Cover Pages: XML Daily Newslink: Monday, 27 October 2008

A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS and Sponsor Members
Edited by Robin Cover

This issue of XML Daily Newslink is sponsored by:
Oracle Corporation http://www.oracle.com

Headlines

Microsoft Joins AMQP Working Group for Open Standards Messaging Software
W3C Creates Model-based User Interfaces Incubator Group
DITA to XLIFF and Back: Two Complementary Standards
SIP and XMPP: Many-to-Many Text Chat
RIM Touts Developer Tools, App Store
Current W3C CSS and Formatting Specifications and Drafts
Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider

Microsoft Joins AMQP Working Group for Open Standards Messaging Software
Staff, Microsoft Announcement

Microsoft Corp. announced that it is joining the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Working Group, an organization focused on the development of the AMQP specification. Microsoft is joining the AMQP Working Group at the request of its members, including several of Microsoft's customers in the financial services industry, in order to support the development of an open industry standard for ubiquitous messaging. AMQP is a specification for platform-neutral, open standards-based business messaging. The primary goal of AMQP is to enable the communications necessary for business processes. AMQP Working Group members are collaborating on specifications for messaging infrastructure that provide businesses with a simple and more powerful way of connecting messaging-dependent applications both within and between firms. By joining the AMQP Working Group, Microsoft is seeking to contribute toward the development of such solutions and to enable greater customer choice in the marketplace. Message-based transports with security and transactional integrity are a vital infrastructure component throughout institutions. As Microsoft continues to provide vertical industry solutions, AMQP will provide an alternative to current messaging options. The AMQP specification and related implementations may provide greater interoperability for a number of vertical scenarios in addition to financial services, insurance and healthcare, among others. Members of the AMQP Working Group inculde Cisco, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Boerse Systems, Envoy Technologies Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., iMatix Corporation, IONA Technologies, J.P. Morgan, Novell, Rabbit Technologies Ltd., Red Hat Inc., TWIST Process Innovations Ltd., WSO2 and 29West Inc.

W3C Creates Model-based User Interfaces Incubator Group
Staff, W3C Announcement

W3C announced the formation of a new Model-based User Interfaces Incubator Group. The mission of the group, part of the W3C Incubator Activity, is to evaluate research on model-based user interface design as a framework for authoring Web applications and with a view to proposing work on related standards. The initiating members include CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, JustSystems, Siemens, Telefónica de España SAU, and Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). The Model-based User Interfaces Incubator Group will evaluate research on model-based design, including end to end models that extend beyond a single Web page, and assess its potential as a framework for developing Web applications. This will involve consideration of use cases and requirements, the role of existing standards such as SCXML, DIAL/XHTML2, and XForms, and making proposals for new work on standards where appropriate. Research work on model-based design of user interfaces has sought to address the challenge of reducing the costs for developing and maintaining user interfaces through a layered architecture that separates out different concerns, for example: Application task models, data and meta-data; Abstract Interface; Concrete Interface; Implementation on specific devices (e.g., HTML, SVG or Java). Each layer embodies a model of behavior (e.g., dialog models and rule-based event handlers) at a progressively finer level of detail. The relationships between the layers can be given in terms of transformations, for example, between objects and events in adjoining layers. XML is well suited as a basis for representing each layer, with the possible exception of the final user interface, which may be generated automatically, guided via author supplied policies. This Incubator Activity work is not on the W3C standards track, but its work may be picked up in part or in whole by W3C Working Groups, such as the Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group, whose charter is due for renewal in 2009.

See also: the W3C Incubator Activity

DITA to XLIFF and Back: Two Complementary Standards
Staff, OASIS Announcement

Slide presentations are now available online for the September 2008 webinars that focused on the work of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and the OASIS XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) Technical Committees. The webinars were: (1) "DITA to XLIFF and Back — two complementary standards that reduce the costs and risks of translating XML content' from a business perspective. Bring together two powerful OASIS XML Standards (DITA and XLIFF), and you get a process that reduces the costs and risks associated with translating topic-oriented, XML-based content. (2) 'DITA to XLIFF and Back — Understanding the Technical Solution.' The OASIS DITA Standard promotes semantically tagged XML topics. Individual XML topics can be translated once and used in multiple deliverables. XLIFF translates XML topics early in the product-development life cycle to facilitate simultaneous shipping of products in multiple languages. OASIS XLIFF provides a mechanism to reduce costs and eliminate risk by packaging DITA files to translation and localization providers that is easier and less costly to manage.

See also: the WMV recordings

SIP and XMPP: Many-to-Many Text Chat
Peter Saint-Andre, Salvatore Loreto (et al.), IETF Internet Draft

IETF has published an initial Internet Draft version of "Interworking between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Many-to-Many Text Chat." The document defines a bi-directional protocol mapping for the exchange of instant messages in the context of a many-to-many chat session among users of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and users of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Specifically for SIP text chat, this document specifies a mapping to the Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP). Both XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE technologies enable multi-user text chat, whereby users can exchange messages in the context of a room. The term "room" usually is a synonym for a virtual environment where people enter and exchange messages. To ensure interworking between these technologies, it is important to define bi-directional protocol mappings. The architectural assumptions underlying such protocol mappings are provided in the I-D "Interworking between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core", including mapping of addresses and error conditions. Mappings for single instant messages (sometimes called "pager-mode" messaging) are provided in I-D "Interworking between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Instant Messaging". Mappings for one-to-one text chat sessions are provided in "Interworking between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): One-to-One Text Chat."

See also: XMPP references

RIM Touts Developer Tools, App Store
Roy Mark, eWEEK

Perhaps not so coincidentally on the eve of T-Mobile's G1 Android phone debut, Research In Motion announced October 21, 2008 new tools for developers building applications for BlackBerry smart phones. RIM also announced plans to launch a new online application storefront and on-device application center. The tools will include a plug-in for Eclipse developers and new features for the BlackBerry plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, as well as support for Gears, allowing Web applications to run stand-alone applications on BlackBerry smart phones. According to RIM, developers will be able to build applications using HTML, JavaScript and XML that get packaged and executed as native Java applications on BlackBerry devices. RIM said support for Gears will include local cache, database and multithreaded JavaScript execution, which allows Web application functions to run in the background. In addition, RIM announced the availability of BlackBerry Web Signals, which allow content providers to push alerts to smart phone users based on a customer's opt-in preferences... The rash of RIM announcements comes just two weeks after the company announced its BlackBerry Storm -- with its new tactile touch-screen—that will be exclusively available on Verizon Wireless in the United States in a matter of weeks. Both RIM and Verizon Wireless are expecting the Storm to seriously challenge Apple's 3G iPhone as the hottest electronic device under this year's Christmas tree.

Current W3C CSS and Formatting Specifications and Drafts
Rick Jelliffe, O'Reilly Technical

This article presents a succinct list of the current Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) specs and drafts. See CSS Snapshot 2007 for some extra information. These are in various stages of completion. The current CSS standard is CSS Level 2, defined in CSS 2.1 Specification. This supercedes the previous Level 2 spec and the long-gone Level 1 spec. There are several profiles: CSS Mobile Profile 2.0, CSS Print Profile 1.0 and CSS TV Profile 1.0 One interesting profile is for MathML for CSS, to allow better styling of MathML code... To see where CSS3 is going, and to find links to the multiple other specifications, many of which seem to be bumming around in Working Draft status, the place to start is the roadmap Introduction to CSS3. However, this document was written in 2001, so it could well have out-of-date parts. On the W3C website, there are CSS drafts for backgrounds and borders, grid positioning, basic box model, advanced layout, multi-column layout, generated content for paged media, text, values and units, cascading and inheritance, speech, hypertext presentation, presentation levels, syntax, borders, lists, and line formatting... These don't nearly exhaust the universe of formatting possibilities. For example, there are several other East Asian formatting idioms that are not present. The W3C's excellent Internationalisation Working Group has a draft Requirements of Japanese Text Layout which is also applicable to Chinese and Korean layout, with the details adjusted. Some issues related to right-to-left scripts can be found at Internationalization Best Practices: Handling Right-to-left Scripts in XHTML and HTML Content and some general requirements for internationalization can be found in Internationalization and Localization Markup Requirements.

See also: on Chinese Tables

Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider
Jorgen Thelin, Blog

Beginning today, Windows Live ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider. You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site. The Windows Live ID OpenID Provider (OP) enables anyone with a Windows Live ID account to set up an OpenID alias and to use that alias for identification at an increasing number of OpenID 2.0 relying party sites-for example: Plaxo, Pibb, StackOverflow.com and Wikispaces... OpenID is an emerging, de facto standard Web protocol for user authentication. It helps eliminate the need for multiple user names across different Web sites, thereby simplifying a user's online experience. Stated another way, you can reuse your OpenID account at different Web sites without having to create a new user name and password at each site you use. The initial release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) Release in the Windows Live ID Integration (INT) environment. It is intended primarily for relying-party Web sites and developers of relying-party client libraries, to enable them to test the interoperability of their implementations against the Windows Live ID OP endpoint and flush out any bugs or incompatibilities. Note that the Windows Live ID OP supports only the OpenID 2.0 protocol.

See also: the OpenID web site


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