Choosing an XML Editor

More and more people are working with texts and documents in XML format. With the increasing popularity of XML, the number of XML editors is also increasing and it can be difficult to choose the editor that best suits a particular user or task. The aim of this Information Paper is to provide an introduction to different features XML editors can have and the extent to which these features are implemented in various editors. It also presents the result of an evaluation exercise where different user groups tried a number of the editors.

van den Broek, Thijs. AHDS (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Creating XML Trees with the XmlTextWriter and XmlDocument Objects

So you know all about reading and parsing XML files, and even checking if they're well-formed and valid. Now, take a step into more advanced territory with this expose of two objects that let you dynamically create well-formed XML documents in your ASP.NET scripts.

ASP Free (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Detecting JBIG2 Compression

How can I tell if JBIG2 compression was used on my PDF file?

Rosenthol, Leonard. PDFzone (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

DocBook and DITA Editors: Is Their Future Online?

Thanks to my Google News Alert service, I recently discovered some on-demand XML Editors supporing DITA. While Salesforce democratized software on-demand in the CRM market, I am still perplexed on the future of on-demand pure play software. So let's see first what makes on-demand software, also known as Saas (Software as a Service), so attractive nowadays. I see five compelling reasons.

Talbot, Fabrice. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Information Design>Software>DITA

Grokker, o la Navegación Visual

La aparición de navegadores cada vez más visuales y mejor estructurados como Vivísimo, Grokker o TouchGraph está empezando a agitar un mundo que parecía estático. Pparece que el referente en este campo está aún más allá del horizonte, pero cada día estamos más cerca.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2004). (Spanish) Articles>Information Design>Software

A Lesson in Templates for Adobe Acrobat

Although Templates have been around since version 3 of Acrobat there was never any really useful supporting information or technical documentation to make use of them. Version 5 and 6 of Acrobat changed all that making it possible to take full control of Templates to create truly dynamic PDF documents.

Wraight, Dave. PlanetPDF (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Overcoming Objections to XML-Based Authoring Systems

During a recent development effort, one of our clients was alarmed at the conversion costs of the proposed XML-based content management system compared to the existing MS Word-based process. This was just one instance of an alarming trend of balking at XML-based systems in favor of using public web folders, indexed by some full-text search engine, as part of a local intranet. In the short run, these edit, drop, and index solutions have some appealing features, including low development and conversion costs. But they are short-lived systems that either wither from lack of functionality or rapidly outgrow their design.

Buehling, Brian. XML.com (2001). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Three Visio Tips: Special Deliverables

No column on information architecture deliverables would be complete without at least some mention of tools. Dan Brown offers three tips on using Visio, Microsoft's diagramming application, that should make your life easier and more efficient.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

Toggling Shapes in Visio

This article will expand upon the Visio techniques presented in the last Special Deliverable and will build on them, showing how to create a widget that can be toggled between two states.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

Visio Glue: Not For Sniffing

Spend any time with Visio and you'll find yourself wondering how glue works. In the real world, it's pretty straightforward: put glue between two things and they'll stick. Although glue is used for sticking shapes together in Visio, the metaphor ends there.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

Wireframe Annotations in Visio

Few information architects tap the full power of Visio. For the IA, Visio is a means to an end—a mechanism for capturing some ideas on paper before they are transformed into graphics, HTML, and code.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

Alternatives to Formatting XML Editors for Creating Structured Information

XML editors have traditionally been modeled after the first SGML editor written in 1985, a long time before creating, managing, and distributing structured information was well understood. Now, nearly 20 years later, there are more choices for users interested in creating structured information. Specifically, this presentation discusses alternatives that include Web-based distributed collaborative XML document creation, "tag-free" tools, non-formatting structured editors, and even using common office tools in creating your XML documents.

Daldt, Dale. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Software>Information Design>XML

XML Authoring for Those Who Don't Like Markup

Advances in word processing technology now enable people to author simple documents in an interface they are familiar with. They no longer need to know a lot about markup, the schema in use, or be distracted by other concerns than writing what they want to write. This simpler interface, built upon a Microsoft "Smart Doc" solution provides support for authors who are focused on the content they are writing rather than the markup that describes it. At the same time, the author is producing valid XML that can be routed for review and approval, used for multi-channel delivery, or reused by other authors in the enterprise. Several scenarios of how such an authoring/management system could be used to solve business challenges are described.

Parsons, Jon. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Introducing WinANT

I decided to simplify the DITA publishing process for myself by building a Windows interface to Ant. Ant was developed to allow programmers to write a simple build file in an XML format, and then process that XML file with the Ant build software.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2007). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Modifying DITA Open Toolkit Build Files for CSH

This procedure is used to modify the DITA Open Toolkit build files to allow an external map file reference and alias strings to be added to the HTML Help Project file before building, as part of the transformation to Microsoft HTML Help (CHM) format.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2008). Articles>Information Design>Software>DITA

Appreciating Libxslt

The two most well-known XSLT processors are probably the Apache project's Xalan (available in both a Java and C++ version) and the Java-based Saxon, which was written by XSLT 2.0 specification editor Michael Kay. If those are the only two XSLT processors you currently use, it's worth checking out Daniel Veillard's libxslt.

DuCharme, Bob. XML.com (2005). Articles>Information Design>Software>XSL

Top Five Best Database Management Tools 

For a database administrator, DBM (database management) tools make tasks related to maintaining relational databases efficient and fast. Prior to the popularity of these tools, most DBA’s had to use the command line to create, edit, and delete databases. In this article, we present to you the top five most popular/most voted for database management tools.

Gube, Jacob. Six Revisions (2009). Articles>Information Design>Software>Databases