Preparing and Publishing Legislation using XML

Many governments are moving to using XML for drafting and publishing legislation. SAIC has worked with a number of jurisdictions to facilitate the automation of legislative drafting and publication processes using XML.

Arnold-Moore, Timothy. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Legal>Government>XML

Lessons Learned: Development from Initial Planning to Successful Implementation

From initial data modeling, to technical XML Schema design and critical programmatic realization, we have an actionable, real-world set of comprehensive recommendations that can help you formulate a successful XML implementation.

Utzinger, Melissa and Cheryl Connors. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards

Managing XML for a Global Content Delivery Platform

LexisNexis, global provider of legal, news, and business information, has migrated the content of its non-US business units to a single product delivery platform. This paper provides an overview of how this was enabled using XML.

Basch, Marc. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML>Case Studies

Browser Problems with the XML Prolog

Some browsers have difficulty upon encountering the XML Prolog. In some cases, the browser will render all the markup as text. In other cases, when a browser has some XML support, it might attempt to render the document as an XML tree. To avoid these problems, many practicing web professionals prefer to leave the prolog off. This table will help you make that decision by showing you which browsers have known problems with the XML prolog.

Web Standards Project (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XML

Why the Future of Documentation Belongs to Extended Markup Language?

XML, that is, Extended Markup Language, is the future of technical writing. There are TWO important reasons why that is so: XML is at the heart of “single sourcing” movement; and XML is a documentation manager’s dream since writing once and publishing many times drops unit production costs tremendously.

Akinci, Ugur. Technical Communication Center (2009). Articles>Documentation>XML>Planning

Structured Authoring for Everyone

While the concepts of structured authoring are more than just slightly useful for technical writing, they can be beneficial for just about any writing task within an organization. But how do you bring XML-based structured authoring to the masses? Perhaps by taking a cue from a word processor called Yeah Write.

Nesbitt, Scott. DMN Communications (2009). Articles>Documentation>XML>Technical Writing

Improving an XML Feed Display Through CSS and XSLT

XML feeds, though useful, are boring to look at in a browser because they are simple XML files. It's possible though to make them easier on the eye, and in this article we'll look at two ways of doing that. First, we'll use simple CSS properties to format each XML node, and then we'll use a little more complex but much more powerful XSL transformation.

xefteri.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>XML>XSL

Lovely DITA, Meta Maid, Ready-made Metadata

Since adaptation and reuse are core ideas of DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture), perhaps we'll be forgiven if we adapt and reuse old Beatles standards to explain the newest XML standards (hey, maybe it's the only way to make XML sound catchy). DITA is an IBM gift to the technical documentation community that was approved as a standard this spring by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the hosts for many XML interchange standards such as ebXML. Ever since, tech writers have been buzzing about an easier way to get into structured topic-based writing with DITA XML and asking XML Editor vendors to add support for DITA.

Doyle, Bob. EContent (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

XSLT Tutorial

A brief and basic tutorial about the XML-based scripting language.

Zvon (2007). Resources>Web Design>XML>XSL

XML Design for Relational Storage  

Design principles for XML schemas that eliminate redundancies and avoid update anomalies have been studied recently. Several normal forms, generalizing those for relational databases, have been proposed. All of them, however, are based on the assumption of a native XML storage, while in practice most of XML data is stored in relational databases. In this paper we study XML design and normalization for relational storage of XML documents. To be able to relate and compare XML and relational designs, we use an information-theoretic framework that measures information content in relations and documents, with higher values corresponding to lower levels of redundancy. We show that most common relational storage schemes preserve the notion of being well-designed (i.e., anomalies- and redundancy-free). Thus, existing XML normal forms guarantee well-designed relational storages as well. We further show that if this perfect option is not achievable, then a slight restriction on XML constraints guarantees a “second-best” relational design, according to possible values of the information-theoretic measure. We finally consider an edge-based relational representation of XML documents, and show that while it has similar information-theoretic properties with other relational representations, it can behave significantly worse in terms of enforcing integrity constraints.

Kolahi, Solmaz and Leonid Libkin. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>Databases

XML-Based XML Schema Access  

XML Schema’s abstract data model consists of components, which are the structures that eventually define a schema as a whole. XML Schema’s XML syntax, on the other hand, is not a direct representation of the schema components, and it proves to be surprisingly hard to derive a schema’s components from the XML syntax. The Schema Component XML Syntax (SCX) is a representation which attempts to map schema components as faithfully as possible to XML structures. SCX serves as the starting point for applications which need access to schema components and want to do so using standardized and widely available XML technologies.

Wilde, Erik and Felix Michel. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML

The Use of XML to Express a Historical Knowledge Base   

Since conventional historical records have been written assuming human readers, they are not well-suited for computers to collect and process automatically. If computers could understand descriptions in historical records and process them automatically, it would be easy to analyze them from different perspectives. In this paper, we review a number of existing frameworks used to describe historical events, and make a comparative assessment of these frameworks interms of usability, based on 'deep cases' of Fillmore ’score grammar. Based on this assessment, we propose a new description framework, and have created a microformat vocabulary set suitable for that framework.

Nakahira, Katsuko T., Masashi Matsui and Yoshiki Mikami. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Knowledge Management>XML>History

XML-Based Multimodal Interaction Framework for Contact Center Applications  

In this paper, we consider a way to represent contact center applications as a set of multiple XML documents written in different markups including VoiceXML and CCXML. Applications can comprise a dialog with IVR, call routing and agent scripting functionalities. We also consider ways how such applications can be executed in run-time contact center environment.

Anisimov, Nikolay, Brian Galvin and Herbert Ristock. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Information Design>XML

Extensible Schema Documentation with XSLT 2.0  

XML Schema documents are defined using an XML syntax, which means that the idea of generating schema documentation through standard XML technologies is intriguing. We present X2Doc, a framework for generating schema-documentation solely through XSLT. The framework uses SCX, an XML syntax for XML Schema components, as intermediate format and produces XML-based output formats. Using a modular set of XSLT stylesheets, X2Doc is highly configurable and carefully crafted towards extensibility. This proves especially useful for composite schemas, where additional schema information like Schematron rules are embedded into XML Schemas.

Michel, Felix and Erik Wilde. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Documentation>XML>XSL

All About Output from DITA Maps

Using Adobe FrameMaker 9, one can save a DITA Map in various formats depending on one’s requirements. It could be intermediary output, like – FrameMaker Book/Document; or it can be final output, like – Print/PDF.

Adobe (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

Using DITA for Publishing Documentation in Eclipse Help Format

This article discusses main challenges that documentation team faces when it decides to use DITA as a source format for Eclipse Help documentation. It also explains how DITAworks documentation tool plans to address these challenges.

DITAworks (2009). Articles>Documentation>XML>DITA

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

Editing XML files on a WebDAV Server Using the Browser Plug-in

You can open and edit XML files stored on the WebDAV server using FrameMaker 9. When FrameMaker 9 is installed on your computer, the Edit with FrameMaker plug-in is added to the browser's toolbar and is listed as an option in the edit menu for XML files.

Adobe (2009). Articles>Content Management>XML>Adobe FrameMaker

Structure View Enhancement in FrameMaker 9

The Structure View allows for real-time validation of the structured element content while editing. It discourages the author from violating the constraint rules set by the EDD or XML schema which was earlier possible only while saving or exporting the document. The Structure View is now capable of pointing the constraint error for integer and float data constraints. The content will turn Red indicating that the content does not satisfy the data type constraint.

Adobe (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>Adobe FrameMaker

How to Customize the DITA Open Toolkit PDF Plugin Output to Remove "on page xx" Text for Cross References

This tutorial uses the DITA Open Toolkit 1.4.2.1 and the corresponding PDF plugin release, and Wrycan's demo text. This assumes you have a working DITA environment and can run the default formatting with PDF plugin.

Blogspot (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

DITA for WordPress

The DITA-OT plugin transforms a map into a single file, suitable for publication, and automatically call the xmlrpc API of the blog to publish it. The DITA Wordpress plugin adds a css (a slightly modified version of the DITA-OT commonltr.css) to your Wordpress theme to properly render the standard domains.

DITA Open Platform. Resources>Information Design>XML>DITA

DITA and XML Community of the Rockies

Our goal is to bring people together — think social network organized around XML, DITA, content management and related topics. This blog serves as a hub for white papers and URL resources, contains a calendar of XML-related events and conferences, tracks industry trends, and keeps members up-to-date as to “what’s new” on the site.

DITA-XML Community of the Rockies. Resources>Information Design>XML>DITA

Moving Forward with DITA 1.2 and the DITA-OT

DITA enters a new phase this year with version 1.2. We'll learn about the big new features, such as keyref, and see them used in the latest DITA Open Toolkit. Attendees will know how to make use of new DITA 1.2 features using the DITA Open Toolkit. Attendees will understand key aspects of the new DITA 1.2 standard.

Anderson, Robert. STC Proceedings (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>DITA

How to Run a Successful DITA Pilot Project

How do you mitigate the risk of a major technology change such as DITA? This presentation shares lessons learned in the first DITA pilot project at IBM Internet Security Systems. How to pick the right opportunity for a user assistance pilot project. How to specify appropriate proof-of-concept requirements. How to use a wiki and collaborative walkthroughs to transfer knowledge and set standards.

Wallis, Mark. STC Proceedings (2009). Presentations>Project Management>XML>DITA