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[June 29, 1999] TReSy - Text Retrieval System for SGML/XML. A communiqué from Francesco Corti (Computer Research for Cultural Heritage Centre, Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy) reports on research underlying an SGML/XML search and retrieval engine. The team has been studying and developing structures for a new search engine for SGML/XML documents, TReSy. TReSy (Text Retrieval System for SGML/XML) "has been designed to manage efficiently the huge volume of information contained in one or more SGML/XML conformant texts. TReSy's numerous potentialities make it a program destined to meet the needs of its users especially thanks to its flexibility that allows for a wide range of practical applications. The encouraging experimental results and the growing interest in the scientific communities all over the world for SGML and XML have lead TReSy to be a part of a wider project aiming at the study of SGML/XML software and at the development of the search engine which should establish itself as an efficient tool for text retrieval on texts. The project has been named after the engine with the generic name of TReSy. . . . The data structure of the textual search engine is based upon the full-text indexing of the documents. The same degree of efficiency is thus guaranteed for the single word search as well as for the phrase search or for the portion of words search. TReSy searching supports: (1) Pattern search independently of its context, (2) Pattern search depending of its context, (3) Context search on indexed documents. . . TReSy's flexibility makes it the ideal tool for a wide range of text retrieval applications from the philological analysis of literary texts, up to the archiving of documents collections. All such applications can run over the Web as well as being easily manageable through external media such as CDROM." In this connection, one may compare Structured Information Manager (SIM), which provides index/search/retrieval for SGML/XML document corpora.
[June 29, 1999] New W3C Recommendation: Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents. A recent announcement bears the title: "W3C Issues Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents as a Recommendation. Allows XML to Leverage Display Power, Flexibility of CSS." Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents Version 1.0 (W3C Recommendation 29-June-1999) is a document specifying a method whereby a style sheet may be "associated with an XML document by including one or more processing instructions with a target of xml-stylesheet in the [XML] document's prolog." The editor of the Recommendation is James Clark. The publication of the document reflects "cross-industry and expert community agreement on the first efforts for allowing style sheets to be associated with an XML document, thus bringing a wider range of design and display options to XML authors. Microsoft, Netscape, Opera Software, and SoftQuad have products that support the new recommendation. Other vendors have promised to support the specification in upcoming products." The relevant W3C working group "expects additional mechanisms for linking style sheets to XML document to be defined in a future specification. Work is already underway to develop technologies that will allow developers to place the style sheet link outside the XML document itself in ways that are extensible, self-documenting, and that can be validated. 'We can now concentrate on developing a more sophisticated mechanism that takes advantage of ongoing W3C work in metadata, schemas, and linking,' Clark added." The association between XML document and style sheet is specified by means of a processing instruction that can have six pseudo attributes; the semantics of the pseudo-attributes (href, type, title, media, charset, alternate) are effectively the same as for the HTML construct <LINK REL="stylesheet">. As for the use of the XML processing instruction: "The W3C does not anticipate recommending the use of processing instructions in any future specification, [and] the use of XML processing instructions in this specification should [therefore] not be taken as a precedent." A collection of Testimonials for Associating Style Sheets with XML Documents accompanies the W3C announcement.
[June 29, 1999] TalkML. Together with Guillaume Belrose, W3C's Dave Raggett (on assignment from HP Labs) "is developing a voice browser to test out ideas for using context free grammars for more flexible voice interaction dialogs. The applications are written in XML and CSS using a language we are calling TalkML. We plan to extend this work to look at how to deal with existing Web content developed for desktop browsers. Some ideas for this are covered in a W3C NOTE ['Voice Browsers'] I wrote last year with Microsoft's Or Ben-Natan. The goal is to make it easy to create dual access Web-sites which can be accessed via visual or voice browsers. See also my talk on Style sheets for Voice Browsers, as presented at the Developer's Day at WWW8. . . TalkML is an experimental XML language for voice browsers, and is being developed by HP Labs for use in the following markets: (1) Call centers (IVR++) -- sales and support services accessed via 800 numbers, adding speech recognition to today's DTMF (touch tone) systems; (2) Smart phones with displays; (3) Access to email, appointments, news and travel services etc. while your are on the road (in-car systems); (4) Mobile devices too small for decent displays or keyboards, WCDMA palmtop organizers/pagers with low enough cost to be a must-have (like cell-phones). TalkML supports more natural conversations than dialog systems based on keywords, while remaining simple to author. Other work is underway to investigate how to author 'dual-access' applications, where the same application can be accessed by both conventional visual browsers and voice browsers." See "TalkML" for additional references.
[June 29, 1999] Updated Version of IBM's XML for C++ (XML4C). IBM alphaWorks lab has published a new release of its XML for C++ parser (XML4C). XML4C is a "validating XML parser written in a portable subset of C++. XML4C makes it easy to give an application the ability to read and write XML data. It is a single shared library that provides classes for parsing, generating, manipulating, and validating XML documents. XML4C is faithful to the XML 1.0 Recommendation and associated standards (DOM 1.0, SAX 1.0). Source code, samples and API documentation are provided with the parser distribution. The version 2.2.0 update for XML4C++ contains more platform support, better conformance to XML Spec(s), bug fixes and higher performance. XML4C++ is now available for WinNT/98, AIX, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX 10.2 (aCC & CC), HP-UX 11 (aCC & CC)." See "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits" for related tools.
[June 28, 1999] Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL). Complete with XML specification, the Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL) "is a computer-interpretable language, developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center under the leadership of Mark Stefik. DPRL is intended to support commerce in digital works, that is, publishing and selling electronic books, digital movies, digital music, interactive games, computer software and other creations distributed in digital form. [DPRL] is also intended to support specification of access and use controls for secure digital documents in cases where financial exchange is not part of the terms of use. One of the goals of DPRL in digital property rights is to develop an approach and language that can be used throughout the publishing industries and other industries as well." Xerox DPRL 'is an XML based syntax for specify the terms and conditions governing the use of a digital content'. Version 2.00 of the DPRL specification, as documented in Digital Property Rights Language. Manual and Tutorial - XML Edition, ('November 13, 1998', review version ) provides a provisional XML encoding: "Usage rights specifications are represented using the element/attribute markup model of eXtensible MarkUp Language(XML). Collectively, the markup tags indicate what rights are in effect on a digital work." The formal grammar is presented in Appendix B (Grammar for the Digital Property Rights Language) in the form of an XML 'work specification' DTD. DPRL is used to specify fees, terms and conditions governing the use of digital content. DPRL is extremely flexible and supports multiple business models and rights protection policies, giving publishers the flexibility they need for their current and future businesses. DPRL supports multiple pricing models: subscription-based, outright purchase, purchase of individual rights (view, print, copy, edit, etc.), metered usage, time-based usage, and membership pricing. DPRL defines syntax for specifying rights for a digital document. Rights such as 'play,' 'print,' 'copy,' 'edit,' etc. can be grouped into named 'rights groups'." In connection with the recent release of the DPRL XML version, John Erickson (VP of Technology Strategy, Yankee Book Peddler, Inc.) has written a sketch for a broad-based 'RightsTalk.org' forum to address interoperability. In his memo "Toward an Open Rights Management Interoperability Framework" he writes: "I'm curious to see if [Xerox] will work to foster a rights management interoperability framework analogous to (or perhaps falling within) the likes of ICE, cXML (Ariba), BizTalk (Microsoft), e-speak (HP), etc. . . After participating for some time in various international "rights metadata" discussions, it is clear to me that a critical element to true distributed rights management will an open, service-level framework that enables peer-to-peer interoperation of rights management services and agents. On a broader scale, I've been trying to collect these thoughts as a working concept that I'm calling RightsTalk. I envision that the definition and evangelism for RightsTalk would be managed under a structure called RightsTalk.org. . ." See the document Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL) for details on the project.
[June 28, 1999] Cost Version 2.2. Released. Joe English has announced the release of Cost version 2.2, which now provides 'preliminary support for XML'. Cost is a free "structure-controlled SGML application programming tool. It is implemented as a Tcl extension, and works in conjunction with James Clark's nsgmls and/or sgmls parsers. Cost provides a flexible set of low-level primitives upon which sophisticated applications can be built. These include: (1) A powerful query language for navigating the document tree and extracting ESIS information; (2) An event-driven programming interface; (3) A specification mechanism which binds properties to nodes based on queries. Cost can be dynamically loaded into a Tcl application with the usual package mechanism, or it can be statically linked into a custom Tcl interpreter. There is also a command-line interface, costsh, which can be used interactively or as part of a command pipeline. A windowing interface, costwish, is also available for building GUI applications with Cost and Tk. New features in Cost version 2.2 include: (1) It should compile and install out-of-the-box on most Unix platforms, with any Tcl release from 7.5 through 8.1.1 - courtesy autoconf; (2) One can load more than one document at a time, and switch between them with the new 'selectDocument' and 'withDocument' commands; (3) It allows comments at certain places in specifications. (4) It provides preliminary support for XML, courtesy expat by James Clark. Note: XML support is largely untested and has a few known deficiencies (and probably several unknown ones!); I'd appreciate any feedback/bug reports. (5) It is released under a Tcl-style license instead of the 'Artistic' license. (6) Cost can now be loaded as an extension into multiple Tcl interpreters without conflicts. (7) Many minor bugfixes, enhancements, and cleanups."
[June 28, 1999] Morphon XML Editor BETA 1. An announcement from Lunatech Research reports on the availablity of a beta version of the Morphon XML Editor. "The Morphon XML Editor is a XML editor which lets you easily create and modify XML documents. It makes sure your document is a correct one (considering the DTD you are using) and presents the data in a user friendly way. Both the XMLEditor and the EXSLEditor are written in java. The Morphon XML Editor is available in jar, tar.gz and zip format and can be downloaded for free from Lunatech Research' site. The demo will expire on the 15th of August 1999 at which time a new version will be available. The Editor needs a working Java installation (jdk/jre 1.1 or 1.2) with the latest swing. Morphon XML Editor features: (1) Create/edit documents based on a DTD; (2) Create/modify Editor Stylesheet; (3) Edit the structure of you document as well as the XML Entities and Notations (4) Supports different languages; (5) Preview of the document being processed by an XSL stylesheet." For related software, see "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[June 28, 1999] How to Validate XML. XML parser writers will be interested in a note written by Joe English under the title "How to validate XML." The note describes a regular expression matching algorithm. An accompanying note posted to CTX provides some background (initated by Joe's comment that 'a validator is far easier to write in a functional language than in C++ or Java.'). "XML validation is an instance of the regular expression matching problem: given a regular expression e and a string s, is s in L(e)? (Here L(e) denotes the language accepted by e). The most commonly-used technique to solve this problem is based on finite automata. There is another algorithm, based on derivatives of regular expressions, which deserves to be more widely known. . . [the referenced document] contains a (very brief) description plus a Haskell program fragment demonstrating the algorithm. . ."
[June 26, 1999] expat - XML Parser Toolkit Supports Parsing External DTDs and Parameter Entities. James Clark has announced a new test version of expat (Version 19990626) which adds experimental, optional support for parsing external DTDs and parameter entities. Expat (XML Parser Toolkit) is an XML 1.0 parser written in C; it aims to be fully conforming, though it is currently not a validating XMLprocessor. Expat is available for use under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1; alternatively you may use expat under the GNU General Public License. The current production version of expat can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.jclark.com/pub/xml/expat.zip. Version 19990626 of expat is "a test version which adds support for parsing external DTDs and parameter entities. Compiling with -DXML_DTD enables this support. There's a new -p option for xmlwf which will cause it to process external DTDs and parameter entities; this implies the -x option. See the comment above XML_SetParamEntityParsing in xmlparse.h for the API addition that enables this. The expat distribution comes with an xmlwf application, which uses the xmlparse library. The arguments to xmlwf are one or more files which are each to be checked for well-formedness. An option -d dir can be specified; for each well-formed input file the corresponding canonical XML will be written to dir/f, where f is the filename (without any path) of the input file. A -x option will cause references to external general entities to be processed. A -s option will make documents that are not standalone cause an error (a document is considered standalone if either it is intrinsically standalone because it has no external subset and no references to parameter entities in the internal subset or it is declared as standalone in the XML declaration)." For other information, see the expat FAQ document. For related tools, see "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits."
[June 25, 1999] IETF/W3C XML-Signature Requirements Document Published. The first Public Working Draft of the IETF/W3C XML-Digital Signature Working Group requirements document has now been published. The document is XML-Signature Requirements (W3C Working Draft 1999-June-23); the editor is Joseph Reagle Jr. (W3C). The WD content is based on the working group's Charter, the XML-Signature Workshop, Richard D. Brown's IETF draft [Digital Signatures for XML], and the SIG mailing list discussion. The XML-Signature WG is a joint Working Group of the IETF and W3C. The working group's mission is "to develop an XML compliant syntax used for representing signatures on Web resources and portions of protocol messages (anything that can be referenced by a URI) and procedures for computing and verifying such signatures. Signatures will provide data integrity, authentication, and/or non-repudiatability." The WD abstract: "This document lists the design principles, scope, and requirements for the XML Digital Signature specification. It includes requirements as they relate to the signature syntax, data model, format, cryptographic processing, and external requirements and coordination." The draft has been "published prior to the June 25 IETF deadline for consideration at the IETF in Oslo as an IETF-draft and W3C Working Draft. The first draft of a Working Group consensus version should be produced by July [1999]." See further references in Signed XML (IETF/W3C)."
[June 25, 1999] Medlane Experiment - MARC to XML. A communiqué from Pamela Murnane (Interface Development/Digital Materials Librarian, Lane Medical Library) describes an experimental XML application being developed at at Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center. The 'Medlane Experiment - MARC to XML' project was recently presented at the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association. The Medlane Experiment concerns restructuring serial, circulation, and traditional bibliographic data for deployment in changing digital environments. "The main idea is using XML over MARC, an old library standard, for management of bibliographic data. [The Medlane Experiment] is an experimental effort to create a flexible retrieval and display mechanism for bibliographic, authority, and other 'library' information using XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Oracle 8i. Essentially, we have mapped Lane Library's 200,000+ bibliographic and authority records, including links to over 5,000 Internet resources, into XML. Circulation and serials checkin servers bypass our CARL System's interface and web catalog. With burgeoning web development, we felt that our 'library information' was under-utilized due to its segregation from mainstream web resources, and in danger of becoming marginalized." For other details, see the text of a presentation given by Dick R. Miller.
[June 25, 1999] WAP Binary XML Content Format. The W3C has acknowledged receipt of a submission from from Ericsson, IBM, Motorola, and Phone.com for WAP Binary XML Content Format (W3C NOTE, 24-June-1999). The document editors are Bruce Martin (Phone.com) and Bashar Jano (Motorola). Abstract: Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a result of continuous work to define an industry-wide specification for developing applications that operate over wireless communication networks. The scope of the WAP Forum is to define a set of specifications to be used by service applications. The wireless market is growing very quickly and reaching new customers and services. To enable operators and manufacturers to meet the challenges in advanced services, differentiation and fast/flexible service creation, WAP defines a set of protocols in transport, session and application layers. For additional information on the WAP architecture, refer to "Wireless Application Protocol Architecture Specification." This specification defines a compact binary representation of the Extensible Markup Language. The binary XML content format is designed to reduce the transmission size of XML documents, allowing more effective use of XML data on narrowband communication channels. Refer to the specification for one example use of the binary XML content format. The binary format was designed to allow for compact transmission with no loss of functionality or semantic information. The format is designed to preserve the element structure of XML, allowing a browser to skip unknown elements or attributes. The binary format encodes the parsed physical form of an XML document, ie, the structure and content of the document entities. Meta-information, including the document type definition and conditional sections, is removed when the document is converted to the binary format. See also the W3C comment on the WBXML Submission (from Dan Connolly, W3C Team Contact), and note its summary of differences between WBXML and XML. The W3C participants of the XML Activity and the Mobile Access Activity have been invited to review WBXML for possible use in their work. Other references: "WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification."
[June 25, 1999] SCOOBS XML Search Engine Now Open Source. Troy D. Milner (Monash University) posted an announcement to the effect that the SCOOBS XML Search Engine is now open source, viz., governed by the GNU Public License. SCOOBS (Search and Classification Of Object Based information Sources) is a 'Context Based Search Engine' that "allows for the context to be derived from an XML document. This means that we can now search for documents that exhibit a certain context. We can search for 'plum pudding', that has a context only of a 'recipe', and SCOOBS will return 'plum pudding recipes', and not 'plum pudding' from restaurant menus and the like. SCOOBS also returns XPointers to exact locations in XML documents, and allows users to locate sub-documents of documents. Now you can travel from a search result straight to the position in a document where that search information is located. SCOOBS offers a very unique merged XML output, where you can request that it gathers all the XML documents of your results and merge them together, removing all the irrelevant information in the original document." For other information, see the SCOOBS Web site.
[June 24, 1999] POIX: Point Of Interest eXchange Language Specification. The W3C has acknowledged receipt of a submission entitled POIX: Point Of Interest eXchange Language Specification (W3C Note 24-June-1999). The editors are Hiroyuki Kanemitsu (Toyota Motor Corporation) and Tomihisa Kamada (Access Co., Ltd.); the document was created in cooperation with the POI Working Group in MOSTEC (MObile Information Standard TEchnical Committee). The document specifies the data format for exchange of location-related information over the Internet. "POIX is a location-related information descriptive language prepared with the aim of exchanging location-related information over the Internet, and is designed with XML 1.0 (Extensible Markup Language). Not only does POIX denote a simple location, but it also provides an environment capable of representing various information comprehensively with the targeted location." Abstract: "The Internet is rapidly growing toward wireless and mobile environment beyond the wired world. Nowadays, various types of mobile devices including PDAs and car navigation systems can access to the Internet. These devices are required to exchange the location-related information such as position data on the map. The 'POIX' proposed here defines a general-purpose specification language for describing location information, which is an application of XML (Extensible Markup Language). POIX is a common baseline for exchanging location data via e-mail and embedding location data in HTML and XML documents. This specification can be used by mobile device developers, location-related service providers, and server software developers." An interesting aspect of the proposal, according to W3C, is that "it is capable to describe not only specific location information, such as latitude and longitude, but also various supplemental information about the target location such as route to the target location and contact information for the target location. Such supplemental information might be useful for some applications, such as car navigation systems, but there will be other applications which only need specific location information. In this respect, it might be useful to modularize the POIX language so that applications can use appropriate modules they need. Such modularization will make it easier to combine with other languages, e.g., modularized XHTML." See also the Document Type Definition POIX.DTD. The development team suggests "that the related group in W3C such as Mobile Access Interest Group should pick up this submission for discussion; then, if there might be enough attention in this topic, related working group should be formalized." See the W3C Team Comment by Tatuya Hagino (W3C lead for Mobile Access Activity).
[June 23, 1999] Generic Interoperability Framework (GINF). Sergey Melnik (Digital Libraries Project, Database Group, Stanford University) posted an announcement to the RDF-DEV mailing list concerning the public availability of software characterized as 'RDF parser/serializer/validator/middleware'. To wit: "the RDF parser/serializer/validator we're using to implement the Generic Interoperability Framework (GINF) is now available for public download. GINF middleware is included in the distribution. Please note that it is still alpha and is subject to frequent changes. Comments are highly appreciated. Enjoy!" According to the Web site documentation: "The Java library includes following features: (1) RDF parser: a modified version of SiRPAC using XML parser Ælfred; (2) RDF serializer; (3) RDF model interface; (4) RDF schema validation; (5) HTTP protocol mapping." The software is free for non-commercial and educational purposes." For additional background, see the working paper "Generic Interoperability Framework" and "Application of the Generic Interoperability Framework to Digital Libraries."
[June 23, 1999] Oracle XML/XSLT Technology Blast. Steve Muench (Oracle XML Technology Evangelist) has announced an Oracle XML Technology Blast consisting of "six new XML technology components made available today on the Oracle Technet Website. These components include: (1) New XSLT engine inside a faster "v2" Java XML Parser; (2) XML SQL Utility for easier database "XML-out" and "XML-in"; (3) XSQL Servlet for easily serving up SQL/XML/XSLT-powered "datapages"; (4) XML Parsers in three new languages (C, C++, and PL/SQL). See the text of the announcement for complete details. From Oracle's document on XML and the Oracle Internet Platform: "Most critical business data is managed by relational databases. In order to realize the promise of XML as an enabler for exchanging business information, we must be able to read and write XML data to and from the database and to integrate this data with existing applications. The information and software available on these pages is designed to help developers build database applications that can read and write data formatted as XML just as easily as they can read and write data in any other form. With the integration of XML technology, the Oracle Internet Platform, which includes Oracle8i, Oracle Application Server and new message broker technologies, is an increasingly powerful alternative for deploying Internet applications."
[June 23, 1999] ECIX QuickData Specifications. The Electronic Component Information eXchange (ECIX) project has recently published ECIX QuickData Specifications which "enable real-time, business-to-business transactions (queries and responses) to be conducted over the Internet. With these specifications, customers may send the same query to multiple semiconductor manufacturers and receive multiple part information records from each manufacturer. They are designed for the interchange of component information about semiconductor and electronic components based on XML, a proposed standard by the World Wide Web Consortium. In order to enable such business-to-business communications, a Registry of participants standard protocols, and message formats are required. The ECIX QuickData Protocol Specification defines the communication protocols to support such interaction. The ECIX QED Specification defines the specific dictionary and associated constraints that apply for queries and responses for selected component information in support of the "component search and select" phases of product design. There are two ECIX QuickData Specifications, collectively referred to as the QuickData Specifications: (1) The ECIX QuickData (QD) Protocol Specification, and (2) The ECIX Quick Evaluation Data (QED) Specification. The QuickData Protocol Specification has an accompanying XML DTD, and samples are available from the QuickData Web site. See also the ECIX XML specifications for the Timing Diagram Markup Language (TDML) and "ECIX Component Information Dictionary Standard (CIDS)."
[June 23, 1999] Stylus - An Integrated Development Environment for XSLT Stylesheets. Carl Sjogreen (President, Transformis LLC) announced an alpha testing phase for "Stylus, an Integrated Development Environment for XSLT stylesheets. Stylus provides a unified, graphical interface for visualizing input data, editing stylesheets, and viewing the result. Stylus is now available for Windows 95, 98, and NT platforms. Current key features of Stylus include: (1) Integrated XML Parser / XSL Processor: Parsing and processing errors automatically display the offending code; stylesheet output is updated and displayed at a keystroke. (2) Structural Data View: Stylus provides a synthesized view of the stylesheet's input data; XSL templates can easily be created and managed through this interface, and are visually associated with the document's hierarchy. (3) Stylesheet Backmapping: Stylesheet backmapping visually associates XSL templates with their output; when a user clicks on text in the stylesheet output, Stylus automatically displays the template that created it. (4) XSL-Aware Editor: Sense:X technology provides customizable context-sensitive help and syntax highlighting. (5) Internet Explorer Preview: If Internet Explorer 4.0 or above is installed, Stylus can preview the result of a stylesheet in an integrated Internet Explorer browser; stylesheet preview in an external browser is also possible regardless of browser version. With Stylus, developers can finally leverage the full potential of XML and XSL through an easy-to-use yet powerful interface. Stylus streamlines the creation of dynamic web sites by providing a graphical environment for the entire development process. From XML data to final result, Stylus keeps developers in control. Stylus is now available for preview through Transformis' Alpha Program. Approved participants will have access to all pre-release versions of Stylus. A public Beta Program will make Stylus available to a wider audience in the future." For related editing software, see "XSL Software Support."
[June 22, 1999] FOP 0.7.0 Release With Source Code. James Tauber has announced the release of FOP Version 0.7.0 with source code. FOP: An XSL Formatter is a Java-based formatter driven by XSL formatting objects. "FOP is a Java 1.1 application that reads a formatting object tree and then turns it into a PDF document. The formatting object tree, can be in the form of an XML document (output by an XSLT engine like XT) or can be passed in memory as a DOM Document." Changes in FOP version 0.7.0: (1) a new mainline class XTCommandLine that enables straight XML+XSL to PDF (using XT which must be downloaded separately) without having to run an XSLT engine and save the formatting object tree as a separate step. (2) FOP now handles multiple page sequences. (3) separation of the PDF-specific code that was within the area/space classes. This makes FOP more modular and will enable alternative output formats in the future." For related software, see "XSL Software Support."
[June 21, 1999] FirstSTEP EXML and Product Data Markup Language (PDML). A communiqué from William C. Burkett (Product Data Integration Technologies, Inc., P.D.I.T.) reports on the development of a small XML tool called 'FirstSTEP EXML' that is being made available to the product data exchange/XML community. FirstSTEP EXML is a software tool which may be used to to convert an EXPRESS schema into an equivalent XML DTD. The conversion algorithm is faithful to the semantics and structure of the EXPRESS language and, as a result, is very literal in the way that the EXPRESS entity declarations map to the DTD element declarations. P.D.I.T. is providing this tool free-of-charge to anyone interested in experimenting with EXPRESS schemas and XML DTDs. Bill Burkett writes: "As a data encoding language, XML is a very flexible and 'Internet-friendly', but it lacks many of the semantic features that data management professionals expect and applications require to ensure data semantics and integrity. Therefore, the PDI project adopted EXPRESS (ISO 10303-11) as the data specification language that governs the semantics of data exchanged with an XML encoding; see http://www.epmtech.jotne.com/learn/ or http://www.nist.gov/sc4/tools/express/etools98.htm. This necessitated a mapping from EXPRESS to XML DTD." The background to this work: "P.D.I.T. is the principle contractor for a program called Product Data Interoperability (PDI), an initiative sponsored by JECPO (Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office), and supported by USAF (U.S. Air Force), and DLA (Defense Logistics Agency). The objective of PDI is to demonstrate a prototype XML-based data exchange between different commercial Product Data Management (PDM) systems. This data exchange will effected with an XML vocabulary known as Product Data Markup Language (PDML). PDML is based on a international product data exchange standard known as STEP (STandard for the Exchange of Product model data - ISO 10303), on which, see http://www.ukcic.org/step/step.htm or http://www.nist.gov/sc4/www/stepdocs.htm." Comments, questions, and feedback on FirstSTEP EXML may be sent to exml@pdit.com. For additional information, see "Product Data Markup Language (PDML)" and "SGML/XML and STEP."
[June 21, 1999] SML (smartX Markup Language). A recent announcement from Gemplus presents smartX - an 'XML-Based Framework Which Brings Smart Card-Based Applications to the Mainstream' "The goal of SML (smartX Markup Language) is to enable automation of all interactions with XML documents providing general methods to represent a set of smart device functions. XML supports the creation of marker content that preserves data structure and promises web documents to be 'machine-readable'. The SML is an implementation of XML for the smart card industry. SML also brings to the smart device applications many IDL features that have been implemented in distributed computed and transaction processings. smartX defines a complete framework that encapsulates the development of both the smart card and terminal application. By separating the application process from the application protocol that is card-specific, smartX makes possible to port quickly an application to a new smart card. The innovation of smartX technology relies on a strong description of the smart device data and attached processes. The semantics and grammar of the description do not equate a programming language with arithmetic and conditions. On the contrary, the data and protocol description is built upon the familiar foundations of the smart card industry, which simplifies programming for the developer. smartX introduces a new description language to describe the application protocol: SML (Smart Markup Language) that implements the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for the smart card industry." For other references, see "smartX ['SmartCard'] Markup Language (SML)."
[June 21, 1999] XML-Based Clinical Trial Data Model. A recent announcement describes a Clinical Trial Data Model which is being submitted to the W3C in order to "accelerate Clinical Trial Data Exchange Standards." Phase Forward Incorporated has announced that it will be submitting its "established eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based data model of their InForm Web-based clinical trial data collection and management software to key industry standards organizations to jumpstart the development of a data interchange model. The Phase Forward Document Type Definition (DTD) data model written in XML will be presented to the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Committee (CDISC), a special interest group of the Drug Information Association (DIA), at its meeting on June 28, 1999. Additionally, Phase Forward also has plans to submit its DTD to the Health Level 7 (HL7) organization and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). CDISC, HL7, and the W3C are the primary standards organizations focused on establishing a data model and XML-based Document Type Definition (DTD) for the healthcare informatics industries."
[June 21, 1999] MATE - Multilevel Annotation, Tools Engineering. A communiqué from Andreas Mengel (Institut für maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Universitaet Stuttgart) reports on a European project MATE which is "producing XML encoding guidelines for the markup of speech data. Similar to TEI who did this for text data, MATE develops standards for the annotation of dialogue data integrating different levels of description (speech sounds, words, sentences, dialogues and the like)." The MATE Project (Multilevel Annotation, Tools Engineering; European CommissionTelematics Project LE4-8370) "aims to facilitate re-use of language resources by addressing the problems of creating, acquiring, and maintaining language corpora. The problems are addressed along two lines: (1) through the development of a standard for annotating resources; (2) through the provision of tools which will make the processes of knowledge acquisition and extraction more efficient. Specifically, MATE will treat spoken dialogue corpora at multiple levels, focusing on prosody, (morpho-) syntax, co-reference, dialogue acts, and communicative difficulties, as well as inter-level interaction. The results of the project will be of particular benefit to developers of spoken language dialogue systems but will also be directly useful for other applications of language engineering. The first step of the MATE project is to define an overall mark-up formalism which is based on the TEI/CES standards."
[June 18, 1999] Human Resource Management Markup Language (HRMML). Structured Methods has developed Human Resource Management Markup Language (HRMML), an XML-based markup language for job postings, job descriptions, and resumes. A new draft of the HRMML specification is now available for download. HRMML "currently is described in two draft Document Type Definitions (DTDs), one for resumes and one for job postings. The two DTDs have many common elements, which are contained in shared modules. HRMML was developed to be broadly applicable to the needs of employers, recruiters, recruiting data aggregators, and Internet job sites. Whether and how specific elements are used will depend on the requirements of the particular implementation. Many organizations will be able to implement a selective profile from the broader DTD and still be able to exchange a core set of data with organizations using a different profile." According to a recent announcement from Chuck Allen, the new release of HRMML "includes more than 300 pages of documentation, which is included in the HRMML distribution file. You are free to use, modify, or redistribute the DTD and documentation." See further references in "Human Resource Management Markup Language (HRMML)."
[June 16, 1999] ACORD - XML for the Insurance Industry. The Web site of ACORD (Agency Company Organization for Research and Development) describes a joint initiative in which XML-based vocabularies for the insurance industry are now being developed in a fast-track effort. "ACORD and the Independent Insurance Agents of America's Agents Council for Technology (ACT) have entered into a joint initiative to deliver to the industry within 120 days, a standardized vocabulary for XML, based on the ACORD ObjX and AL3 standards, announced Gregory A. Maciag, president and CEO, ACORD. This joint initiative will help prevent the potential growth of non-standard DTDs (Document Type Definitions) which would lead to multiple, uncoordinated, and more costly efforts to standardize XML transactions for the industry, said Maciag. "The 'fast track' approach reemphasizes to the industry ACORD's permanent commitment to lead the way in standardizing the exchange of insurance-related data by leveraging our ObjX development. . . [in order to develop a widely accepted standard, the parties] 'are all committed to working together to produce the minimum specifications required to facilitate initial deployment of XML-based insurance applications in a consistent, standardized fashion. . . developing these XML definitions is "a step toward full ObjX implementations and is part of ACORD's mission to build bridges between AL3 and ObjX'." ACORD currently has defined an XML Based render form Transaction; it has "a standard object model" which will be given to member companies and "is now in the process of working on other transactions including request quote, and establish account. These transactions are based on our UML model, and a standard DTD which we are defining with the help of its members." For other references, see the document "ACORD - XML for the Insurance Industry."
[June 16, 1999] XML Forms Architecture: XFA-Template and XFA-FormCalc. The W3C has acknowledged receipt of a two-part submission from JetForm Corporation on the topic of XML Forms Architecture. Both documents are edited by Gavin McKenzie. XML Forms Architecture (XFA) "provides for the specific requirements of electronic forms and the applications that use them. XFA addresses the needs of organizations to securely capture, present, move, process, output and print information associated with electronic forms." The submission "describes an XML tagset for electronic forms with support for graphics, templates, calculations, validation, scripting, picture clauses, sequencing, and digital signatures. Some aspects of the submission duplicate existing work by W3C: the box model (W3C's style sheet activity), graphics (W3C's work on scalable vector graphics), linking (W3C's work on XML Linking). The details for signed forms relate to new work at W3C on signed XML. Work on data types for XML Schemas may be relevant to the canonical representation of form values such as dates." XFA "clearly distinguishes between the two stages via the following terminology, as detailed in [the submissions]: (1) Form -- what the form consumer works with (2) Template -- what the form designer creates." The document "XFA-Template" [XFA-Template Version 1.0] describes the open and extensible modeling of secure forms with high fidelity composition, automated calculation and validation, pluggable user-interface components, and flexible data handling. The second document "XFA-FormCalc" [XFA-FormCalc Version 1.0] describes a simple scripting language optimized for creating electronic-form centric logic and calculations. See further information in the W3C Team Comment on the submission (by Dave Raggett), and in the document: "XML Forms Architecture (XFA)."
[June 16, 1999] New XML Technologies from IBM. IBM recently made available additional XML technologies in the tools "DDbe" and "Xplorer." Data Descriptors by Example (DDbE) "accepts well formed XML documents as input and constructs an XML DTD. [It] is a Java component library for inferring a DTD or Schema from a set of XML instances. People can easily learn how to author well formed XML, however, the learning curve really increases when XML developers have to write a DTD. For the beginner, DDbE automatically produces a DTD from a set of well formed XML documents. Advanced users can take advantage of several parameters that will allow the customisation of content models and attribute specifications. Indeed, DDbE gives a good start at creating DTDs for any user. DDbE is not only for developers! DDbE can be used in Business to Business applications that need to automatically generate DTDs for XML message validation." [Note that Michael Kay's SAXON DTDGenerator supports similar DTD generation, as does OCLC's Fred - The SGML DTD/Grammar Builder.] IBM's Xplorer "is a Java application that can be used to search XML files, validate XML files and view the valid XML files in XML viewer. Xplorer allows the user to do the following things: (1) Search for XML files based on the XML file name, Document type and some advanced search options like element name and value, attribute name and value, PI, etc. (2) Check the validity of XML files. (3) View a valid XML file in the XML viewer. Only valid files can be viewed in the XML viewer. If you try to view an invalid XML file, an error dialog appears and errors are logged in the Log Window. The XML Viewer which is shipped along with the Xplorer provides the following features: (1) XML Tree View of the opened XML file. (2) XML Source view of the opened XML file. (3) DTD Source view of the opened XML file. (4) Attribute View of the selected node. (5) Selective display of XML elements, attributes, PI, Text and white space characters in the Tree view."
[June 15, 1999] XFA - Free XML Scripting Tools. A communiqué from John R. Nestor announces the release of the XFA Scripting System supporting rapid development of XML applications. The Microsoft Windows and Linux versions of this product are free. "XFA (XML For All) is a set of XML tags that specify executable actions. Other approaches to processing XML require the use of another language such as Java, Perl, or Visual Basic. With XFA, all you need is XML. XFA was designed from the start around XML and uses XML pervasively. XFA is ideal for developing advanced web sites. An XFA script contains a mix of XFA, XML, and HTML tagged elements allowing web page designers and programmers to share a common language. Its easy to add new executable tags to XFA or to create a custom interpreter for a new XML tag set. The XFA Scripting System includes an XFA interpreter, comprehensive documentation, and a collection of examples, libraries, and tools. The XFA interpreter can be run either under a web server or stand alone. The XFA library system can be used to factor large applications and to organize collections of reusable components." See also the associated press release, "XML For All Announces Free XML Scripting Tools."
[June 15, 1999] Xml2Beans - Converting XML DTDs into Java Beans. A communiqué from Robbie Schaefer reports on the availability of Xml2Beans, now in its first public release (Version 1.0 beta). Xml2Beans is a tool that "converts XML DTDs into Java-Beans: it processes a given XML-DTD and generates JavaBeans according to the DTD-structure. These beans have special properties and methods which enables them to be read and processed with specialized bean editors. Thus an editor for any desired DTD can be created. Once inside the editor, the XML-beans can produce XML files which are valid for the DTD the beans where made with. We are currently working on such an editor, but it is not to be released for some time. . . To parse the XML-files we use the Ælfred-parser which is event driven and produces minimal overhead. For each <!ELEMENT...>-event a new XML-bean is generated and the sub elements and attributes are mapped to the bean's properties. Thus the XML-tree-structure is stored imlicit within the beans."
[June 15, 1999] SAXON Version 4.3 - XSL Interpreter and Compiler. Michael H. Kay has announced the availability of SAXON Version 4.3. The SAXON package is a "collection of tools for processing XML documents. The main components are: (1) An XSL processor, which supports the W3C 21-April-1999 XSLT specification from the World Wide Web Consortium, found at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-xsl-19990421 [with a few minor restrictions and a number of powerful extensions], and (2) A Java library, which supports a similar processing model to XSL, but allows full programming capability, which you need if you want to perform complex processing of the data or to access external services such as a relational database. So you can use SAXON by writing XSL stylesheets, by writing Java applications, or by 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 4.3: "The new version has been upgraded so both the XSL interpreter and compiler now conform (very nearly) to the April 21 W3C XSLT specification. I tried this time to concentrate on conforming to the spec and avoiding the temptation to innovate, but in the end I couldn't resist adding an assignment statement for variables and a while loop. To the functional programming enthusiasts, I apologise (you don't have to use them); to everyone else, I hope it will make your life a little easier."
[June 14, 1999] iXSLT - An XSLT Processor. Pina Hirano of Infoteria Inc. announced the public availability of iXSLT (iXSLT 1.0 Beta Evaluation edition for Windows 95/98/NT). iXSLT is an XSLT processor compatible with the latest W3C public working draft of XSL Transformations (XSLT) (1999-04-21). iXSLT is a command-line executable, and the download file includes simple samples. For related tools, see "XSL Software Support."
[June 11, 1999] eConcert -- The Implementation Phase of RosettaNet. When RosettaNet inaugurated the latest phase of its program to 'align the supply chain' through the standardization of business processes, it was a major media event. The press event backgrounder for RosettaNet's eConcert included references to over twenty-five company announcements and press releases. "There was no shortage of volunteers when the call went out for participants in eConcert -- the implementation phase of RosettaNet, the most advanced partner-to-partner e-business initiative ever undertaken. In an initiative that will define supply chain transactions using between 75 and 100 standard XML-based partner interface processes (PIPs), or computer-to-computer dialogs, fifteen (15) companies have committed resources to four-to-six-month pilot programs that will test processes for updating catalogs and purchasing products. The announcement Thursday by RosettaNet -- the IT industry consortium comprised of manufacturers, software publishers, distributors, resellers, integrators and end users -- involves implementation of nine PIPs that will eventually comprise e-business production systems. [A RosettaNet PIP is an XML specification designed to align a specific business process between supply chain partners. RosettaNet PIPs create new areas of alignment within the overall IT supply-chain eBusiness processes, allowing IT supply-chain partners to scale eBusiness, and to fully leverage Ecom applications and the Internet as a business-to-business commerce tool.] The selected implementers have formed partnerships of two to six companies to begin pilot implementations. These early adopters recognize the value that RosettaNet's standards bring for themselves, RosettaNet members and every other company in the IT supply chain. Eventually, the entire industry will have the opportunity to take advantage of RosettaNet PIPs, each company in its own timeframe, according to Fadi Chehade, RosettaNet president and CEO. In addition to implementing PIPs to align their business processes, each of the eConcert participants have committed to encourage and assist all of their other key supply chain partners to get ready for the production system rollout in February of next year. eConcert will come to fruition on Feb. 2, 2000, when all the eConcert member companies will use PIPs in their everyday production routines. The RosettaNet Managing Board now consists of 34 CEOs, CIOs and executives representing global members of the IT supply chain." For additional information, see "RosettaNet."
[June 11, 1999] Web Techniques Special Issue: "XML & Java: An Obvious Match." The June 1999 issue of Web Techniques Magazine is a special issue with the title "XML & Java: An Obvious Match." The articles are publicly available online. The articles most relevant to XML, each catalogued with an extended abstract, include: (1) "XML Development in Java. It's All in the Beans" [Maneesh Sahu]; (2) "Why XML is Meant for Java. Exploring the XML/Java Connection" [Matthew Fuchs]; (3) "XML Integration Platforms. Anatomy of an XML Server" [Bob Bickel]; (4) "SQL-Based XML Structured Data Access" [Michael M. David]; (5) "Database Developer: Modeling, Metadata, and XML" [Ken North]; (6) "Patterns in XSL" [Michael Floyd]; (7) "XML's Achilles Heel" [Dale Dougherty]. Web Techniques magazine provides "critical Internet technical solutions increasingly in demand throughout the enterprise. Each issue is packed with how-to information that illuminates every aspect of Web development, design and management, including coverage of Java, scripting languages, XML, design, security, database integration, electronic commerce, searching/indexing, site management, new product coverage, and more." The source code used by the authors of Web Techniques (program code, text markup) is provided online each month. Web Techniques also offers limited free subscriptions to Internet Professionals [U.S. residents only]. Direction for the publication is provided by Editor-in-Chief Bob Kaehms and by Editorial Director Dale Dougherty. Dougherty is also the president and CEO of Songline Studios, Inc.; he was co-founder of O'Reilly & Associates, head of O'Reilly's Digital Media Group, and publisher of Global Network Navigator (GNN).
[June 11, 1999] Introduction to XSLT (XSL Transformations). A recent communiqué from G. Ken Holman (Crane Softwrights Ltd.) announces the availability of a third edition publication of the work Introduction to XSLT (XSL Transformations) (1999-06-08; 205 pages; ISBN: 1-894049-00-4). The tutorial Introduction to XSLT (XSL Transformations) is a detailed overview of the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, used as the support material for instructor-led lectures and hands-on courses and future Computer Based Training offerings by Crane Softwrights Ltd. The Third Edition covers the entire 1999-04-21 W3C Working Draft of XSLT http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-xslt-19990421.html with references to James Clark's XT (19990514) and Microsoft's IE5 (5.00.2014.0216). A preview excerpt of the complete text of the first three modules, plus overviews of the other seven modules, is available for free download from Crane's web site in the Commercial Training Materials section. The purchase price ($40.00 US) includes free access to all future editions of the same title, thus ensuring currency with W3C revisions to working drafts and the proposed and final recommendations. New editions are also available periodically based on customer and student feedback." For related resources, see "XSL Articles, Papers, Tutorials" and a recent posting from Mike Brown.
[June 11, 1999] eXtensible Server Pages (XSP). Stefano Mazzocchi is author of a draft document "eXtensible Server Pages (XSP) Layer 1" describing design work that is part of tbe Java Apache Cocoon project. The document "specifies an XML namespace that addresses a complete region of web publishing, that of logic-based, dynamic content generation. This language is introduced to fill an existing gap between the W3C specifications and working draft and the increasing demand for a flexible server side approach based on the new XML paradigm. [The draft thus] specifies both an XML document type defintion and a development methodology to generate dynamic XML by server side processing of client's requests. Such a specification is useful to define an open and standard way to develop and maintain dynamic XML server pages. The technology described in this document was designed to complete the XML-based publishing framework defined by the Cocoon Project and it's mainly targetted on this project, even if the final goal of this effort is to submit a request to a standard body (such as W3C) for final recomandation." Cocoon is "a 100% pure Java publishing framework servlet that relies on new W3C technologies (such as DOM, XML, and XSL) to provide web content." Ricardo Rocha has also contributed to the authoring of the XSP draft document.
[June 10, 1999] Music Markup Language (MML). A communiqué from Jacques Steyn (Associate Professor, Multimedia, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria) reports on the development of a new XML-based notation for music: MML: Music Markup Language. Professor Steyn writes: "MML (Music Markup Language) focuses on the structure of music and music related processes with the aim to write the specifications of a markup language. This language should be human readable along the lines of HTML and XML that are used for Web-based documents. For more information, see http://is.up.ac.za/mml/." From the Web site's MML 'Scope' Document: "This language should be human readable along the lines of HTML and XML that are used for Web-based documents. This language is an SGML (Standard General Markup Language; ISO 8879) subset, following the approach to SGML by XML (eXtensible Markup Language). MML describes the structure of various aspects of music production, such as: (1) Music performance; (2) Music representation (e.g., notation systems); (3) Music instruments; (4) Music manipulation (e.g., effect units)." Markup examples of MML are provided for Chorale: Johann Sebastian Bach and for other pieces (Musorgsky's Boris Godunov, Chopin's Trois Nocturne, Antonio Vivaldi's Sonata in Sol minore). For related initiatives aimed at creating standardized markup-based notations for music, see "XML and Music."
[June 10, 1999] Markup Languages for Legal Document Management. A communiqué from Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg announces the availability of a major publication on legal document management. The book is: Critical Factors in Legal Document Management: A Study of Standardised Markup Languages, by Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg. Stockholm: Jure AB, 1998. ISBN: 91-7223-045-2. Extent: 458 pages. "This book is meant as a guide to modern handling of legal information with the aid of standardized markup languages, in response to the well-known need for sharpened tools for managing the rapidly growing amount of legal information in combination with transborder data flows, especially on the Internet. The SGML and XML international standards for document description are becoming increasingly important for the legal domain in these respects. The content is based on empirical results reached in the Corpus Legis Project. This interdisciplinary research programme began in 1994 at the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University and it has led to three different IT-applications, which may be categorised according to the following profiles: (1) hypertext based systems, (2) advanced information retrieval systems, and (3) general electronic document and management systems. Experiences from this practical work are described in the book. Major activities associated with the development of an SGML system, e.g. document analysis, DTD-design (Document Type Definition), and markup, are described from a legal point of view. The study comprises document types originating from different national legal systems, written in various languages, and covering a broad time perspective. The book can thus be seen as a checklist of critical factors in legal document management." Magnusson Sjöberg's volume forms part of the official project documentation for the Corpus Legis Project. Corpus Legis is a computerized text corpus for legal-linguistic studies developed in co-operation with the Swedish Law & Informatics Research Institute and the Department of Computational Linguistics at the University of Stockholm. In this project, "Questions of legal document management have been investigated in this project by means of the international document representation standard SGML - Standard Generalized Markup Language. The main part of the analysed text corpus focuses on documents reflecting the system for lawmaking, e.g., government bills and laws." For additional information, see "The Corpus Legis Project" and the main bibliography entry for the volume.
[June 10, 1999] Emile 1.0 - XML Editor for Macintosh. A communication from Terje Norderhaug announces the availability of Emilé 1.0, "the first XML editor for Macintosh. Emilé is the commercial edition of the free Emilé Lite XML editor that was released in April, 1999. Emilé is a highly customizable XML editor that supports productive markup with XML, liberating the author from detailed knowledge of the XML specification by providing context-sensitive dialogs and menus listing allowed tags and common markup constructs. The editor automatically adapts the user interface to the current document type (DTD), and comes with a validator to ensure correct markup. Emilé has an introductory price of $79. A demo copy of the editor can be downloaded from the company's website [Media Design in*Progress] at www.in-progress.com/emile." For related tools, see "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[June 09, 1999] Financial Products Markup Language (FpML). From a recent company announcement entitled "Introducing FpML: A New Standard for E-commerce": "J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP announced the release of FpML (Financial Products Markup Language), a new protocol for Internet-based electronic dealing and information sharing of financial derivatives, initially handling interest rate and foreign exchange products. The specification, which will be freely licensed, is expected to set the standard within these industries for the rapidly growing field of business-to-business electronic commerce. Based on XML, the emerging Internet standard for data-sharing between applications, FpML enables Internet-based integration of a range of services, from electronic trading and confirmations to portfolio specification for risk analysis." [So,] 'How does this standard relate to others' like FIX/FIXML, OFX, etc.? "While XML is a standard, only the syntax has been standardized. To be useful, each industry is required to define a common set of industry-specific definitions. Several organizations have been working to define these market-segment-specific definitions. Examples of languages in progress include FIX, for the equities market, and OFX, for consumer financial activities. However, there has not yet been an effort to standardize product and trade information for foreign exchange and fixed income derivatives. There are many standards related to financial data processing for retail and commercial banking. Some of these standards and governing bodies, such as SWIFT and FIX, have an established history of successfully standardizing certain classes of financial transactions. Other standards, such as OFX, have recently been introduced, and are still evolving. All of these protocols have enabled market participants to lower transaction costs and reduce the operational risks associated with transaction initiation, confirmation, and settlement. There are currently no standards in active use to address the financial derivative markets, such as FX options and interest-rate derivatives (e.g., swaps). A standard for financial derivatives (e.g., interest-rate products) has not evolved for a variety of reasons, some of them technical and some of them related to the proprietary nature of capital markets banking." The associated Web site describes a new FpML Discussion Group - "a message board that provides a mechanism for the exchange of ideas relating to the FpML standard." For additional information, see the FAQ document and the press release: "J.P. Morgan, PricewaterhouseCoopers Propose FpML, a New E-commerce Standard - Financial Products Markup Language Handles FX and Fixed Income Derivatives." For references to related standards, see "Financial Products Markup Language (FpML)."
[June 09, 1999] New DSSSL Web Site and OpenJade. Didier PH Martin has posted an announcement concerning a new collection of Web pages for the DSSSL language. "You'll find useful references, articles, news and software all about DSSSL. This is the site in construction for the DSSSL user group. Avi Kivity already organized the source code on a CVS server. Ralph Ferris is busy working on the next Hybrick browser plug-in. I am busy working on the SGML/XML kit version 2 that will also include the Omnimark language in addition to OpenJade. Hopefully, if Keith work is enough advanced, the kit will offer an alternative to Microsoft's XSL engine. I am also slowly but surely documenting the OpenJade code (a long and hard job). I think that we'll soon be ready to integrate the OpenJade code developed by some of you for the next OpenJade release." The OpenJade source code, now maintained by the user group members, is available in a CVS repository. Note that the new DSSSL Web site and the 'OpenJade' effort have emerged in the context of a wider conversation about Jade/DSSSL held on the (Mulberry Technologies) DSSSList forum; see the May/June 1999 threads with subjects "Jade Maintenance," "Jade/DSSSL future," and "More on the Future of DSSSL." From one of the key postings by James Clark, maintainer of Jade - an implementation of the DSSSL style language: "My general feeling is that just as the future is XML not SGML, so the future is also XSL not DSSSL. When XSLT and XSL are done, there will (I hope) be nothing you can do in DSSSL that you can't do with XSL(T). DSSSL has not achieved widespread acceptance, and of course that's disappointing to all of us involved in DSSSL. But I think we have to face up to the fact that the main reason it has failed to achieve acceptance is not because of lack of promotion or explanation or marketing (although that has probably been a factor), but because of real useability problems in the language itself. XSL started off as a collaboration between DSSSLers and Microsoft to create a new syntax for the DSSSL style language that would be easier to use and could achieve wide acceptance. It hasn't quite turned out like that. On the XSL flow objects side, politics and market realities have necessitated building DSSSL functionality on top of CSS formatting objects/properties rather than starting with the DSSSL flow objects. On the XSLT side, as we've continued to work on the language we've found many ways to improve it, and the language has evolved substantially from DSSSL; however it's still very much the same approach to transformation as jade -t sgml. There are big advantages to being in the mainstream, and XSLT looks set to become a mainstream technology. It's attracted the support of some of the biggest players out there -- Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun, Lotus, Adobe . . ." See also the OpenJade announcement posted by Didier PH Martin to Usenet CTS/CTX. For DSSSL information, see DSSSL - Document Style Semantics and Specification Language. ISO/IEC 10179:1996."
[June 09, 1999] Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems. The W3C Micropayment Markup Working Group has published a working draft document on micropayments, and invites public comment on the specification. The document is: Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems. W3C Working Draft 9-June-1999. Editor: Thierry Michel (W3C); other contributors: Amir Herzberg, Chair (IBM); Anat Sarig, (IBM); Mark Manase, Co-Chair (Compaq); Jean Claudes Pailles (France Telecom); Phillipe Michon (France Telecom). The Micropayment Markup Working Group is part of the Micropayment task within the W3C ECommerce Activity. The WD 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." Appendix 2 of the WD provides guidelines for 'Embedding micropayment information using RDF encoding'. . . "This embedding using the Resource Description Framework is another example of implementation allowing different micropayment electronic wallets to coexist in a interoperable manner. The specification of RDF uses the Extensible Markup Language encoding as its interchange syntax. RDF also requires the XML namespaces facility to precisely associate each property with the schema that defines the property. . ."
[June 09, 1999] Xport 2.0 - XSL Engine from T.I.M.E LUX. A communiqué from Roger Schütz of TIMELUX announces the release of new software products in the area of processing XML/SGML data. Xport 2.0 is a stand-alone XSL engine, available free of charge as a COM object. This is an XSL transformation engine that provides flow objects and data transformation for in-line display, HTML-conversion, and any other output format you may use. Furthermore, its powerful API can be addressed by most popular standard languages like C++, Visual Basic, VB- and J-script." For related XSL tools, see "XSL Software Support."
[June 09, 1999] Braifo - A Braille Formatter. Peter Nilsson has posted an announcement to the DSSSList for the availablity of 'Braifo - A Braille Formatter'. "Braifo is a braille formatter that will generate braille out of an SGML/XML document. Currently it supports DSSSL using (OPEN)Jade. I am planning to also support XSL in the future, when the XSL spec gets more ready. Braifo will convert documents written in SGML into braille as specified in a style sheet. Braifo will support some, but not all of the featueres that are optional in the style language. It will also not support some required features of DSSSL, such as font characteristics, the external-graphic flow object class, etc. The page feature of DSSSL will be supported. This allows for generated headers and page footnotes. Neither of the multi-column, nor nested-column-set features will be supported. The bidi and vertical features also won't be available. The style sheet language is DSSSL, with some modifications to support braille. The development platform for Braifo is Debian GNU/Linux, but it is planned to run on as many platforms as possible (including Unix variants, DOS and Windows)." For other DSSSL information, see DSSSL - Document Style Semantics and Specification Language."
[June 08, 1999] Sun Solaris Supports WBEM Standards. A recent press release from Sun Microsystems outlines the new Solaris Operating Environment support for DMTF's WBEM/CIM standards: "Sun to Implement Web-Based Enterprise Management Standards in Solaris Operating Environment. Industry Leaders Applaud Sun's Embrace of Emerging WBEM Standards." Salient points from the announcement: "Solaris WBEM Services software enables IT managers to create and modify system information stored in a standard format, the Common Information Model (CIM). This software eases the administration of the Solaris Operating Environment and provides for management software interoperability. WBEM is a DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) initiative based on a set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments. WBEM provides the ability for the industry to deliver a well-integrated set of standardized management tools leveraging the emerging technologies such as CIM and XML. Sun continues to be an active board member of the DMTF and participates in several working groups. As part of the DMTF's Technical Development Committee and its sub-committees, Sun has made significant contributions to such standards and specifications as Desktop Management Interface, CIM and the XML Encoding Specification for CIM." For further information, see: "DMTF Common Information Model (CIM)." See also "Sun Adopts WBEM, and Provides the Active Ingredient with Java Technology."
[June 08, 1999] Web Architecture: Describing and Exchanging Data. The W3C has released a programmatic essay as a NOTE under the title Web Architecture: Describing and Exchanging Data, authored by Tim Berners-Lee (Director of the W3C), Dan Connolly (Leader of Architecture Domain), and Ralph R. Swick (W3C Metadata Activity Leader). In the abstract, the authors draw a deep breath that should prepare readers for the scope of the discussion: "The World Wide Web is a universal information space. As a medium for human exchange, it is becoming mature, but we are just beginning to build a space where automated agents can contribute -- just beginning to build the Semantic Web. . ." The document "explores a common model" whereby Schema design [RDFSchema] and XML Schema design [XMLSchema], which began as independent design efforts, may "fit together as interlocking pieces of the semantic web technology." The authors "review some of the requirements for the Semantic Web. Secondly, they review the data models of many systems whose data is under strong pressure to be accessible directly in semantic form. For each, they try to delineate the mapping where it is evident, but outline the areas where specification work is required." The essay seeks to demonstrate "the importance of a common architecture for tree-structured documents and directed labeled graphs, [and to] shed new light on some of the design decisions in the XML syntax used by RDF; it discusses the way contemporary data models (relational, object, knowledge representation) relate to a unified Semantic Web Architecture."
[June 08, 1999] efirst XML for E-journals. A posting from Eric Hellman to XML-L reports on the availability of a set of tools for publishing electronic journals: "efirst XML." David Ephron and Miles Poindexter (Openly Informatics) have developed a collection of "XML and SGML DTDs, EDDs and templates for use with Framemaker+SGML, XSL and CSS Stylesheets, and configuration files for Chris Hector's RTF2HTML. efirst XML is an application of the World-Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for scholarly and scientific journal articles. The authors have used efirst XML in producing the two most recent volumes of the MRS Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research. efirst XML is specifically designed to allow journal articles to be optimized for presentation both on the Web and in print using a single storage format by supporting references to multiple graphic and multimedia files. It allows a journal to be built from databases by supporting multiple keys in elements such as <author>. It allows easy compatibility with HTML presentation formats through the use of HTML-style tables. Most importantly, efirst XML is designed from the ground up for XML -- it's not just a port of an SGML application. The efirst XML document type definition, or DTD, provides a level of validation that has previously required the complexity of SGML. The result is an archival-quality format compatible with inexpensive XML tools."
[June 08, 1999] Expatpp c++ - Wrapper for Expat. Andy Dent (A.D. Software, Perth, Western Australia) has announced the availability of a new version of expatpp. Expatpp is an Original Work which works with James Clark's Expat -- XML Parser Toolkit, a library for XML parsing in C. "The big feature of this update of Expatpp is it makes it trivially easy to create nested parsers which is something used heavily in parsing our report-writer output. The nesting approach was used in our OOFILE report-writer which saves report layout and data out to XML files and allows them to be read back into our preview window. We just released an OOFILE update which saves and restores entire report layouts and data (using expatpp for reading). We've included relevant report-writer code as an example in the expatpp release." Expatpp is released by AD Software under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.0.
[June 08, 1999] XML Spy 2.5 with DTD-Validation and Three-View Architecture. Alexander Falk recently announced the release of the XML editor software XML Spy Version 2.5. Version 2.5 of the editor "introduces complete DTD-Validation support and the new three-view architecture: (1) The Enhanced Grid View is what already made XML Spy so popular with our existing customers. It shows the entire structure of an XML document in a hierarchical presentation that allows in-place editing of all elements. (2) The new Source View gives you the option to view the XML document in source form with customizable syntax-coloring and allows you to directly edit the source for low-level tasks. (3) The integrated Browser View uses Internet Explorer 5 to render your XML document inside XML Spy. This view fully supports CSS and XSL and can be displayed in a separate window so that you can keep one of the above editing views and the browser view side-by-side for maximum editing comfort." See the company Web site for further details; for related tools, see "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[June 08, 1999] IBM's easyXML Bean Suite. An IBM alphaWorks 'News story' describes how you can "Add XML Functionality to Your Java Applications With easyXML." The easyXML Bean Suite "provides the functionality to develop Java applications for processing XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents. It can also be used for adding XML support to existing applications. Beans in the suite include XMLHolder, XMLElement, XMLAttribute, and XMLFileGenerator. The easyXML Bean Suite has been written in 100% Pure Java, and runs on any platform that supports JDK 1.1.
[June 07, 1999] Release of fxp Version 1.2 - A Validating XML Parser. Andreas Neumann has announced the release of version 1.2 of fxp, "a validating XML parser written the functional programming language SML (Standard ML). fxp has been developed at the Computer Science Department, University of Trier, using Standard ML of New Jersey. The parser toolkit comes with five sample applications: (1) fxp, the pure parser - it parses a document and finds well-formedness errors, validity errors and other problems; (2) fxcanon, which produces an equivalent canonical XML document; (3) fxcopy, which 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) fxesis, which adds a backend to fxp, producing an output similar to NSGMLS's ESIS (Element Structure Information Set) output; (5) fxviz is an XML tree visualizer which produces a graph description suitable as input to Georg Sander's vcg." New features in fxp version 1.2: "(1) full support for XML syntax of XML Catalog; (2) support for retrieval of non-local URIs; (3) new sample application fxviz, a document tree visualizer." The documentation and sources for fxp are available at http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~neumann/Fxp. For related XML tools, see "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits."
[June 07, 1999] The Universal Plug and Play Forum. The The Universal Plug and Play Forum "is an industry group of companies promoting Universal Plug and Play networking protocols and device interoperability standards. Universal Plug and Play members will work with Microsoft to enable device-to-device interoperability by promoting Universal Plug and Play protocols and cooperatively developing and contributing XML schemas for device description, naming and HTML-based control. UPnP.ORG, the Forum's web site, will be a central repository for schema which have been developed by the Forum, the Universal Plug and Play specifications, source code, and implementers guides. UPnP.ORG will also distribute information about the Forum's activities and progress." UPnP Schemas: "The discovery process returns only the basic information needed to connect to a device. Once a service has discovered its peers, the service often needs to find out more information in order to work best with them. The description process returns a schema providing descriptive data about the service. A schema is a structured data definition that defines a set of structured values that provide descriptive information about a service. Universal Plug and Play will use Extensible Markup Language (XML) for schema, because XML's self-describing structured data format provides the level of expressiveness and extensibility needed by a universal schema and data format." Preliminary examples of UPnP device description are available online.
[June 03, 1999] Sun's JavaServer Pages (JSP) Technology. A recent white paper from Sun Microsystems provides an overview of the JSP specification, [which] "is the result of extensive industry cooperation between vendors of web servers, application servers, transactional systems, and development tools. The JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology provides a simplified, fast way to create web pages that display dynamically-generated content. Sun Microsystems developed the specification to integrate with and leverage existing expertise and tools support for the Java programming environment, such as Java Servlets and JavaBeans. The result is a new approach to developing web-based applications that extends powerful capabilities to page designers using component-based application logic. . . A JSP page is executed by a JSP engine, which is installed in a web server or a JSP-enabled application server. The JSP engine receives requests from a client to a JSP page, and generates responses from the JSP page to the client. A JSP page looks like a standard HTML or XML page, with additional elements that the JSP engine processes and strips out. Typically, the JSP elements create text that is inserted into the results page. Any tags that the JSP engine does not recognize it passes on with the results page. Typically, these will be HTML or XML tags. Most JSP processing will be implemented through JSP-specific XML-based tags. JSP 1.0 includes a number of standard tags, referred to as the core tags. JSP pages can be used to generate both XML and HTML pages. For simple XML generation, developers can include XML tags and static template portions of the JSP page. For dynamic XML generation, use server-based Beans and customized tags that generate XML output. . ." Version 1.0 of the JSP Specification is now available or download. See also the JSP Web site and the press release: "Sun Unveils JavaServer Pages Technology. JavaServer Pages Technology Allows Developers to Build Dynamic, Cross-Platform Web-Based Applications."
[June 03, 1999] DocZilla Alpha 2 for WinNT/95/98 and Linux. A communiqué from Mirja Hukari announces the availability of the DocZilla SGML/XML browser for WinNT/95/98 and Linux. "CiTEC is proud to announce the first XML and SGML browser on Linux, DocZilla. DocZilla Alpha 2 runs on WinNT/95/98 and Linux. The Linux DocZilla Alpha comes with the Linux HOWTO's (technical documentation created using the LinuxDoc DTD) rendered directly from the original SGML format. The DocZilla XML/SGML Module Alpha 2 extends Mozilla Web technology with enhanced XML support, SGML, HyTime links, CGM graphics, CALS tables, and additional features from CSS2. The DocZilla XML/SGML Module will be a dynamically registered add-on component to the Netscape Gecko browser when it is released. The XML/SGML Module Alpha 2 is now available as a standalone application built with the Mozilla source code with the full web browser capabilities. The XML/SGML Module is the first offering from CiTEC of components for advanced Web publishing. Our next components will include: XML search, publishing tools, and document fragment delivery. The XML/SGML Module Alpha 2 comes with a Demo Kit with many excellent demonstrations of the use of SGML, XML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, CGM and more with DocZilla. These demos are set up to be viewed with point-and-click simplicity."
[June 03, 1999] New Book on XML Applications. Simon St. Laurent posted an announcement to the XML-DEV list concerning the publication of Building XML Applications. Authored by Ethan Cerami and Simon St. Laurent, the book "focuses on Java XML parsers, including Ælfred, SAX (Simple API for XML), and Microsoft MS-XML. Other topics include XML/database integration and dynamically generated XML via Java Servlets." Published by McGraw-Hill (May 1999, ISBN: 0-07-134116-1). For additional information, see the volume description with Table of Contents, or the main bibliographic entry.
[June 01, 1999] Sun Microsystem's Java Project X - Technology Release 2. Advancing its Java and XML development, Sun Microsystems recently provided public information on the Java Project X Technology Release 2. JavaTM Project X Technology Release 2 "is a maintenance release that offers full conformance to the XML 1.0 specification and SAX 1.0 APIs, and continues to lead the industry with substantial improvements in performance. JavaTM Project X is the code name for XML technology services written completely in the Java language. Java Project X is experimental technology that provides developers with 'round trip' XML processing capabilities for developing robust, flexible XML-oriented applications and network services. The Technology Release 2 package provides core XML capabilities including a fast XML parser with optional validation and an in-memory object model tree that supports the W3C DOM Level 1 recommendation. With Java Project X, developers can build robust, flexible XML-oriented applications and network services. The release is addressed to Java developers who want access to Sun's fast and fully conformant core XML software for their development. The library supports fast parsing of XML documents, including optional validation, and supports an optional in-memory object model tree for manipulating and writing XML structured data. The library is 'core' in the sense that significant XML based applications can be written using only this functionality, and that it is intended that other XML software be layered on top of it. That is, it is a building block for developers. Technology Release 2 contains both binary and source. All classes are written exclusively in the Java language, and accordingly may be used with any JDK 1.1 conformant system, including the Java 2 SDK. Developers can redistribute the binary software in commercial products. See further information in the README document, in the Java Project X FAQ document, and in the installation instructions.
[June 01, 1999] SAX2 Alpha Release for Java. David Megginson has announced that an alpha version of SAX2 for Java is now available for download. SAX2 is "an update to the widely-implemented SAX 1.0 interface for XML parsers. SAX2 consists of two parts: (1) a new, extensible mechanism for querying and setting features and properties in SAX parsers in a standard way; and (2) a set of recommended core feature and property names. David says: "Be warned that this is very early, and that everything is subject to change. . . You also need the SAX 1.0 distribution to use SAX2. SAX2 does not replace SAX 1.0, but it does augment it by adding additional functionality for those who want it; for now, the feature/property setting and discovery is being handled through a separate interface. People are encouraged to start supporting SAX2, but SAX 1.0 implementations will not become obsolete. I've also hacked together a simple SAX2 wrapper for Microstar's AElfred SAX 1.0 driver, which more-or-less correctly reports what features are available (such as external entity expansion) and unavailable (such as validation). It is available through a separate download. Note that even SAX2 parsers are free not to implement any or all of the core features and properties."
[June 01, 1999] GUI Interface for James Clark's XT. Steve Ball (Zveno Pty Ltd.) announced the availability of TclXT.tcl on the XSL-List. "To make life a bit easier when processing XML documents using XT, I've written a small Tcl/Tk script that slaps a Tk GUI interface onto the Java processor. The interface is very rudimentary at the moment, but I'll be improving it over time. Apart from the software needed to run XT, this also requires Tcl/Tk 8.0.5 and Tcl Blend 1.1, both available from the Scriptics site, http://www.scriptics.com/. Installation and configuration instructions are in the script. They will be expanded here at a later stage." Clark's XT is a Java implementation of XSL Transformations, compatible with the W3C's April-21 working draft (WD-xslt-19990421).
[May 31, 1999] Stephen Deach on XSL. Stephen Deach (Adobe Systems Inc.) has posted a response to the article "XSL Considered Harmful," by Michael Leventhal. Stephen Deach is Editor of the W3C Working Draft Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Specification ('formatting' portion of the specification, 21-April-1999). From the author's 'Conclusion': "If XSL provides a better mechanism to support online presentation, it is clearly in the web community's interest. If it provides a better solution to print it is clearly in the web community's interest. If it provides a common mechanism to support print and online presentation it is clearly in the web community's interest. If it does all of these, even better. From preliminary indications, XSL seems implementable and useful, thus Mr. Leventhal's request to stop work on XSL (at least until CSS-2 is fully implemented on every platform) is not only unrealistic, but is detrimental to the web, since it would delay widespread support for XSL." For references to other articles on XSL, see "Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)."
[May 31, 1999] Release of Expat Version 1.1. James Clark has announced the release of Expat Version 1.1, which may be used under either the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 or the GNU General Public License. "Expat (XML Parser Toolkit) is an XML 1.0 parser written in C. It aims to be fully conforming [but] is currently not a validating XML processor. New features of expat version 1.1 relative to 1.0 include: (1) Support for XML namespaces, (2) Ability to report comments, (3) Ability to report CDATA section boundaries, (4) Ability to report which attributes are defaulted, (5) Compile option to reduce object-code size at the expense of speed. Expat has built in support for the following encodings: utf-8, utf-16, iso-8859-1, and us-ascii. Additional encodings can be supported by using XML_SetUnknownEncodingHandler." For other information, see the the primary expat documentation page and the document "Frequently Asked Questions about Expat." For references to other XML parsers, see "XML Parsers and Parsing Toolkits."
[May 28, 1999] Markup Languages: Theory and Practice - New Issue Published. The second issue of Markup Languages: Theory and Practice has now been published, and contains several excellent articles on SGML/XML markup technologies. I have prepared a document with an annotated Table of Contents for Markup Languages: Theory and Practice, Volume 1, Number 2 (Spring 1999). Markup Languages: Theory and Practice (ISSN: 1099-6622) is published by MIT Press Journals. Editors in Chief for MLTP are B. Tommie Usdin (Mulberry Technologies, Inc.) and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (University of Illinois/Chicago). MLTP is a "quarterly, peer-reviewed technical journal [and] the first journal devoted to research, development, and practical applications of text markup for computer processing, management, manipulation, and display. Specific areas of interest include new syntaxes for generic markup languages; refinements to existing markup languages; theory of formal languages as applied to document markup; systems for mark-up; uses of markup for printing, hypertext, electronic display, content analysis, information reuse and repurposing, search and retrieval, and interchange; shared applications of markup languages; and techniques and methodologies for developing markup languages and applications of markup languages." A full journal description with an overview of the Editorial Structure is provided in a separate document. See also the detailed annotated Table of Contents for MLTP Volume 1, Number 1 (Winter 1999).
[May 28, 1999] HaXml. Malcolm Wallace and Colin Runciman (University of York) are working on HaXml - "incorporating XmlLib, Haskell2Xml, and Xml2Haskell. HaXml is a collection of utilities for using Haskell and XML together. XmlLib is a combinator library for generic XML document processing, including transformation, editing, and generation. Haskell2Xml is a replacement class for Haskell's Show/Read classes: it allows you to read and write ordinary Haskell data as XML documents. We include a version of DrIFT which automatically derives this class for you. Xml2Haskell is a framework for translating any valid XML DTD into equivalent Haskell types. This allows you to generate, edit, and transform documents as normal typed values in programs, and to read and write them as human-readable XML documents. Development of these XML libraries was funded by Canon Research Europe Ltd.. The library is Open Source, i.e., the bits we wrote are copyright to us, but freely licensed for your use, modification, and re-distribution, provided you don't restrict anyone else's use of it. We are interested in hearing your feedback on these XML facilities - suggestions for improvements, comments, criticisms."
[May 28, 1999] Tony - a XML Parser and Pretty Printer. Christian Lindig (Software Technology Group, Technical University of Braunschweig) is at work on Tony - a XML Parser and Pretty Printer. "Tony is a lightweight XML parser and pretty printer written in Objective Caml. It has started as an experimental spare time project and has some limitation with respect to the XML definition [. . .] it's a magnitude smaller than most XML parsers and it offers pretty printing of the result. The current distribution contains a single application tony which reads a XML source and pretty prints it. It serves as a test case for the parser. The pretty printer is modeled after the pretty printing algebra suggested by Philip Wadler in his paper A Prettier Printer. Since the original pretty printer implementation relies heavily on lazy evaluation it was adopted for the strict evaluation of OCaml. It is provided in a library which is part of the distribution and may be interesting in its own right. There is a separate page that shows the pretty printing capablities of Tony. The distribution comes as a self contained tar-archive including makefiles and other build support. Although the source should compile on Windows, NT, and MacOS as well there is no support for building it on these platforms. Building Tony requires OCaml 2.0 or above since the lexer uses the new let feature introduced in OCaml 2.0. My devlopment platforms are Linux/Redhat 5.0/LinuxPPC and Linux/Debian 1.3/x86. There is currently no user documentation since this software is intended for developers. I would be glad to receive feedback and contributions to turn Tony into a useful XML parser and application. This has not been tested extensively -- so expect problems. You should have the XML defintion at hand in order to understand the problems you will encounter."
[May 28, 1999] New Release of RXP Parser. Richard Tobin has


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