XML
Standards News
XML
'98 Provides Update on W3C Standards
Standards
Update Session at XML '98 featured Dan Connolly
of the W3C. Dan reviewed important XML-related
efforts at the W3C such as XLink, XSL, DOM and
Schema.
- Paul
Grosso of the XSL working group reported that
he expected a new working draft of XSL in mid-December.
- Michael
Sperberg-McQueen, co-chair of the Schema Working
Group, reported that the working group was beginning
by creating a formal requirements document before
moving to evaluate schema submissions to W3C
such as DCD, SOX and XML-Data.
- Bill
Smith of Sun Microsystems and chair of the XLink
group said that he expected his group to produce
a Recommendation on linking in 1999.
- Lauren
Wood, chair of the DOM working group, reported
that Level 1 DOM was final (it became a recommendation
on October 1) and work has begun on the Level
2
New
DOM Working Draft
On
January 5, 1999 the DOM Working Group released
a new Working Draft specification for The Document
Object Model Level 2, Version 1.0 (WD-DOM-Level-2-19981228).
The new Level 2 W3C DOM Working Draft, defines
"a platform- and language-neutral interface
that allows programs and scripts to dynamically
access and update the content, structure and style
of documents. The Document Object Model Level
2 builds on the Document Object Model Level 1
which became a recommendation in October 1998.
Level 2 adds interfaces for a Cascading Style
Sheets object model, an event model, and a query
interface, amongst others. This first release
of the Document Object Model Level 2 contains
interfaces for the Cascading Style Sheets object
model, the Range object model, filters and iterators,
and the Events object model only. The other interfaces
will be added in future versions of this specification.
The DOM Level 2 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) interfaces
are designed with the goal of exposing CSS constructs
to object model consumers. Cascading Style Sheets
is a declarative syntax for defining presentation
rules, properties and ancillary constructs used
to format and render Web documents. This document
specifies a mechanism to programmatically access
and modify the rich style and presentation control
provided by CSS (specifically CSS level two ).
This augments CSS by providing a mechanism to
dynamically control the inclusion and exclusion
of individual style sheets, as well as manipulate
CSS rules and properties. "
The
chair of the DOM Working Group is Lauren Wood,
of SoftQuad Software Inc. Parts of the current
draft have also been edited by Vidur Apparao,
Mike Champion, Arnaud Le Hors, Tom Pixley, Jonathan
Robie, Peter Sharpe, and Chris Wilson.
XML
Standard for Newspaper Classified Advertising
The
Newspaper Association of America's (NAA) Classified
Advertising Standards Task Force has introduced
a common format that allows classified ad publishers,
advertisers and online enterprises to readily
exchange and publish classified ads. The standard
was unveiled January 12, 1999 by task force Chairman
Jack H. Stanley, Houston Chronicle senior vice
president/operations and technology, during NAA's
Newspaper Operations SuperConference at the Hilton
at Walt Disney World Village in Orlando. The standard
is represented electronically through a document
type definition, or DTD, a virtual road map for
classifieds. The DTD has a set of elements, or
fields, which describe the product being sold.
The XML DTD was designed to provide publishers
the standard information they need, while also
allowing advertisers to be flexible. The DTD is
free and available for download from NAA's
Web site. Background information on the new
standard can be found in the executive
summary of the document.
XML
Version of ISO 12083 Posted for Review
During
working group meetings held in conjunction with
XML '98 in Chicago this November, XML versions
of the ISO 12083 DTDs were created. In order to
create XML DTDs, a number of decisions were made
by the working group:
- The
use of the AND connector was eliminated by precise
modeling
- The
use of inclusions was eliminated by creating
new parameter entity models allowing XML-compliant
mixed content
- The
working group agreed that the "user beware"
approach was the most reasonable way to eliminate
exclusions. It would complicate the DTD to add
a host of new elements just to prevent the use
of floats within floats. So exclusions were
simply eliminated from the DTD.
The
new DTDs, along with minutes, survey results and
other committee documents can be found at the
ISO 12083 Web site, http://www.xmlxperts.com/12083.htm.
DocBook
Developing an XML DTD
DocBook is an SGML DTD that is 'particularly well
suited to books and papers about computer hardware
and software'. DocBook has been adopted by a large
and growing community of authors writing books
of all kinds. DocBook is supported 'out of the
box' by a number of commercial tools, and there
is rapidly expanding support for it in a number
of free software environments. These features
have combined to make DocBook a generally easy
to understand, widely useful, and very popular
DTD. Dozens of organizations are using DocBook
for millions of pages of documentation, in various
print and online formats, worldwide.
The
official DocBook distribution is an SGML DTD.
An XML DTD based upon DocBook version 3.0 has
been under development for some time -- principally
through the efforts of Norman Walsh. DocBook DTD
is now maintained by the OASIS DocBook Technical
Committee. The meetings of the DocBook Technical
Committee are open to anyone who wishes to attend,
and thus not limited to OASIS members. The DocBook
DTD now has a new Web site at http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/.
Return
to TOC
