Who Says You Can't Use Microsoft Word To Do XML?

Although MS Word can generate XML, it should not be considered any kind of a robust XML authoring tool. Instead, its XML features are best for use with other Microsoft Office applications. However, because XML authoring is gaining in popularity, new XML authoring software tools and utilities are coming to market. In this article, Scott Abel looks at using MS Word for XML and takes a closer look at one alternative XML solution from a Microsoft partner that uses Word's familiar interface.

Abel, Scott. Writing Assistance (2006). Articles>Word Processing>XML>Microsoft Word

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 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

The Wisdom of Crowds Meets the Wisdom of Authors: How XML Enables the Semantic Web

Combining semantic markup with a granular authoring approach like DITA holds a lot of promise for content creators and consumers alike. Content becomes easy to define and even easier to discover. The combination also holds a lot of promise for the future of the Semantic Web itself. In fact, creating the Semantic Web might be as easy as authoring content in DITA.

Wlodarczyk, Paul. XML.org (2008). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>XML

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>Programming>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 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>Adobe FrameMaker

XML Architecture for Customized User Assistance

To create a specific deliverable, you collect all of the relevant topics and wrap information around them. A printed book, for instance, contains topics grouped into chapters along with front and back matter.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. WritersUA (2005). Articles>Information Design>Help>XML

An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture

DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. We discuss several methods that can be used to extend DITA's basic topic types.

Day, Don, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell and Nancy Harrison. WritersUA (2004). Articles>Documentation>XML>DITA

An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture  

DITA is an architecture for creating topicoriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. We discuss several methods that can be used to extend DITA’s basic topic types.

Day, Don, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley and David Schell. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML

XML Arrives in Word 2003

The XML train is finally pulling into the station. It brings an ocean change in the way we create, store, and manage information. In October of last year, Microsoft released Office 2003, which brings the promise of XML to the desktop. Previously, Word 2000 saved only the Properties of documents in an XML module in files converted to HTML. In this new edition, you can save or export all Office documents as XML documents. Using XML tags, we can now identify various elements of our documents for manipulation, storage, and retrieval as you would data in a data bank. It also enables us to more easily share information in those documents across other applications (including Web applications), networks, and operating systems.

DuBay, William H. Impact Information (2005). Articles>Document Design>XML>Microsoft Word