XML By John Sutton Preview What is it

XML By John Sutton

Preview What is it Where did it come from Advantages Differences from HTML Sample Code

XML Extensible Markup Language XML is a meta-language Makes SGML usable on web Works with SGML & HTML

SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO 8879: 1985) Very large, powerful, and complex XML, HTML both Derived from

Who designed XML Project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W 3 C) Supervised by their XML Working Group XML is a public format: it is not proprietary v 1. 0 accepted by the W 3 C as Recommendation on Feb 10, 1998.

Why not just carry on extending HTML is already overburdened with incompatible inventions from different manufacturers HTML is of fixed type XML allows people or organizations to create their own customized markup applications (electronics, hill-walking, finance…. anything)

HTML is at the limit of its usefulness as a way of describing information It will continue to play an important role for the content it currently represents

Why do we need SGML, HTML, XML…Why not Word? Information on a network which connects different types of computers has to be usable on all of them It is in a simple reusable format Non Proprietary

Improve functionality through flexible document ID Easy to design custom document types Easy to share across the web Makes generic SGML easy to use

Designed as interface Used for storing structured Information Non compatible computer systems use as interface

Differences between HTML and XML HTML one fixed version of SGML (most popular) XML Allows you to custom design format yourself

Current state of existing browser support (1 Jan 2003) Microsoft IE 5. 0, 5. 5, and 6. 0 Mozilla 0. 9 onwards Netscape 6

Do I have to switch from SGML or HTML to XML? No, but if you want to view or download and use XML files, you will need to use XML-aware software

In use today: Corel's Word. Perfect suite ships with a fullyfledged XML editor Sun's Star Office and its Open Source branch, Open Office, have been saving their files as XML for a couple of years The upcoming release of Microsoft Office will extend the existing `Save As. . . XML' to all parts of the suite except Power. Point Oracle, SQL DB option

Code Samples

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