GCA Core Technologies Program

Tuesday, December 7th  

11:00 am

WebCGMTM
WebCGM™ is a profile of the ISO Computer Graphics Metafile Standard (ISO/IEC 8632:1992), tailored to the requirements for scalable 2D vector graphics in electronic documents on the World Wide Web. Learn from the experts what is happening in the WebCGM ™ arena today.
Lofton Henderson, Inso HSI

11:45 am

RDF
Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a foundation for processing metadata; it provides interoperability between applications that exchange machine-understandable information on the Web. RDF emphasizes facilities to enable automated processing of Web resources. This session examines how RDF enhances processing on the Web, the benefits associated with RDF and expectations about the future of the framework.
Ora Lassila, Nokia Research Center

2:00 pm

XPointer
XPointer provides ways to directly identify any node, data, or selection in any XML document by describing its structure and context. An identified data location is called a "target." The XPointer specification is particularly meant to enable hyperlinks to identify any such data, regardless of whether there is (or even could be) an ID on the target or not. Learn about the XPointer language and how it will work with XLink to provide a new level of Web functionality.
Daniel Veillard, W3C, INRIA Rhone-Alpes

2:45 pm

XLink
With the advent of XML, an improved, more functional approach to linking is being introduced as the XLink standard. This session explains new Web linking concepts and provides a status report of the new Web linking standards.
Daniel Veillard, W3C, INRIA Rhone-Alpes

4:00 pm

STEP---SGML/XML Harmonizations
Just as SGML has been the starting point for revolutions in document preparation and interchange, the STEP standards have brought together basic tools for managing structured information related to product data. Since SGML (and HTML and XML) documents often describe the products whose physical geometries are described by STEP and its native markup language, EXPRESS, Yuri Rubinsky, one of the organizers of these conferences, started an effort to harmonize the standards. Now, ISO TC184/SC34 has just approved a project to work together with JTC1/SC34 to carry out the synthesis. What will the results be --- STEP represented in SGML, EXPRESS as a schema notation for XML, or something else? Come hear Eliot Kimber, one of the project leaders from SC34 talk about the latest work.
W. Eliot Kimber, ISOGEN International Corp.

Wednesday, December 8th

9:00 am

XML Schema and Datatypes
An XML schema is a mechanism somewhat analogous to DTDs for constraining document structure (order, occurrence of elements, attributes). In addition, specific goals beyond DTD functionality, such as the specification of datatypes have been identified within the scope of XML Schema. This informative session focuses on the emerging XML schema language and the proposed mechanism for specifying datatypes.
C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, World Wide Web Consortium/MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Murray Maloney, Muzmo Communications Inc.

9:45 am

XSLT
XSL (Extensible Style Sheet Language) was posted to W3C as two separate Working Drafts on April 6. The first part of XSL is now the specification for XSLT. XSLT is a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents. XSLT was designed to be used independently of XSL. However, XSLT is not intended as a completely general-purpose XML transformation language. Learn more about XSLT in this session.
G. Ken Holman, Crane Softwrights Ltd.

11:00 am

Querying XML
Today, many people want a standard way to query XML. One proposed solution is a query language designed specifically for XML documents. The logical model for XML queries is based directly on XML. This session introduces the issues involved in querying XML, then outlines current proposals, which provide a language for specifying nodes, paths, and conditions based on a model of logical completeness for the structure of XML documents.
Paul Cotton, IBM Canada Ltd.

11:45 am

DOM
Document Object Model (DOM) provides us with a uniform method to interact with XML on an application level. What is the DOM? What are the levels of the DOM? How does it guide software developers? What is the status and schedule for this W3C standard?
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.

3:15 pm

Report from the ISO
Standards development in the ISO arena that is related to markup languages (particularly to SGML) has been organized in JTC1/SC34 for just over a year. SC34 has working groups dedicated to the description, presentation, and association of information structures---that is, to SGML; DSSSL and Fonts; and HyTime, ISMID, Topic Maps, and Standard HTML. The chairman of SC34 and representatives of the working groups will make their annual report to the Markup Technologies community.
Chair: James David Mason, Chairman, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34

4:30 pm

The future of SGML
Three years ago at the GCA conference, Jim Mason, now the Chairman of ISO's JTC1/SC34 predicted that the future of SGML depended on its becoming invisible. In the intervening years, XML has become very visible, at least in the press. Meanwhile SGML has been revised somewhat and other projects have continued in ISO. Does the ISO work have a future? Should this new work be implemented by the toolmakers? What relationship should the SGML standard(s) have to XML? Experts with various slants on the issues will debate.
Chair: Joan Smith, SGML Technologies Group

Thursday, December 9th

9:00 am

HyTime
Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime), the language for encoding the structure of hypermedia documents, is defined as an SGML document architecture. This second edition of HyTime extends SGML by defining how composites of SGML constructs can be built to represent hypermedia structure. These concepts have been influential in the development of Topic Maps and the XML linking specifications such as XPointer and XLink. This presentation provides an overview and the latest information.
W. Eliot Kimber, ISOGEN International Corp.

9:45 am

DSSSL
Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) is the international standard for describing style and layout of SGML documents. Ever since its release in 1996, DSSSL has been highly controversial. DSSSL proponents point to the virtues of its wide scope, language independence, and declarative style. DSSSL opponents point to its unfamiliar syntax, the relatively few DSSSL tools available, and the popularity of XSL. Recently the most widely used DSSSL engine (Jade by James Clark) has become open-source. Topics discussed in this presentation will include the status of the DSSSL standard, DSSSL tools, and the relationship between DSSSL and XSL.
Didier Martin

11:00 am

Topic Maps
Topic Maps is a new international standard (ISO/IEC 13250) for organizing and providing access to large information sets by assigning properties to information objects using links. This Topic Map standard covers: topics, associations, occurrences, and facets/metadata. Topic Maps are expected to a greater impact on future information systems. This session will provide an overview of the Topic Map standard, its goals, and current implementations.
Michel Biezunski, Infoloom