What is: XPATH

XPath is a way of pulling out particular data from an XML document. It is used by XSL to determine what should be output in your documents. It is essentially a systematic way of defining an address of each piece of data.

Tech Write Tips (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

What the Hell is XML?

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the Eurodollar of web development. Both XML and the Euro bring order to chaos; both offer undeniable, wide-ranging benefits; both are poised, in 2002, to change the way we do things. Frankly, both scare the crap out of people. For web developers, 2002 is a time to conquer fears and take their first hands-on approach to XML. It's time to examine XML and realize the practical benefits that it can provide to web projects today. The bankers can fend for themselves.

Janisch, Troy. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design>XML

The What, Why, How, and Where of DITA  

Is DITA right for your organization? This article provides a starting point for your own research on DITA.

Steiner, Rob. Intercom (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

What's the Diff? Diff XML Documents

If you are handling many XML documents, sometimes you need to check the differences between two or more documents. You can perform diffs of XML documents with online and command-line tools.

O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>UNIX

When is XML the Wrong Answer?  

XML-based publishing challenges authors to convert from the familiar desktop-publishing routine to new tools. This article explains what you should consider when deciding whether to implement XML.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Intercom (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML

The Why and How of XML Data Islands

This article explains a useful way to embed data in an HTML document, and store it on the client, using XML. With XML becoming ever more pervasive and the client side implementation gaining a lot of ground, you will probably find yourself using this technique in many projects.

Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. Dev Articles (2006). Design>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Why Technical Writers Should Learn XML Now

Lately you may have noticed the increase in newsletter articles, seminars, and monthly meeting topics that relate to XML. If you haven’t been keeping up, you might be wondering what's all the fuss about XML? Or, why do I need to learn this if my job doesn’t have anything to do with XML? If you haven’t kept up, you might be interested to know why you should.

Schurtz, Renee. STC Puget Sound (2004). Articles>Writing>XML>Technical Writing

Why You Should Include an XML Declaration

Although XML declarations are optional, every XML document should have one. An XML declaration helps both human users and automated software identify the document as XML. It identifies the version of XML in use, specifies the character encoding, and can even help optimize the parsing. Most importantly, it's a crucial clue that what you're reading is in fact an XML document in environments where file type information is unavailable or unreliable.

Harold, Elliotte Rusty. InformIT (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML

Wikis, Docs, and the Reuse Proposition

The Darwin Informaton Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based document format that was designed from the ground up for reuse. It rocks. Content Managment Systms (CMSes) are designed to hold XML data. So in theory, a CMS system that lets you edit like a Wiki would be everything you need. But getting a system like that to work is a pretty tricky proposition.

Armstrong, Eric. Sun Microsystems (2007). Articles>Content Management>XML>DITA

Working XML: Use Eclipse to build a user interface for XM

Anyone familiar with XM -- the low-cost, open-source content management solution based on XSLT -- knows that for all its good points, it still lacks a decent user interface. In this article, columnist Benoï¿t Marchal uses the Eclipse platform's open universal framework to build a user interface for XM.

Marchal, Benoit. IBM (2002). Design>User Interface>Software>XML

The World of RSS Explorations

I’ve now seen firsthand that RSS feedreaders, or news aggregators, truly can provide the ability to literally scan hundreds of site updates and headlines in a matter of seconds, letting me know when those sites have updated posts or news. Depending on the software used, the user can be notified by a bubble popping up, a sound, or the headlines appearing in a list with a right click mouseover on the aggregator’s system tray icon, for example.

Kaiser, Shirley E. Brainstorms and Raves (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML>RSS

A Writer's Guide to XML Content Management  

A discussion of how XML changes what you do as a writer.

Hackos, JoAnn T. and Tina Hedlund. ComTech Services (2000). Articles>Content Management>XML>Writing

X Marks the Spot

An explanation of how one writer is using XML to produce documentation and why it's such a great idea.

Skeet, Michael. IRTC (2001). Design>Web Design>XML

X-Diff: An Effective Change Detection Algorithm for XML Documents    

XML has become the de facto standard format for web publishing and data transportation. Since online information changes frequently, being able to quickly detect changes in XML documents is important to Internet query systems, search engines, and continuous query systems. Previous work in change detection on XML, or other hierarchically structured documents, used an ordered tree model, in which left-to-right order among siblings is important and it can affect the change result. This paper argues that an unordered model (only ancestor relationships are significant) is more suitable for most database applications. Using an unordered model, change detection is substantially harder than using the ordered model, but the change result that it generates is more accurate. This paper proposes X-Diff, an effective algorithm that integrates key XML structure characteristics with standard tree-to-tree correction techniques. The algorithm is analyzed and compared with XyDiff [CAM02], a published XML diff algorithm. An experimental evaluation on both algorithms is provided.

Wang, Yuan, David J. DeWitt and Jin-Yi Cai . University of Wisconsin (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML

XMetaL-DITA

The XMetaL-DITA group was founded to educate XMetaL users in working with the DITA standard.

Yahoo. Organizations>Information Design>XML>DITA

XML

A collection of XML online resources maintained by IBM's DeveloperWorks division.

IBM. Resources>Information Design>XML

XML 1.1 and Namespaces 1.1 Revealed

Explains what XML 1.1 and Namespaces 1.1 are about, what changes they bring, and how they affect other specs and users.

Le Hors, Arnaud. IBM (1999). Design>Web Design>XML

XML在用户界面(User Interface)中的应用

我们可以使用多种方法，通过XML描述用户界面。事实上，XML是在HTML的基础上成长起来的，而HTML则是一种当前流行的面向网络的用户界面。有了XML，你就可以使用用许多方便快捷的技巧创建有用的和可用的用户界面。

ZDNet (2002). (Chinese) Design>User Interface>XML

XML Accessibility Guidelines

This document provides guidelines for designing Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications that lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical, cognitive, and neurological). XML, used to design applications such as XHTML, SMIL, and SVG, provides no intrinsic guarantee of the accessibility of those applications. This document explains how to include features in XML applications that promote accessibility.

W3C (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>XML

XML Adoption for Document-Based Applications  

The question is not whether XML will succeed as a widespread data format, but rather how fast, to what level and with what products. With the rapid maturing of the XML data standard by the W3C and the creation of many related standards, hundreds of leading vendors will ship XML-enabled products over the next 24 months. These products will drive a limited, but important, number of corporate and commercial publishing applications that will both prove the market viability of XML and also generate a small but critical mass of XML data that will trigger rapid widespread adoption.

Young, Brad and Randy Clark. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Information Design>XML

XML and Accessibility

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a meta-syntax, used to create new languages. It can be seen as a simplification of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), designed to promote a wider acceptance in Web markets, but serving the same functionality of extensibility and new language design. XML is therefore not to be seen as a replacement of HTML, but as a new building layer, usage examples of which are: XHTML (for general HyperText content). Furthermore, it is important to understand that XML is not only a User Interface technology (like HTML), but can and is often used in protocol communication, to serialize and encode data to be sent from one machine to another.

Franklin, Tom. TechDis (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>XML

XML and Browsers

Now you should know what XML is for and how to write a basic XML document. In this part I will show you how to create a full XML document and load it in a browser, as well and the different ways it can be displayed.

Gowans, David. Free Webmaster Help (2001). Design>Web Design>XML>Web Browsers

XML and Content Management Systems

This article explores the role of XML in the context of content management systems, focusing specifically on the business issues.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>XML

XML and Documentation  

XML provides a robust, non-proprietary, and verifiable file format for the storage and transmission of text and data both on and off the Web. XML removes the complexity of SGML, making it easier to define your own document types, and to write programs to handle them.

Bokil, Manoj. STC India (2003). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>XML

XML Architecture for Customized User Assistance

Content reuse enables technical communicators to create multiple deliverables from a single set of source documents. A key component of reuse is identifying which information belongs in which deliverable. Some customization is feasible with build tags (RoboHelp), conditional text (FrameMaker), topic reuse (FrameMaker and AuthorIT), and similar features.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. WritersUA (2005). Articles>Documentation>XML