[January 21, 2000] Portable Site Information. A posting from Lynn C. Rees (Electric Thought Solutions) reports on the design of an XML application for portable site information. "Portable Site Information is a language for creating websites that are portable between different web content platforms. Our intent is to not only transfer data and pages but the whole site. We originally created it for a web project we're involved in but we thought PSI might be useful outside our narrow scope. PSI is primarily indended to be a XML repository between NetObjects and Midgard but leave the site dependent on neither. We might make a PSI import and export filter later... [we] thought we'd toss it out into the world and see if the XML community thought it was any good for broader application. A PSI glossary is available at http://psilib.sourceforge.net/psintro.html. The PSI-lite DTD is available at http://psilib.sourceforge.net/psilite.dtd."
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Contact: Lynn C. Rees
[March 22, 2000] "Moving Home: Portable Site Information." By Lynn C. Rees. From XML.com (March 22, 2000). ['Web development frameworks are many and varied, but why should you have to rebuild your site structure for each one? XML comes to the rescue, in the form of the Portable Site Information project.'] "One common use of XML is to provide data for template-based web pages created with XSLT. However, XML can be used to model the actual structure of a web site too. Portable Site Information is a project to develop an XML abstraction for template-based web sites, to allow their migration between site development frameworks such as NetObjects or Cocoon... [Rees concludes:] "Work on PSI is ongoing. Currently, PSI uses a standard DTD to define its syntax but we plan on migrating it to an RDF schema. This will allow us to exploit PSI with more tools, as well as use it with other RDF formats (like Dublin Core and RSS) to create even more powerful site models. We're cleaning up our current code into an LGPL library called psilib and then releasing it through psilib.sourceforge.net. It's turning into a useful tool for us and may benefit others, which only makes our jobs as web developers easier, especially if we get future site projects already laid out in PSI. XML is proven in modeling complex hierarchies for open exchange. Sites are no exception. Developing PSI has helped us glimpse the underlying patterns of the Web. More connects than divides site structures. We hope to see a standard reflecting this evolve so that any pain from future site evolution comes as a side effect of creation, not transportation. PSI may contribute to this. It may just dimly light the way. The end of portable site information is more important than the means."
