(XML)Pedagogy

Jean-Marc Vanel jmvanel at FREE.FR
Sat Nov 27 14:20:55 CET 1999


(XML) means a post about XML (see Gregor Hagedorn's post, "First level
topics on this list (GEN)"; every post should bear a tag among RQT, XML,
GEN).

By the way, this kind of tagging is much in the spirit of XML. Even in
an HTML text, you can mark up a sentence, a paragraph, or words, with
tags like <requirement>, <opinion>, <example>, <reference-to-article>,
etc. To identify this family of tags (called a vocabulary), it is better
(though not mandatory) to indicate that this fragment of HTML text is
using this vocabulary (say, in this example, called
authoring-discussion).

Here is a complete example:

     <HTML  xmlns:disc="urn:authoring-discussion" ><!-- N1 -->
     <!-- N2 --><STYLE>
     disc\:opinion{color:red; font-size:large;}
     </STYLE>
     <P>
     Everybody agrees that ......; but I think that
     <disc:opinion>modelizing amphibians is very
     important and a very special case</disc:opinion>.
     </P>
     </HTML>

You can copy-and-paste this into an example.html file, and see it in
Internet Explorer 5, or Mozilla, or any XHTML+CSS1 compliant browser.
For your conveniance, this file is joined to the post.

Notes:
N1    xmlns is a reserved word meaning "XML namespace"; the string
following = can be:

   * a URN, that is an Unique Resource Name, (see RFC 2396, it's only
     required to remain globally unique and persistent ) as in this
     example,
   * or an URL (Uniform Resource Locator), that is something retrievable
     on the Internet, like
     http://www.w3.org/DTD/authoring-discussion.dtd , which in our
     example would contain a formal description of the vocabulary, a DTD
     (XML Data Type Definition) or another syntax like XML Schema.

N2   This is a CSS1 style; complete specification in
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1


There many topics more about XML, like:

   * how and why mix several vocabularies,
   * how to format and query an XML document (XSLT),
   * what's going on in the business and scientific domains around XML
   * relations beetwen XML and HTML,
   * XML and the Web: the so-called semantic Web.

If time and popular demand are here, I could write more on this.

Cheers

Jean-Marc

--------------52129AB1A34C872F3361D323
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
(XML) means a post about XML (see Gregor Hagedorn's post, "First level
topics on this list (GEN)"; every post should bear a tag among RQT, XML,
GEN).
<p>By the way, this kind of tagging is much in the spirit of XML. Even
in an HTML text, you can mark up a sentence, a paragraph, or words, with
tags like &lt;requirement>, &lt;opinion>, &lt;example>, &lt;reference-to-article>,
etc. To identify this family of tags (called a vocabulary), it is better
(though not mandatory) to indicate that this fragment of HTML text is using
this vocabulary (say, in this example, called authoring-discussion).
<p>Here is a complete example:
<blockquote><tt>&lt;HTML&nbsp; xmlns:disc="<A HREF="urn:authoring-discussion">urn:authoring-discussion</A>" >&lt;!--
N1 --></tt>
<br><tt>&lt;!-- N2 -->&lt;STYLE></tt>
<br><tt>disc\:opinion{color:red; font-size:large;}</tt>
<br><tt>&lt;/STYLE></tt>
<br><tt>&lt;P></tt>
<br><tt>Everybody agrees that ......; but I think that &lt;disc:opinion>modelizing
amphibians is very</tt>
<br><tt>important and a very special case&lt;/disc:opinion>.</tt>
<br><tt>&lt;/P></tt>
<br><tt>&lt;/HTML></tt></blockquote>
You can copy-and-paste this into an example.html file, and see it in Internet
Explorer 5, or Mozilla, or any XHTML+CSS1 compliant browser.
<br>For your conveniance, this file is joined to the post.
<p>Notes:
<br>N1&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; xmlns is a reserved word meaning "XML namespace";
the string following = can be:
<ul>
<li>
a URN, that is an Unique Resource Name, (see RFC 2396, it's only required
to remain globally unique and persistent ) as in this example,</li>

<li>
or an URL (Uniform Resource Locator), that is something retrievable on
the Internet, like <A HREF="http://www.w3.org/DTD/authoring-discussion.dtd">http://www.w3.org/DTD/authoring-discussion.dtd</A> , which
in our example would contain a formal description of the vocabulary, a
DTD (XML Data Type Definition) or another syntax like XML Schema.</li>
</ul>
N2&nbsp;&nbsp; This is a CSS1 style; complete specification in <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1">http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1</a>
<br>&nbsp;
<p>There many topics more about XML, like:
<ul>
<li>
how and why mix several vocabularies,</li>

<li>
how to format and query an XML document (XSLT),</li>

<li>
what's going on in the business and scientific domains around XML</li>

<li>
relations beetwen XML and HTML,</li>

<li>
XML and the Web: the so-called semantic Web.</li>
</ul>
If time and popular demand are here, I could write more on this.
<p>Cheers
<p>Jean-Marc</html>


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