What You Need to Know About Whitespace in XML

Learn about the concept of XML whitespace, and gets tips for avoiding problems associated with it.

Wang, Jinyu. Oracle (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML

Using XSLT to Filter and Sort Records in the Browser

With XSLT support fast becoming a commonly available component in the browser, web developers can now leverage transformations to manipulate large amounts of data in the browser at speeds acceptable for more advanced user interfaces. Once Safari gets its act together, I see more and more UI-specific data processing being moved off of the server into the browser. This article outlines the process involved in transforming the del.icio.us user API XML document into an HTML fragment.

Johnvey (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

Voice Enabling XML, Part 1: Develop a Voice-Enabled RSS Reader

RSS is a hot topic these days, as it provides an easy way to stream data online. This article, the first of a four-part series on developing VoiceXML applications, shows you how to develop a voice-enabled RSS reader. The input to the application is RSS data, and the output is VoiceXML that can be read and spoken by your favorite compatible voice application.

Brown, Martin. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>Voice

Scaling Up with XQuery, Part 1

The value of XQuery is not in its role as an alternative syntax to XSLT 2.0 for manipulating XML; it's in the implementations, which let you quickly retrieve, sort, and manipulate specific subsets of XML from collections that can measure in the terabytes. The ability to store large, indexed collections of data that don't fit neatly into normalized relational tables will create possibilities for all kinds of new applications, both inside and outside of the publishing world.

DuCharme, Bob. XML.com (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

Scaling Up with XQuery, Part 2

Gets you to the point where you could start exploring those features with a reasonably large collection of your own data. Without spending any money, you can check them all out and discover the advantages to having large amounts of your XML stored in a database where you (or an application!) can use a W3C standard language to quickly retrieve what you want from that database.

DuCharme, Bob. XML.com (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

XQuery Tutorial

XQuery is to XML what SQL is to database tables. XQuery was designed to query XML data.

W3Schools (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

XML Content Management the Dr. Macro Way: Simple Is Good

Because most of CMS integration efforts will be concentrated on the boundaries, it further supports the engineering conclusion that minimizing the amount of effort spent on the core functionality is good because it maximizes the amount of the total implementation budget that can be spent on implementing the boundary functionality.

Dr. Macro's XML Rants (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML

XCMTDMW: Characteristics of an XML CMS

I feel that the term "XML CMS" is unnecessarily specialized. In my world, content management is a much more general problem and 90% of what you need to manage XML well applies to everything else too. That's another reason I chafe at over-specialized XML repositories--they really can't manage anything else.

Dr. Macro's XML Rants (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML

XM: Open-Source Content Management Based on XML and XSL

XM (XSLT Make) is a simple and affordable web-publishing content-management solution that takes advantage of XML and XSLT.

Ananas. Resources>Software>XML>XSL

Converting to XML: Is it Always the Answer?

Although managing costs is important anytime, it is especially important in today's economic reality where budgets are shrinking drastically. Getting your money's worth as well as what you need to support your data should be a core factor of any data project. The two biggest cost factors are the type of conversion work you need done and how much of it you'll need. This article focuses on how your goals for your project relate to the output format you choose, and how that format impacts costs. While some outputs, like XML, provide higher capabilities, they also cost more to create.

Gross, Mark. Data Conversion Laboratory (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Alternatives to XML: Keeping Down your Document Conversion Costs

While I'm a big fan of XML for many purposes, it's a misconception that it's the single best solution in every scenario, and it's worthwhile to consider the alternatives in situations where the benefits of XML are not necessary. In this article, I discuss alternatives to XML, SGML, and HTML that might be suitable when budgets are more limited. While XML is perfect for highly coded information, other options can work well for many kinds of information. Markup languages are at the high end of the cost spectrum, so if you don't need the benefits they provide, you certainly should consider the alternatives discussed below.

Gross, Mark. Data Conversion Laboratory (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Validating a Custom DTD

In his article in this issue, Peter-Paul Koch proposes adding custom attributes to form elements to allow triggers for specialized behaviors. The W3C validator won’t validate a document with these attributes, as they aren’t part of the XHTML specification. This article will show you how to create a custom DTD that will add those custom attributes, and will show you how to validate documents that use those new attributes.

Eisenberg, J. David. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Using XML

The reason that we use XML instead of a specific application is that XML is not just a pretty face, living in isolation from the rest of the computing world. XML is more than a rulebook for generating custom markup languages. It is part of a family of technologies, which, working together, make your XML-based documents very useful indeed. To demonstrate what I mean, I decided to create a new XML-based markup language from scratch, and show what you can do with a document written in that language, using off-the-shelf tools.

Eisenberg, J. David. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML

Unwebbable

It’s time we came to grips with the fact that not every “document” can be a “web page.” Some forms of writing just cannot be expressed in HTML—or they need to be bent and distorted to do so. But for once, XML might actually help.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>XML

Introduction to RDFa: Part 2

RDFa (“Resource Description Framework in attributes”) is having its five minutes of fame: Google is beginning to process RDFa and Microformats as it indexes websites, using the parsed data to enhance the display of search results with “rich snippets.”

Birbeck, Mark. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XML

Use Cases for User Assistance Writers

Perhaps the true measure of a good idea is its persistence, even though folks are slow to pick up on it. SGML is a good example. It seemed like a great idea, but for a long time, had trouble getting traction in the general tool space. Then it started showing up at technical communication conferences wearing a name badge that said, “Hi, my name is DITA,” and suddenly, it’s a hit!

Hughes, Michael A. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Documentation>XML>DITA

Cafe con Leche: XML News and Resources

A blog about XML theory and XML applications.

Harold, Elliotte Rusty. Cafe con Leche. Resources>Information Design>XML>Blogs

What is Intelligent Content? And Why Won’t Scott Abel Shut Up About It?

Intelligent content is content which is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. It’s content that helps you and your customers get the job done, often automatically.

Abel, Scott. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Concept, Task, Reference: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Topic Type

This presentation is for beginning to intermediate users of DITA. It's based on my experience with projects on which I'm project manager, information architect, and writer.

Kunz, Lawrence D. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>DITA

How DITA Changed the Tech Comm Landscape

Before DITA, we told readers how things worked. After DITA, we tell users how to use things. Before, we wrote information linearly. After, we write individual units as needed.

SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>TC>XML>DITA

The Road to XAML 

XAML stands for eXtensible Application Markup Language and was created by Microsoft. It is currently the primary mechanism for declaratively creating the user interface in a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application. WPF is part of the .NET 3.0 framework. Why discuss these very technical things in a design blog post? The answer is simple: because XAML is designed for designers. It has other uses of course, but one of its main tenets is that XAML enables the separation of UI and logic (code). That is a very powerful concept! In this and future posts, I will explain how a few of us at Autodesk are using XAML in our design process as a way to enable design refinement during the Development phase.

Stein, Matt. Designing the User Experience at Autodesk (2009). Articles>User Interface>Programming>XML

DITA for the Impatient 

By reading this short tutorial, you'll get acquainted with the DITA 1.1 markup and after that, you'll be able to author your first DITA document right away. This short tutorial will not discuss the DITA ``philosophy'' or the advantages of the DITA vocabulary over other XML vocabularies (e.g. DocBook).

Shafie, Hussein. XMLmind (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

An XML Experiment Fizzles 

I did an experiment on Friday that taught me an important lesson: When it comes to handling XML structures, I know pretty much jack. This may be a fatal admission for a technical communicator, but it’s an honest one.

Minson, Benjamin. Gryphon Mountain (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML