draft (WD) of the XML Fragment Interchange specification (W3C Working Draft 03-MAR-1999). The document editors are Paul Grosso and Daniel Veillard. The document abstract: "The XML standard supports logical documents composed of possibly several entities. It may be desirable to view or edit one or more of the entities or parts of entities while having no interest, need, or ability to view or edit the entire document. The problem, then, is how to provide to a recipient of such a fragment the appropriate information about the context that fragment had in the larger document that is not available to the recipient. The XML Fragment WG is chartered with defining a way to send fragments of an XML document -- regardless of whether the fragments are predetermined entities or not -- without having to send all of the containing document up to the part in question. This document defines Version 1.0 of the [eventual] W3C Recommendation that addresses this issue." The draft specification defines: 1) exact constraints on what portions of an XML document may constitute fragments; 2) the set of information needed to allow for successful parsing as well as for viewing or editing of a fragment in a useful and important set of cases; 3) the notation (i.e., language) in which this information (the fragment context specification) will be described; 4) some mechanisms for associating this information with a fragment, with at least one allowing for the fragment context specification to be included in the same storage object as the fragment body and at least one allowing for the fragment context specification to be in a storage object separate from the fragment body." This new WD document is available in both HTML and XML format. The XML Fragment Working Group invites comment on the draft specification; comments may be sent to the publicly archived mailing list forum. See "XML Fragment Working Group" for a description of the W3C WG and references to its published deliverables.
[March 02, 1999] VXML Forum Created by AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Motorola. The formation of a new 'Voice Extensible Markup Language Forum (VXML Forum)' has been announced by AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Motorola. The VXML Forum "aims to drive the market for voice- and phone-enabled Internet access by promoting a standard specification for VXML, a computer language used to create Web content and services that can be accessed by phone. AT&T, Lucent and Motorola will contribute their markup language technologies to the development of the open VXML specification. Seventeen other leading companies from the speech, Internet and communications markets have agreed to support the VXML Forum and play an active role in reviewing or contributing to the VXML specification. The initial specification will be available for public comment and contribution next month [April 1999], with the goal of submitting a final proposed specification for standardization to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) later this year. The initial VXML language specification will be based upon characteristics and functionality that includes Phone Markup Language or PML, an extension of the HTML language from AT&T, Lucent and Motorola 's VoxML." According to information provided on the VXML Forum's Web site, VXML has its roots in a research project called PhoneWeb at AT&T Bell Laboratories. After the AT&T/Lucent split, both companies pursued development of independent versions of a phone markup language. Lucent's Bell Labs continued work on the project, now known as TelePortal. The recent research focus has been on service creation and natural language applications. AT&T Labs has built a mature phone markup language and platform that have been used to construct many different types of applications, ranging from call center-style services to consumer telephone services that use a visual Web site for customers to configure and administer their telephone features. . . As an XML-based definition with an HTML-like appearance, VXML will be easy to learn for experienced Web content programmers and amenable to easy processing by tools to support desktop development of VXML Web applications." For other references, including related speech/voice markup languages, see "VXML Forum (Voice Extensible Markup Language Forum)."
[March 02, 1999] Workshop on Integrating XML and Distributed Object Technologies. A Call for Papers has been issued by the organizers of the upcoming Workshop on Integrating XML and Distributed Object Technologies, part of WET ICE 1999. The IEEE 8th International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises will be held June 16 - 18, 1999, at Stanford University, California. WET ICE '99 will consist of parallel, three-day workshops on different topics related to collaboration technology. The goal of this XML workshop "is to investigate how XML and Distributed Object technologies such as Java, CORBA and DCOM can be integrated leveraging the strengths each have to offer: 1) Integrating XML and Distributed Object technologies; 2) Advances in XML: DOM, SAX, XSL, Schemas, XLink as it relates to Objects; 3) Advances in CORBA 3.0, Java, DCOM as it relates to XML; 4) Tools and utilities that facilitate integration of XML and object-technologies; 5) Application of XML and Object technologies in E-commerce, Finance, Healthcare, Publishing, Insurance and Manufacturing and System Integration. The purpose of these examples should be to show specific successful integration approaches of XML and objects." Submissions are due by March 22, 1999.
[March 01, 1999] Public Release of DB2XML. Volker Turau (Fachhochschule Wiesbaden, Fachbereich Informatik) has announced the public release of DB2XML, available now for download. "DB2XML is a tool for transforming relational databases into XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents. It is written in Java. DB2XML provides two main functions: 1) Transforming the results of database queries into XML documents; 2) Providing attributes describing the characteristics of the data. DB2XML comes with an easy to use graphical user interface and accesses databases using JDBC drivers. It requires JDK 1.1 (or higher) and a database with a JDBC driver (or a ODBC driver using the JDBC-ODBC bridge). DB2XML is well documented and can be used freely."
[February 26, 1999] Character Model for the World Wide Web. As part of the W3C Internationalization Activity, a working draft document has been published by the Internationalization Working Group (I18N WG) describing a Character Model for the World Wide Web. Edited by Martin J. Dürst (W3C), this new working draft document "addresses the requirements laid out in Requirements for String Identity and Character Indexing Definitions for the WWW (WD-charreq-19980710, 10-July-1998). It also contains lists of topics for explicit formulation of the character model used by W3C specifications; these lists will be expanded in the next version. [The document] defines various aspects of a character model for the WWW. It contains basic definitions and models, specifications to be used by other specifications or directly by implementations, and explanatory material. In particular, early uniform normalization, string identity matching, string indexing, and conventions for URIs are addressed." The specification "has a wide range of potential users, including several W3C-related activities (DOM, XPointer, XSL, RDF, XML element and attribute names, digital signatures) and broader technologies (e.g.,identifiers in Java, string handling in ECMAScript, filenames in FTP, folder names in IMAP, Usenet newsgroup names, identifiers in ACAP."
[February 26, 1999] Fujitsu's HyBrick Browser Version 0.82 Released. Ralph E. Ferris (Fujitsu Software Corporation) has announced a new release of Fujitsu's HyBrick SGML/XML browser, with expanded support for XLink/XPointer. It is available from the Fujitsu Software Corporation's Web site. New features in HyBrick V0.82 related to XLink and XPointer include: "1) XLink/XPointer error/warning info is shown in the error list dialog; 2) A 'Document Group' sub-menu has been added in the 'XLink/XPointer' menu; users can now navigate between inter-linked documents by using Document Groups as well as through individual links; 3) In the 'select link' dialog, link element 'role' values are displayed instead of GIs. This feature, as well as the 'Document Group' display feature, are particularly useful for creating and navigating 'Topic Maps.'; 4) The mouse cursor now changes its shape over links." Also new in HyBrick 0.82 are multiple stylesheet support (if multiple stylesheet PIs are present, users are presented with a dialog box to select the stylesheet they want to use), 'Reload hubdocument' function and 'Close window' function. 'HyBrick' is "an advanced SGML/XML browser developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, the research arm of Fujitsu. 'HyBrick' is based on an architecture that supports advanced linking and formatting capabilities. HyBrick includes a DSSSL renderer and XLink/XPointer engine running on top of James Clark's SP and Jade. It supports both valid and well-formed XML documents, XLink and XPointer (XLink implemented as a subset of the HyTime property set), SGML (ISO 8879), DSSSL (ISO 10179) online specification, printing and print previewing based on DSSSL stylesheets." See more on "HyBrick Support for XPointer" in a posting of March 4, 1999.
[February 26, 1999] QAML 2.0X, an XML DTD for FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). A recent communiqué from Rick Jelliffe (Academia Sinica Computing Centre) announces a 'Call for Comments' on a proposed XML DTD for 'Frequently Asked Questions' documents. The new QAML 2.0X XML DTD is "based on the QAML 1.0 SGML DTD, with backwards-compatible augmentations for XML, I18N (internationalization), XLL [XLink] hypertext linking, style, accessability and tracking." Comments on the proposed DTD are solicited by the authors, Justin Higgins of digitalNation Network Services, and Rick Jelliffe. The XML DTD is available online from the FAQ.org website (http://www.faq.org/qaml/) and from the 'Chinese XML Now!' website (http://www.ascc.net/xml/).
[February 26, 1999] New Release of SiRPAC. Janne Saarela (World Wide Web Consortium) posted an announcement for a new release of SiRPAC - Simple RDF Parser & Compiler. Rel


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