Extreme Markup Languages 2000

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9:15 - 9:30 Plenary
GCA Welcome

9:30 - 9:45 Plenary
Welcome to Extreme
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen and B. Tommie Usdin

Guide to the Conference
Deborah A. Lapeyre

9:45 - 10:30 Plenary
Opening Keynote: We’re open for business
Steven R. Newcomb, TechnoTeacher, Inc.

This is a technical conference. We’re all here presumably because we expect, by the end of the week, to go forth with more and better understandings about modern information management, and about the ideas, initiatives, and people who can help us sort through the challenges we face in that arena. With the self-assurance of one who has not yet fully appreciated the depth of his own ignorance, but who is willing for others to do so, I have mustered all the presumption necessary to share with you some questions, the answers to which, if any, I think may turn out to be important.

11:00 - 11:45 Plenary
Meaning and interpretation of markup
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, W3C, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Claus Huitfeldt, University of Bergen, and Allen Renear, Brown University

SGML and XML markup signals the occurrence of specific features in a document; based on the markup, the reader may make certain inferences about the marked-up material. If the meaning of element types is expressed formally, then the task of interpreting the markup at a particular location in a document may be formulated as finding the set of inferences about that location which may be drawn on the basis of the markup in the document. Several different approaches to this problem are outlined; they vary in complexity, and indirectly provide a measurement of the relative complexity of different approaches to marking up particular kinds of information.

11:45 - 12:30 Plenary
Knowledge Engineering for the "Ferret" Analytical Engine
James David Mason,Chairman, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34, Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant

The Topic Map standard and supporting implementations can facilitate the reliable semantic interchange of structured information. Semantic interchange is facilitated by using two levels of metadata: the schema abstraction (a description of how an instance must be structured in order to be valid) and the Topic Map abstraction. Achieving semantic interchange at the schema level requires a mapping from every construct in one schema to the corresponding construct in the other, so the number of mappings increases by the number of existing schema. In contrast, a Topic Map can capture the essence of a schema structure and then define Topic Occurrences to provide the association between different schema. Associations can also be used to express the dependencies between schema constructs — how schemas can map to existing schemas.

The following sessions are reserved for technically newsworthy submissions so late-breaking that the normal lead time required for peer review is impossible.

2:00 - 2:45 Late breaking news
Topic Maps: Designing and modelling relationships within complex content corpora
Ann M Wrightson, Sweet & Maxwell Ltd.

Because of their simplicity and uniformity, Topic Maps can be difficult to apply to complex problems in a structured manner. To alleviate this problem, this presentation offers both: a graphical notation for representing and designing topic maps, based on the core abstractions underlying the standard and examples of structuring complex interrelationships within large corpora of electronic content into distinct domains and categories, and modelling these using topic map abstractions. The examples are based on the author's work with two kinds of complex, highly interrelated content: interactive electronic technical manuals, and legal information.

2:45 - 3:30 Late breaking news
Topic Maps: Next Generation
Michel Biezunski, InfoLoom, Inc.

Topic Maps have been a widely unknown specification until recently. However, since the ISO standard (ISO/IEC 13250) was published in January 2000, it has gained remarkable momentum and many now believe it will become the next important information technology. This paper focuses on the issues relating to Topic Maps that must be addressed in order for Topic Maps to be widely adopted in today's web-centric environment.

4:00 - 4:45 Late breaking news
Relaxer: Java classes from RELAX modules
Makoto Murata, Engineering Manager, IBM, Tokyo Research Laboratory & Tomoharu Asami

Relaxer is a Java program that generates Java classes from RELAX modules: XML documents valid against a RELAX module can be handled by the Java classes generated from that RELAX module. Relaxer liberates programmers from tedious work: (1) Variables in generated classes have programmer-friendly names, since they are borrowed from RELAX modules; (2) Datatypes specified in RELAX modules are used as datatypes of Java variables; (3) Convenient methods such as reader/writer for XML documents and access function are generated; and, (4) Functions for design patterns "factory", "composite" and "visitor" are generated. Unlike other Java class generators or XML-Java mapping tools, Relaxer supports all features of RELAX Core including mixed content models, element content models, and standard attributes such as xml:lang, xml:space and xml:base. Relaxer has been extensively used by some early adopters, and has received very positive feedback.

4:45 - 5:30 Late breaking news
What's in a name? The latest controversy over namespaces
David G. Durand, Dynamic Diagrams

There has been a lot of recent discussion of the meaning of namespace declarations in the W3C and in the larger community. The key issue seems a small technical point: whether the ability to use relative URI references for namespaces in XML is a terrible mistake, and if so, what solutions might be possible. This seemingly simple question has led to more that 3000 email messages on the public discussion list without reaching a satisfactory conclusion as of the composition of this abstract. I will attempt to present the main issues fairly, without unduly favoring my own views (which I will make clear to ease the detection of bias). Whether this will be a discussion of the history of a decision, or an update on an ongoing process is as yet unclear.

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