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[December 21, 1999] W3C Working Draft for XHTML Basic. As part of the W3C HTML Activity, the W3C has released a first public working draft specification for XHTML Basic. Reference: W3C Working Draft 20-December-1999, edited by Masayasu Ishikawa (W3C), Shinichi Matsui (Panasonic), Peter Stark (Phone.com), and Toshihiko Yamakami (Access Co., Ltd.). This review draft "has been prepared by the Mobile Subgroup of the W3C HTML Working Group based on input from the WAP Forum Application's group and members of the W3C Mobile Access Interest Group. The document represents "work in progress... [it] will be used by the Mobile Subgroup of the W3C HTML Working Group and the W3C Mobile Access Interest Group to find a common ground for future markup languages aimed at content for small information appliances." Document abstract: "The XHTML Basic document type is a subset of XHTML 1.1. It contains the basic XHTML features inlcluding text structure, images, basic forms, and basic tables. It is designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features; for example, Web clients such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes. The document type definition is implemented using XHTML modules as defined in 'Modularization of XHTML'." Comments on the draft are solicited, and may be sent via email to the editors and public discussion list. Background and rationale for this work: "Information appliances are targeted for particular uses. They support the features they need for the functions they are designed to fulfill. The following are examples of different information appliances: Mobile phones, Televisions, PDAs, Vending machines, Pagers, Car navigation systems, Mobile game machines, Digital book readers, Smart watches. Existing subsets and variants of HTML for these clients include 'Compact HTML,' the Wireless Markup Language (WAP), and the 'HTML 4.0 Guidelines for Mobile Access'. The common features found in these document types include: Basic text (including headings, paragraphs, and lists), Hyperlinks and links to related documents, Basic forms, Basic tables, Images, Meta information. This set of HTML features has been the starting point for the design of XHTML Basic."
[December 20, 1999] New W3C Working Draft Specification for the XML Linking Language (XLink). As part of the W3C XML Activity, the XML Linking Working Group has published a new Working Draft specification for theXML Linking Language (XLink). Reference: W3C Working Draft 20-December-1999, edited by Steve DeRose (Brown University), Eve Maler (Sun Microsystems), David Orchard (IBM Corp.), and Ben Trafford (Invited Expert). This release of the specification contains a number of graphical models which visually portray important aspects of the XLink linking semantics. The working draft specification "defines the XML Linking Language (XLink), which allows elements to be inserted into XML documents in order to create and describe links between resources. It uses XML syntax to create structures that can describe the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML as well as more sophisticated links." This WD version, which updates the July 1999 version, is believed by the working group "to be near completion; however, a few issues remain on which the Working Group seeks public feedback." Comments on the working draft may be sent via email to the editors; such comments will be publicly archived. "For XLink purposes, a link is an explicit relationship between two or more resources or portions of resources. XLink provides a framework for creating both basic unidirectional links and more complex linking structures. It allows XML documents to: (1) Assert linking relationships among more than two resources; (2) Associate metadata with a link; (3) Create link databases that reside in a location separate from the linked resources. An important application of XLink is in hypertext systems. Hyperlinks are links that are meaningful to end users, often being presented to them directly for use and activation. This specification defines hypertext-specific metadata that can be associated with a link. XLink is also applicable to links that are entirely machine-processed..." For background and references, see "XML Linking Languages (XPath, XPointer, XLink)."
[December 20, 1999] New W3C Working Draft for XML Base (XBase). The W3C XML Linking Working Group has released an initial public Working Draft specification for XBase, and invites comment on this draft specification. The WG's purpose in publishing this draft is to solicit feedback from the community both on the need for such a facility and the suitability of the mechanism. XML Base (XBase) (W3C Working Draft 20-December-1999) is edited by Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft). The specification "proposes syntax for providing the equivalent of HTML BASE functionality generically in XML documents by defining an XML attribute named xml:base." Rationale and description: "The XML Linking Language defines XML constructs to describe links between resources. One of the stated requirements on XLink is to support HTML 4.0 linking constructs in a generic way. The HTML BASE element is one such construct which the XLink Working Group has considered. BASE allows authors to explicitly specify a document's base URI for the purpose of resolving relative URIs in links to external images, applets, form-processing programs, style sheets, and so on. This document proposes that the functionality of BASE be provided to generic XML applications. Furthermore, it proposes that the resolution of relative URIs is not limited to the domain of XLink but is applicable to any XML application that makes use of relative URIs. In other words, this problem should be solved at the addressing (URI) level and not at the higher level of linking (XLink). This document introduces a syntax for a generic BASE functionality in XML documents by defining an xml:base attribute. The attribute xml:base may be inserted in XML documents to specify a base URI other than the base URI of the document or external entity, which is normally used to resolve relative URIs. The value of this attribute is interpreted as a URI as defined in RFC 2396. The base URI specified by xml:base sets the base URI information set property of the element on which this attribute occurs, and to its descendants except where further xml:base attributes are applied. The value of the xml:base attribute may itself be a relative URI, in which case it must itself be resolved against the base URI of the element it appears on. This base URI may have been obtained from an xml:base attribute on an ancestor element. This enables scoping behavior consistent with the xml:lang and xml:space attributes."
[December 20, 1999] Tutorial Materials for XML Schema Definition Language Available. Henry S. Thompson (HCRC Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh), Principal Editor of the W3C XML Schema: Structures Working Draft specification has made available the presentation slides and some additional XSDL documentation from his intensive (full-day) XML Schema tutorial session at XML '99 in Philadelphia. The tutorial materials have been updated to match the 1999-12-17 versions of the XML Schema specification (XML Schema Structures and XML Schema Datatypes). The sixty-six (66) tutorial presentation slides are available in Powerpoint and in HTML format. The "Additional Materials" document, provided as a supplement to the presentation slides, is available in '.doc' and in HTML format. For background and additional references, see "XML Schemas."
[December 17, 1999] New W3C Working Drafts for XML Schema. Under the leadership of WG Chairs Michael Sperberg-McQueen and Dave Hollander, the W3C XML Schema Working Group has released a revised 2-part working draft specification for the XML Schema Definition Language. The Schema Working Group believes this working draft specification "to be 'feature-complete': the functionality included here is substantially complete and is expected to be stable. We do not expect to add major new functionality, or to make major changes to the functionality described in this draft. Some sections of the draft (in particular those on conformance), and some aspects of the design (in particular details of the transfer syntax for schemas), on the other hand, are still rough and are expected to be revised. The WG expects to spend January, 2000, working out details, clarifying points of uncertainty that arise in the review of this draft, cleaning up inconsistencies, reviewing the design of the concrete transfer syntax, and making editorial improvements. Following that period of review and polishing, it is the WG's intent to issue a Last Call for Review by other W3C working groups sometime during February, 2000, and to submit this specification in March, 2000, for publication as a Candidate Recommendation." The framework for the XML Schema Definition Language is presented in XML Schema Part 1: Structures (W3C Working Draft 17-December-1999), edited by Henry S. Thompson (University of Edinburgh), David Beech (Oracle Corp.), Murray Maloney (Commerce One), and Noah Mendelsohn (Lotus Development Corporation). XML Schema: Structures represents "part 1 of a two-part draft of the specification for the XML Schema definition language. This document proposes facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML 1.0 documents. The schema language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs)." The purpose of a Structures schema document is to "define and describe a class of XML documents by using these constructs to constrain and document the meaning, usage and relationships of their constituent parts: datatypes, elements and their content, attributes and their values. Schema constructs may also provide for the specification of additional information such as default values. Schemas are intended to document their own meaning, usage, and function through a common documentation vocabulary. Thus, XML Schema: Structures can be used to define, describe and catalogue XML vocabularies for classes of XML documents." The structures specification is expressed normatively in concrete syntaxes expressed by an XML schema ['Schema for Schemas'] and an XML DTD ['DTD for Schemas']. The specification is also available in XML format. XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes (W3C Working Draft 17-December-1999) has been edited by Paul V. Biron (Kaiser Permanente, for Health Level Seven) and Ashok Malhotra (IBM). XML Schema: Datatypes presents part 2 of a two-part draft of the specification for the XML Schema definition language. This document proposes facilities for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas and other XML specifications. The datatype language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs) for specifying datatypes on elements and attributes." It is well known that "validity constraints exist on the content of [XML document] instances that are not expressible in XML DTDs. The limited datatyping facilities in XML have prevented validating XML processors from supplying the rigorous type checking required in these situations. The result has been that individual applications writers have had to implement type checking in an ad hoc manner. This [Datatypes] specification addresses the need of both document authors and applications writers for a robust, extensible datatype system for XML which could be incorporated into XML processors." At the moment, these datatypes can be specified only "for element content that would be specified as #PCDATA and attribute values of various types in a DTD." The datatypes specification is presented in concrete syntaxes via an XML schema and an XML DTD. For references to earlier and related work, see "XML Schemas." See also the dtddiff of 1999-12-17 schema proposal vis-à-vis 1999-11 WD, provided by Bob DuCharme.
[December 17, 1999] Experimental DTDs from Reuters. In connection with the NewsML and IPTC2000 mailing list, Nic Fulton (Leader of XML Architecture and Design, Reuters Ltd) posted a message about the availability of 'Experimental DTDs from Reuters.' Fulton writes: "... I have uploaded some experimental DTDs from Reuters. These were written by Jo Rabin and were submitted to the IPTC as a seed for some of the NewsML work. They can be found in the vault area on the eGroups web site at: http://www.egroups.com/docvault/newsml/. I hope this acts as a seed for further discussion, although please be aware that these are for 'information only'... Please note that these are NOT the current IPTC NewsML DTDs and [...] there is no certainty that the final NewsML DTD/DTDs will reflect some or any of the constructs within." A document accompanying the experimental DTDs "NewsML Elements and Attributes" 'outlines descriptions of the elements, attributes and reasoning.' In a recent announcement ("Reuters to Use XML for News"), Reuters said that it would "introduce NewsML to present its news services. NewsML is an open standards-based format for the creation, transfer and delivery of news. It is based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), the emerging Internet standard for data sharing between applications developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, the co-ordinating body for Internet developments. Reuters has taken the initiative in the creation and adoption of NewsML through the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). The IPTC recently established a programme, IPTC 2000, which will deliver a single XML-based format for managing news production. An increasing number of Reuters subscribers are establishing themselves on the Internet and requesting delivery in XML." For background and further references, see "NewsML."
[December 17, 1999] XML Version of the MONDIAL Database. A posting from Wolfgang May (Institut für Informatik, Universität Freiburg) reports on the use of an XML version of the MONDIAL database. The MONDIAL database "has been compiled from geographical Web data sources listed below using the F-Logic system FLORID. It contains: (1) the CIA World Factbook, (2) A set of Global Statistics which has been collected by Johan van der Heijden, (3) additional textual sources for coordinates, (4) the International Atlas by Kümmerly & Frey, Rand McNally, and Westermann, (5) some geographical data of the Karlsruhe TERRA database. In all, the database contains information about 250 countries, 1400 provinces, 3000 cities, 170 political organizations with 7700 memberships and some geographical data. The 'Seminar Information Processing on the Web' at the IIF uses the XML version of the MONDIAL database, compiled as a case study for information integration from (Non-XML) Web sources using the Florid system. It is used at the Institute for Computer Science at Freiburg University for teaching XML-related topic to students. Perl scripts are used to map data from Florid Frame Format into XML and to producing a LaTeX documentation from XML/XSL files. XML DTDs and XSLT transformation scripts are provided for use in the 'flat model' and in the hierarchical XML model. MONDIAL and the IIF Oracle training are " freely available for research and educational purposes under the condition that the origin of MONDIAL is mentioned in all publications and documentation."
[December 15, 1999] OASIS Publishes Draft Specification for XML.org Registry and Repository. Through the authorship and editorial supervision of Terry Allen (Commerce One, Chair of the OASIS Registry & Repository Technical Committee), a draft specification for the XML.org Registry and Repository has been prepared for publication. The document OASIS Registry Technical Specification [17-November-1999] is referenced from the public information page of the OASIS Registry and Repository Technical Committee. The new OASIS Specification will be used in building the XML.org Registry & Repository and will contribute to the infrastructure needed for deploying interoperable XML repositories across the Web. The document abstract: "The OASIS Registry and Repository Technical Committee of OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (formerly SGML Open), seeks to specify operation of a registry for some set of or XML-related entities, including but not limited to DTDs and schemas, with appropriate interfaces, that enable searching on the contents of a repository of those entities. The registry and repository shall interoperate and cooperate with other registries and repositories compliant with this specification and respond to requests for entities by their identifiers. This document deals primarily with the registry; while scenarios and requirements for the repository are included, the repository design is detailed in a separate document." In a recent announcement, Allen clarifies that the goal of this endeavor "is not only to specify an open format for our own vendor-neutral clearinghouse for XML and SGML DTDs and schemas. We want to establish the groundwork for a distributed, global web of XML repositories... OASIS [has to date] put a great deal of time and energy into developing this Specification." For references to related work, see "XML Registry and Repository."
[December 15, 1999] Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification Published as W3C Candidate Recommendation. As part of the W3C DOM Activity, the Document Object Model Working Group has published a new Candidate Recommendation for DOM Level 2: Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification, Version 1.0. Reference: W3C Candidate Recommendation 10-December-1999. A W3C 'Candidate Recommendation' is a new category in the W3C specification track; a CR represents a "work that has received significant review from its immediate technical community. It is an explicit call to those outside of the related Working Groups or the W3C itself for implementation and technical feedback." After this CR phase ends (January 19, 2000), "the specification will move into the Proposed Recommendation phase and it will be sent to the W3C membership for review." Abstract: "This specification defines the Document Object Model Level 2, a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents. The Document Object Model Level 2 builds on the Document Object Model Level 1. The DOM Level 2 is made of a set of core interfaces to create and manipulate the structure and contents of a document and a set of optional modules. These modules contain specialized interfaces dedicated to XML, HTML, an abstract view, generic stylesheets, Cascading Style Sheets, Events, traversing the document structure, and a Range object." [Introduction:] The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface (API) for HTML and XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated. In the DOM specification, the term 'document' is used in the broad sense - increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different kinds of information that may be stored in diverse systems, and much of this would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents. Nevertheless, XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this data. With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been specified. As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object Model is to provide a standard programming interface that can be used in a wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is designed to be used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise, language-independent specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to define the specifications in OMG IDL, as defined in the CORBA 2.2 specification. In addition to the OMG IDL specification, we provide language bindings for Java and ECMAScript (an industry-standard scripting language based on JavaScript and JScript)." The new CR is available in Postscript, PDF, plain text, and ZIP archive formats. Lauren Wood (DOM WG Chair) wrote in a note to XML-DEV: "The only changes that will be made [to the specification] from now on are if something is seriously broken and it's very difficult or impossible to implement. (Apart from clarifications, of course!). So if the specification isn't clear enough to implement from, or implementations are nearly impossible, please send email. Also, if you do implement some part of Level 2, I'd like to hear about it, so we can be sure that the spec has been implemented often enough that we probably have the bugs out of it. If you want your email to be confidential, just send it to me (lauren@softquad.com), marking it as confidential, otherwise please send email to the public DOM mailing list." See "W3C Document Object Model (DOM)."
[December 15, 1999] XPath Interface for XT Version 0.90. Takuki Kamiya (Fujitsu Limited) recently announced the release of an updated version of 'XPath Interface for XT' (Version 0.90). The 0.90 version of XPath Interface is now available for download. The XPath interface for XT "provides DOM query API facilities on top of XT. It is implemented in Java language and complies with W3C's XPath Proposed Recommendation as is currently [1999-12-15] implemented in [James Clark's] XT. Variable support in XPath is added in this release. Use the class VariableMgr to make your queries aware of variables." To use XPath interface for XT Version 0.90, one would: "(1) Build a DOM Tree (i.e., org.w3c.dom.Document) by using a XML Parser; (2) Construct a DomQueryManager object with the DOM created in step 1; (3) Register variables if necessary; (4) Invoke DomQueryManager's getNodesByXPath method by supplying a DOM Node and XPath selector string as arguments." Version 0.90 also currently assumes that you are using Sun's Project X TR-2 XML parser. You should be able to add support for other XML parser easily by subclassing XMLProcessorImpl abstract class. XML Parser is not included in the distribution. James Tauber noted: "This is cool. Exactly what I wanted way back when I was musing about a 'shell' that enabled you to navigate a DOM the same way you'd navigate a file system in a command-line interface."
[December 15, 1999] A Visualization Tool for XPath. A recent posting from Khun Yee Fung announces the availability of a visualization tool for XPath. Khun Yee Fung writes: "I have written an XPath visualization tool. The tool allows you to choose an XML file as the initial XML document. The XML document is then shown as a tree (JTree in Swing). After that, you can specify XPath expressions and step through the execution of the expressions. The nodes selected in each step (can be a big step, a small step, or a baby step, or no stepping at all) are highlighted on the tree. A context tree is also presented so that the context of an XPath expression (like the context of a location path inside a predicate of another location path) can be shown. The execution stack of the context is also displayed when a context is chosen. The user can also select a node of the JTree as the initial context node of an XPath expression. This is how relative location paths are handled. The tool is meant as a learning tool for XPath. It implements nearly all the features of XPath, including the additional functions in XSLT. I am adding the additional functions from XPointer very soon. The only missing feature right now is the key() function. The document() function has been implemented and all documents included by the function are shown as JTrees as well... The tool uses the SAX and SAX2 interfaces from Xerces-1.0." The tool is available for download. For related tools, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[December 15, 1999] Pre-release Version of OpenSP-1.4 Available. Matthias Clasen (Mathematisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg) recently announced the pre-release version of OpenSP-1.4 from the OpenJade development team. OpenSP is a variant of James Clark's SP SGML parser, maintained by the OpenJade team. Feedback on the OpenSP-1.4-pre1 release (builds and usage on a Unix or Win32 platform) should be sent to the maintainers. The announcement contains a list of changes in OpenSP version 1.4 vis-à-vis SP-1.3.4.
[December 15, 1999] OASIS to Host XML-DEV Mailing List. An announcement from Peter Murray-Rust, delivered at the XML '99 Conference, reports on a recent decision to move the XML-DEV Mailing List to the XML.org portal. From the announcement: "OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, unveiled plans to host the XML-DEV mail list through its industry portal, XML.org. Since 1997, XML-DEV has served as an open, unmoderated list supporting XML implementation and development. In the closing plenary of the XML 99 conference today, Prof. Peter Murray-Rust of the University of Nottingham (UK) announced that XML-DEV, presently hosted by Imperial College (UK), will soon become an OASIS resource. 'We are very excited that XML-DEV has found a permanent home at OASIS,' said Murray-Rust, who created XML-DEV with Dr. Henry Rzepa of Imperial College (UK). 'We strongly support the role OASIS plays in the industry as a neutral, trusted organization and are confident that XML-DEV will be a natural fit with XML.org. We also wish to express our gratitude to Imperial College for hosting the list for three years.' XML-DEV, which has global membership of approximately 1500, averages more than 1200 postings a month from XML developers around the world. It emphasizes active participation through code development, creation of protocols and specifications, and other material contributions such as reference resources." According to a communiqué from list maintainer Henry Rzepa: "During the last three years, this list has had a home at Imperial College, and more than 18,000 postings have been made, the cumulative effect of which we feel has made a major impact on the development of the Internet and of Open Standards."
[December 14, 1999] Pyxie - An Open Source XML Processing Library for Python. Sean McGrath recently announced the release of 'Pyxie - An Open Source XML Processing Library for Python.' Sean says: "I hope some of you find it useful and help me to develop it further - either by submitting problem reports or contributing to the development effort." Description: "Pyxie is designed to provide a powerful XML processing library wrapped up in a Python friendly API. The entire Pyxie library revolves around a very simple, line-oriented notation for the information emitted by an XML parser. This notation is known as PYX. The Pyxie project includes two command line utilities [source and binaries] for generating PYX notation: xmln - A stand-alone PYX generating utility built on top of James Clark's non-validating XML parser, expat; xmlv - A stand-alone PYX generating utility built on top of Richard Tobin's validating XML parser, rxp. PYX Generators: The xmln and xmlv utilities can usefully be thought of as PYX generators that happen to eat XML. Numerous other PYX generators can be envisioned working with structured and semi-structured data sources. You can layer this stuff until your head hurts. In XML processing with Python for example, I develop a SAX driver that turns any MySQL database into a source of PYX. Tree driven XML Processing: Pyxie is most at home when processing trees. Trees can be created from XML files or from strings. Once a tree is created you can navigate it at will using the Up, Down, Left and Right methods. Cut and Paste methods are provided along with a bunch of methods for creating and manipulating lists of nodes. Hybrid event/tree driven XML processing: Pyxie has a hybrid event/tree processing mode that provides (most) of the programming features of tree processing with (most) of the resource efficiency of event processing. Pyxie in pipeline architectures: The line oriented nature of PYX makes it suitable for use in Unix style pipelines. This has the major advantage that the PYX notation does not need to ever exist on disk. To use Pyxie you need two things: a) A Python distribution and b) The XML package for Python created by the Python communities XML Special Interest Group. 'C3' is an XML editor/viewer developed using Pyxie and the wxPython GUI toolkit. You will need the wxPython package installed to run C3. Some things still needed: a) PYX generators for ODBC, RTF, Latex, CGM etc. b) Addition of XML styling in C3 using CSS and/or XSL. wxPython now has an HTML widget that could be used for this. c) An XPath implementation for addressing in Pyxie trees..."
[December 14, 1999] XHTML 1.0 Published as a Revised Proposed Recommendation. The W3C HTML Working Group has released a new 'Proposed Recommendation' specification for XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language. A Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0. Reference: W3C Proposed Recommendation 10-December-1999. The Proposed Recommendation review period extends until 8-January-2000. This version of the specification constitutes a "revision of the Proposed Recommendation dated 24-August-1999 incorporating changes as a result of comments from the Proposed Recommendation review, and comments and further deliberations of the W3C HTML Working Group. A diff-marked version from the previous proposed recommendation is available for comparison purposes. Summary from David Megginson on XML-DEV: "(1) A single XHTML Namespace, http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; (2) Examples of using elements from other Namespaces inside an XHTML document, and of using the XHTML Namespace inside other document types -- though there are no strict conformance criteria defined for either yet. (3) All element and attribute names in lower case. (4) The DOCTYPE declaration is still required for strict XHTML conformance (annoying, but I can live with that), and there are still three different DTDs..." The spec is also available in Postscript, PDF, and ZIP archive formats. The PR specification "defines XHTML 1.0, a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application, and three DTDs corresponding to the ones defined by HTML 4.0. The semantics of the elements and their attributes are defined in the W3C Recommendation for HTML 4.0. These semantics provide the foundation for future extensibility of XHTML. Compatibility with existing HTML user agents is possible by following a small set of guidelines." The PR's normative 'Appendix A.' includes three XHTML DTDs and entity sets, which "approximate the HTML 4.0 DTDs. It is likely that when the DTDs are modularized, a method of DTD construction will be employed that corresponds more closely to HTML 4.0." (1) XHTML-1.0-Strict; (2) XHTML-1.0-Transitional; (3) XHTML-1.0-Frameset.
[December 14, 1999] Industry Leaders Endorse the HR-XML Consortium's XML Framework . The HR-XML Consortium recently announced that "more than twenty-five (25) organizations have endorsed an XML framework designed to enable a new generation of web-based workforce management and recruiting services. The HR-XML Consortium is a newly formed non-profit group dedicated to the development and promotion of standardized human-resources-related XML vocabularies for enabling business-to-business e-commerce and the automation of inter-company exchanges of human resources data." The HR-XML Consortium has already developed three provisional schemas. The schemas (for JobPosting, CandidateProfile, Resume) "are very preliminary and are intended to generate discussion." The distribution files contain Document Type Definitions (DTDs) as well as Microsoft BizTalk-compatible schemas." The HR-XML consortium is open to all interested parties, but membership is targeted toward: (1) Software Vendors. For example, vendors providing HRIS, staffing and recruiting, or workforce planning software solutions. (2) Employers. Particularly large, multinational employers seeking to rationalize workforce management processes. (3) HR Service Suppliers. For example, providers of recruiting, payroll, benefits consulting, and temporary staffing services. (4) XML Tool Vendors/Technology Companies. Vendors of XML editors, servers, and data management tools. (5) Non-Profit HR-Related Associations. SHRM, IHRIM, EMA, and other HR-industry groups. (6) Human resource professionals. Human resources and recruiting and staffing professionals, compensation and benefits administrators, and HRIS administrators." For other/related references, see "HR-XML Consortium."
[December 07, 1999] Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) Submitted to Industry Standards Bodies. Bowstreet, a "leader in mass customization of business-to-business e-commerce, today delivered a universal directory service language for the Internet to three key Internet standards bodies. This language, called Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), represents an e-commerce milestone and is supported by the collective efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. By helping establish directories as the infrastructure for e-commerce applications, DSML enables easy sharing of valuable business data and processes within and across company boundaries. DSML will also accelerate the industry shift toward business-to-business applications built on Web services, modular units of software functionality located anywhere on the Internet. DSML and Web services will enable companies to develop dynamic e-commerce Web sites that can uniquely meet the needs of a company's customers and business partners. The DSML 1.0 specification submission enables different vendors' directory services to work together more easily by describing their contents - including data about people and computing resources - in the Internet's lingua franca for commerce, XML. Particularly convenient for e-commerce applications, XML is the emerging standard for business-to-business data interchange. Today's announcement keeps the working group's July 12 promise to reach consensus on a draft standard this year. End users will also benefit from DSML as Web-based applications discover and act upon directory-resident data related to users' roles, preferences, affiliations and available computing resources. The six companies today turned over the DSML 1.0 specification draft to OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, a nonprofit, international consortium considered the world's leading independent organization for the standardization of XML applications in e-commerce. In an effort to gain rapid and widespread acceptance, DSML 1.0 information is also being provided to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and BizTalk. The W3C is an international industry consortium developing protocols that promote the Web's evolution and ensuring its interoperability. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. BizTalk is driving the rapid, consistent adoption of XML for e-commerce and application integration. The DSML 1.0 schema in XDR format will be made available to the BizTalk framework." For details, see the text of the announcement: "Industry Leaders Publish Ground-breaking XML Standard for E-commerce and Directories. Bowstreet, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Sun-Netscape submit Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) 1.0 to industry standards bodies." See also "Twenty Companies Sign On To Support XML-based Directory Standard For e-Commerce." For related references, see the DSML Web site and "Directory Services Markup Language (DSML)."
[December 07, 1999] Sun Microsystems Leads Industry Effort to Simplify XML. According to a recent announcement: - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today made two announcements that underscore its support for the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) with the Java 2 platform: the availability of the Java Application Programming Interface (API) for XML Parsing Optional Package ("JAXP"), and the formation of an expert group for the XML Data Binding project. The expert group for this project, which is going through the Java Community Process, consists of Allaire, Ariba, BEA/Web Logic, Bluestone Software, AOL/Netscape, Extensibility, Fujitsu, IBM, Object Design, Oracle, webMethods and Sun Microsystems. With these announcements, Sun is leading the effort to deliver XML technologies for the Java 2 platform that will ease the creation and maintenance of Java technology-based applications enabled by XML and improve portability of data exchange between disparate business systems. In 1996, Sun spearheaded an initiative through the W3C to develop the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), a standards-based universal syntax for describing and structuring data in a way that is independent from the application logic. Sun's announcement of the Java technologies for XML provides universal application logic that complements XML. The Java 2 platform and XML are complementary technologies that each have common features critical for industrial-strength Web-based applications, including platform-independence, industry standards, extensible, reusable, and global language support. Together, the Java 2 platform and XML will allow enterprises to simplify and lower the cost of information sharing and exchange in Web applications. The JAXP optional package provides basic functionality for reading, manipulating, and generating XML documents through pure Java APIs. Seamlessly integrated with the Java 2 platform, JAXP provides a standard way for a Java platform-based application to plug in any XML-conformant parser. While the reference implementation uses Sun's experimental high performing Java Project X as its default XML parser, the software's pluggable architecture allows any XML- conformant parser to be used, such as the xml.apache.org XML parser, code named Xerces. As part of Sun's ongoing commitment to industry developed standards, JAXP is fully conformant to XML standards from the W3C and the XML community. JAXP is being developed through the Java Community Process ("JCP"), which is the formalization of the open process that Sun has been using since 1995 to develop and revise Java technology specifications in cooperation with the international community of developers using Java technologies. Sun also announced the expert group of industry leaders within the JCP that is working to create XML Data Binding software for the Java 2 platform. This project, code-named Project Adelard, will enable developers to deliver and maintain high-performance XML-enabled applications with a minimum of development effort. Project Adelard provides a two-way mapping between XML documents and Java technology-based objects along with a schema compiler tool. The compiler will automatically generate Java classes from XML schemas without requiring developers to write any complex parsing code. In addition, the compiler will contain automatic error and validity of checking of XML messages, helping to ensure that only valid, error-free messages are accepted and processed by a system. Thus, not only will developers be able to more easily develop and process Java technology-based applications that leverage XML, but enterprises will also lower costs through more productive development."
[December 07, 1999] Lexica Releases iLingo XML Schemas For Review. "Lexica has announced the release of a new set of XML schemas, collectively called iLingo, [which] provides the essential structural framework for deploying portable, robust transactional applications that enable business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce. Paving the way for insurance carriers and distributors to more easily meet the exploding consumer demand for online services, Lexica LLC, a leading developer of end-to-end e-business supply chain management software for the insurance industry, today announced that it has published a preview set of Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas on Microsoft's BizTalk.org and Lexica's iLingo.org Web sites. This is the industry's first comprehensive set of XML schemas posted to BizTalk.org that is specifically designed to empower the supply chain participants in the end-to-end automation of insurance selling and transaction processing. Once Version 1.0 is released in early 2000, iLingo will be freely available to any insurance or related financial services provider. Updates will be posted at www.ilingo.org, and to BizTalk.org. 'Lexica is offering iLingo to the industry as critical `head-start' technology, and we're leveraging it in our own product, Lexica Online,' said Peter Henry, Lexica's president and chief technology officer. 'We want it to be the preferred basis of insurance e-business transaction systems. Users will get several immediate benefits by using iLingo XML schemas, including the ability to easily exchange data with vendors, customers and other e-commerce partners; the ability to introduce new products online faster; and the ability to reduce their overall systems maintenance costs.' Lexica Online is an integrated, XML-based platform that enables companies to operate and participate in an efficient electronic marketplace with other trading partners as part of an automated supply chain. By using iLingo in its own software, Lexica will take the lead in building real-world solutions that break the logjam of inefficient inter-company transactions that has hampered insurance industry business processes and escalated costs. The company will also incorporate iLingo into its consumer Internet insurance site InsureZone.com. Developing an XML schema set targeted to the insurance industry is particularly significant due to the enormous potential for online insurance and the equally enormous technological challenges faced by this market segment when trying to establish an online presence. The industry's nearly $800 billion a year in premiums dwarfs other emerging e-commerce industries such as travel, book sales, music and video combined. Still the industry has long struggled to seamlessly and effortlessly automate the information exchange and workflow that occurs within its supply chain. The complexity of business processes, and the need to gather and generate data from many sources have served as near impenetrable barriers. [Lexica] will continue to refine the iLingo XML schemas in the coming months, with actual real-world examples from InsureZone.com and the Lexica Online software platform. Lexica will also continue to work closely with the appropriate standards bodies to further define its XML schema set. Lexica is a participating member of several technology initiatives and standards bodies including the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), ACORD and the Worldwide Web Consortium (WC3). Lexica will work with ACORD, which has the support and participation of more than 1,000 insurance carries and groups, 25,000 agencies, the major providers of software and services to the industry, and nonprofit associations including agency system user groups, nation producer associations, and the CPCU society. ACORD initially developed standard ACORD forms to enable information sharing in the industry, and has added data integration to its package of services." The iLingo FAQ document provides other information on the XML schema set. See also the full text of the announcement: "Lexica Releases iLingo XML Schemas for Industry Review, Posts It to Microsoft's BizTalk.org Web site. XML Schema Set Designed To Revolutionize Insurance Industry e-business." On ACORD, see the ACORD Web site and "ACORD - XML for the Insurance Industry."
[December 07, 1999] Architag Announces 'Schema Validating' XML Editor. An announcement from Architag International Corporation describes the alpha release of 'xRay, a New XML Editor'. The description, in part: "Architag International Corporation today announced the alpha release of their first software product, xRay, for Microsoft Windows operating systems. The product is a real-time, validating XML editor designed to provide fast creating, viewing and editing of XML documents. 'We are proud to offer this tool as a contribution to the XML community,' said Brian Travis, President and CEO of Architag. 'While there are several editing tools available for the XML implementer, we felt the need for a diagnostic tool that allows users and developers to look inside their XML documents the way the XML parser does.' The product's speed means that it can also be used by professional keyboarders producing XML documents in a production environment. xRay is a real-time editor. On every keystroke, the editor validates the XML document and displays errors in a window on the screen. Multiple windows can be displayed, each containing its own XML document. xRay works with well-formed XML documents, but also validates according to different types of schemas. 'One of the breakthroughs in xRay is the ability to create and modify a document type definition (DTD) schema, but also create and validate against XML Data, a schema submission to the W3C,' said Travis. 'xRay is also the first XML editor that verifies rich datatypes, like numbers and dates, against the XML Data schema.' The xRay XML Editor is currently in a limited alpha testing release. Developers who are interested in participating in the test can contact Architag at xray-alpha@architag.com."
[December 06, 1999] W3C Last Call Working Draft for the XML Pointer Language (XPointer). The W3C XML Linking Working Group has published a 'Last call' working draft specification for XML Pointer Language (XPointer). References: W3C Last Call Working Draft 6-December-1999, edited by Steve DeRose (Brown University Scholarly Technology Group), Ron Daniel Jr. (DATAFUSION, Inc.), and Eve Maler (Sun Microsystems). The Last Call period begins 6-December-1999 and ends 27-December-1999; the editorial team invites comment on the specification. Abstract: "This specification defines the XML Pointer Language (XPointer), the language to be used as a fragment identifier for any URI-reference that locates a resource of Internet media type text/xml or application/xml. XPointer, which is based on the XML Path Language (XPath), supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. It allows for traversals of a document tree and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position." [Introduction:] "The XPointer specification "does not constrain the syntax or semantics of URI-references to resources of other media types. XPointer supports addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. It allows for traversals of a document tree and choice of its internal parts based on various properties, such as element types, attribute values, character content, and relative position. In particular, it provides for specific reference to elements, character strings, and other parts of XML documents, whether or not they bear an explicit ID attribute. The structures located with XPointer can be used as link targets or for any other application-specific purpose. This specification does not constrain what uses an application may make of locations identified by XPointers. In particular, implementation of traversal to a resource is not constrained by this specification, and whether user traversal is the purpose of an XPointer at all is application-dependent. A formatted-text browser traversal might scroll to and highlight the designated location; a structure-oriented graphical tree viewer or a document-relationship display might do traversal in quite a different way; and a search application, parser, archival system, or expert agent might use XPointers for other purposes entirely. The construction of linking elements in XML documents that associate arbitrary resources (including XML documents and portions thereof) is defined in a related specification (XLink). XPointer is built on top of the XML Path Language, which is an expression language used in the XSL Transformations (XSLT) language. XPointer's extensions to XPath allow it to: (1) Address points and ranges as well as nodes, (2) Locate information by string matching, and (3) Use addressing expressions in URI-references as fragment identifiers... XPointers, like XPath expressions, operate on the XML Information Set, a tree derived from the elements and other markup constructs of an XML document. Both XPointers and XPath expressions operate by selecting particular parts of such trees, often by their structural relationship to other parts (for example, the parent of a node with a certain ID value). XPointers can express multiple such selections, each operating on what is found by the prior one. Selection of tree portions is done through axes, predicates, and functions. An axis defines a sequence of candidates that might be located; predicates then test information in the tree relative to such portions; and functions generate new candidates or perform various other tasks. For example, one may select certain elements from among the siblings of some previously located element, based on whether those sibling elements have an attribute with a certain value, or are of a certain type such as FOOTNOTE, or select the point location immediately preceding a certain P... [While] XPointer is the fragment identifier language for the text/xml and application/xml media types, it is expected that many applications of XML will define their own media types in order to indicate the particular usage of XML they define. A recent Internet Draft ["Internet Draft: XML Media Types"] suggests the use of a naming convention, */*-xml, for specialized media types based on XML). XPointer is expected to be useful as a fragment identifier language for the generic XML aspects of those media types." For background and references, see the XPointer requirements document and "XML Linking Language."
[December 06, 1999] XFA Edit - An Advanced XML Editor. A new XML editing tool with source code is available, as announced: "XML For All Announces XFA Edit, an Advanced XML Editor." - "XML For All, Inc. today announced the release of XFA Edit, an advanced text editor for XML and HTML documents that runs under Microsoft Windows operating systems. XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, is a W3C standard with broad industry support that is quickly becoming the notation of choice for structured information exchange. XFA Edit is implemented as an intelligent XML editing mode that runs on top of Lugaru's Epsilon, an EMACS-like editor. A single package that contains both Lugaru Epsilon and XFA Edit can be ordered from the XML For All Web site at www.xmlforall.com. Epsilon supports full screen editing with an EMACS-style command set, non-intrusive mouse support, the ability to simultaneously edit an unlimited number of files, an extensive help system and on-line documentation, advanced search and search and replace commands, multilevel undo and redo, and advanced customization via the Epsilon EEL scripting language. XFA Edit adds color highlighting for XML tags, strings, attributes, and comments; checking for matching tags, quotes, and parenthesis; automatic indentation of nested XML elements; fast XML element navigation; and automatic insertion of XML end tags. All features can be individually customized via an extensive set of options. Support is provided for editing HTML, XML, and XML For All's XFA scripts. Complete EEL source code for XML Edit is included..." Compare "XML Editing Mode in PSGML" and (for other editors) "XML Document Editing, DTD Editing, Stylesheet Editing, Formatting, Browsing, and Delivery Tools."
[December 04, 1999] New and Updated XML Tools from IBM alphaWorks. IBM alphaWorks labs has released several new and updated XML development tools: (1) ActiveNotebook: "ActiveNotebook is a tool for capturing, organizing, viewing and publishing snippets of information that you or someone else grabs out of a browser. It provides users with a way to organize, view, create and publish information snippets that are between bookmarks and web pages in size. ActiveNotebook is written in HTML and Javascript, with data storage in XML format. Once you've got the right set of notebooks loaded, you can sort your entries by title, date, source notebook, URL, hierarchical category. Each entry is stored in a notebook which is represented as an XML file. You can load multiple notebooks into the ActiveNotebook viewer and search over the entire set of entries that they store. These notebook files can be on your local disk, or at a URL anywhere on the Web." (2) DatabaseDom: "DatabaseDom is a technology allows mapping a database table into an XML document and back again, providing a great deal of flexibility in the XML structure generated. DatabaseDom is a combination of Java JDBC, IBM Data Access Bean and DOM programming. An XML template file defines the database and XML structure. A JavaBean reads this, and creates XML from the results of a database query, and also updates the database based on a new or modified XML structure." (3) Visual DTD: "Visual DTD is a visual tool for creating, viewing, and editing existing DTDs. The new update generates Java Classes for creating XML instances of an XML schema and sample XML document from a DTD. Also contains a new graphical view, error reporting and bug fixes. Using Visual DTD, you can: a) Create DTD elements, attributes, entities, and notations; b) Import existing DTDs into Visual DTD; c) Create DTD from existing XML documents; d) Generate DTDs; e) Generate XML Schemas. Note this is only preliminary support for the W3C XML Schema Language. We intend to provide complete support in subsequent updates. Visual DTD has three views: tree view, design view, and source view." (4) Visual XML: "Visual XML is a transformation tool that can help you compose new XML document from existing XML documents. With the new version, you can now save your session information, and resume from your previous session. Visual XML Transformation Tool will take 1 and n number of DTDs describing the source XML documents as input. The user visually construct the structure of the new XML document. It will generate an XSL script for transforming the source documents to the target document and also the DTD for the target document. Optionally you can also unit test the XSL script from within the tool." (5) Xplorer: "Xplorer is a Java application that can be used to search XML files, validate XML files and view the valid XML files in XML viewer. Xplorer has been updated to use IBM Install Toolkit for Java 1.60. With Xplorer, one may search for XML files based on the XML file name, Document type and some advanced search options like element name and value, attribute name and value, PI, etc." (6) XML Viewer: "The XML Viewer addresses the need for viewing XML data from various perspectives such as the source of the XML, the DTD for the XML, the hierarchical structure of the XML data. It has been updated to use IBM Install Toolkit for Java 1.60. XML Viewer for Java is a Java application that displays any well-formed XML document. You can traverse the document's hierarchy using the tree views, find out the attributes of a particular node in the hierarchy and view the source of the XML and associated DTD files. You can also view the source of a selected node in the XML source view and the definition of the node in the DTD source view." (7) DocFile: "DocFile is Java package for accessing DocFile type files. DocFile is a Java package that allows read access to the OLE 2.0 DocFile file type. This is a proprietary archive file format that is used in the Windows family operating systems. The interface to this file type is through com.ibm.docfile.DocFile, which closely mimics the java.io.File class and through com.ibm.docfile.Stream, which closely mimics java.io.RandomAccessFile, with the exception of file writes. DocFile is written in pure Java and does not require any of the Windows DLLs for accessing the DocFiles."
[December 03, 1999] SAXON Version 5.0 Released. A posting from Michael Kay to the XSL-List announces the release of SAXON version 5.0, which supports the W3C XSLT and XPath Recommendations published on November 16, 1999. Kay says that the SAXON 5.0 package is now "a complete implementation of XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0 - If there are any parts of the spec it doesn't implement, then that's an oversight and will be treated as a bug. Apart from full conformance, the new things in this release include: (1) a number of new extension functions [intersection(), difference() and has-same-nodes() to compare node-sets; line-number() and system-id() of the current node in the source document; if(condition, then, else)]; (2) stylesheet chaining: [specify <saxon:output next-in-chain="phase2.xsl"> to send the output of this stylesheet to be the input to another stylesheet]; (3) user-definable numbering and collating sequences; (4) internal improvements to node-set handling and sorting, which should result in better performance when handling large node-sets, and should certainly reduce the load on the garbage collector." The SAXON package is "a collection of tools for processing XML documents. The main components are: (1) An XSL processor, which implements the Version 1.0 XSLT and XPath Recommendations from the World Wide Web Consortium [...] with a number of powerful extensions; (2) A Java library, which supports a similar processing model to XSL, but allows full programming capability, which you need if you want to perform complex processing of the data or to access external services such as a relational database. So you can use SAXON by writing XSL stylesheets, by writing Java applications, or by any combination of the two. If you are only interested in running the XSL interpreter, on a Windows platform, try Instant SAXON. At 241 Kb, this is a much smaller download; it excludes source code and API documentation. SAXON provides a set of services that are particularly useful when converting XML data into other formats. The output format may be XML, or HTML, or some other format such as comma separated values, EDI messages, or data in a relational database. SAXON implements the XSLT recommendation, including XPath, it its entirety. SAXON also does things that are beyond the scope of the XSL standard: for example: (1) It allows XSL processing and Java processing to be freely mixed, so you can always escape into procedural code to do something non-standard (such as accessing a database); (2) It allows multiple output files. SAXON is particularly useful for splitting a large document into page-sized chunks. You can do this without writing any Java code; (3) It allows multi-pass processing, by means of an extension function that converts a result tree fragment to a nodeset, or by chaining stylesheets together; (4) It allows variables to be updated." For related software, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[December 03, 1999] Rocket: A Framework for Creating XML-Based Web Sites. Ken North posted an announcement to XML-DEV concerning Michael Floyd's recent release of 'Rocket: A Framework for Creating XML-Based Web Sites.' The online description reads: "Rocket is a framework I created for generating your own XML-based Web sites. Rocket's name is a play on XML's 'skyrocketing' success in virtually every phase of computing. In a nutshell, Rocket is a collection of skeleton XML documents, XSL style sheets, and DTD's that you can use as a basis for creating your own XML-based Web site. Using Rocket, you can transform XML documents and serve them to any browser, regardless of its capabilities. Rocket also allows you exchange XML streams between XML-capable browsers and HTTP servers. Currently, Rocket is set up to operate with Active Server Pages (ASPs). However, there's nothing to prevent you from dropping the framework into a servlet environment, or running it in conjunction with Perl's xml::parser module. The one caveat is that some style sheets may have to be tweaked to work with newer style-sheet processors... Before installing the framework, you first need to ensure that your server has everything Rocket needs. Specifically, Rocket needs an HTTP connection, ASP support, and XML capabilities. The other piece of the equation is XML support. You can use any XML processor you wish. However, the easiest way to add XML support to your server is to install Internet Explorer 5. Installing IE 5 automatically installs the XML and XSL processors, registers the "text/xml" MIME type and creates associations for the .xml and .xsl file types. Since Rocket is designed to work with the MSXML processor, this is the recommended approach. . ." See the installation instructions and download form for other details.
[December 03, 1999] New Working Draft for the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification. The W3C has released a revised public review draft version of the SVG specification: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification. References: W3C Working Draft 03-December-1999, edited by Jon Ferraiolo. The document has been produced by the SVG working group as part of the W3C graphics activity. The SVG specification "defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. One area of current activity where some changes are expected is the detailed definition of some of SVG's DOM interfaces. An aaccumulative list of changes to the specification since the first public working draft of SVG (05 February 1999) is supplied in Appendix I: Change History [Changes with the 03-December-1999 SVG Draft Specification]. This working draft attempts to address 'Last Call' review comments from the previous public working draft (the "Last Call" draft of 12 August 1999) plus modifications resulting from continuing collaboration with other working groups and continuing work within the SVG working group." Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) "is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML. SVG allows for three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes (e.g., paths consisting of straight lines and curves), images and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. The feature set includes nested transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, filter effects and template objects. SVG drawings can be interactive and dynamic. Animations can be defined and triggered either declaratively (i.e., by embedding SVG animation elements in SVG content) or via scripting. Sophisticated applications of SVG are possible by use of supplemental scripting language with access to SVG's Document Object Model (DOM), which provides complete access to all elements, attributes and properties. A rich set of event handlers such as onmouseover and onclick can be assigned to any SVG graphical object. Because of its compatibility and leveraging of other Web standards, features like scripting can be done on XHTML and SVG elements simultaneously within the same Web page. SVG is a language for rich graphical content. For accessibility reasons, if there is an original source document containing higher-level structure and semantics, it is recommended that that higher-level information be made available somehow, either by making the original source document available, or making an alternative version available in an alternative format which conveys the higher-level information, or by using SVG's facilities to include the higher-level information within the SVG content." The new WD specification is available in HTML 4.0, ZIP archive, and PDF file formats.
[December 03, 1999] DOM ECMAScript Test Suite. Mary Brady (NIST, Conformance Testing) posted an announcement regarding the update of the NIST DOM ECMAScript test suite, accessible via http://www.nist.gov/xml/. "Click on DOM Test Suite. This suite includes approximately 900 ECMAScript tests that exercise the DOM Level 1 Fundamental, Extended, and HTML interfaces. You can view the results using IE5 by clicking on first the category, and then the particular interface. Options are available for displaying the source code, semantic requirements (which are simply axioms we glean from the spec to organize our thoughts), and the actual specification. Please let me know if you find this useful. We are in the process of generating equivalent functionality for the java binding. We are just about finished with the fundamental interfaces, and expect to have a first set, including fundamental and extended available in early January." For related XML/DOM conformance test resources, see "XML Conformance."
[December 03, 1999] XML Query Engine - A JavaBean Component. Howard Katz recently announced the release of XML Query Engine, implemented as a JavaBean component. "I'm pleased to announce XML Query Engine, a JavaBean component that can index single or multiple well-formed XML documents using any SAX-based parser. Users can pose full-text queries against the resulting index using XQL. Index speed is quite reasonable for small- to medium-size repositories, in the neighborhood of 45 to 50,000 words per second on a 466 Windows machine. (That drops to about 20,000 words per second on my 166 laptop.) I've added several minor extensions to XQL to allow for full-text query capability. Details on XQL Query Engine and how to obtain it are available on my website at http://www.fatdog.com. The software is in alpha and will be available once I've returned the week after next from XML' 99 in Philadelphia. I'll be demoing in the "New Technology Nursery" area on the exhibit floor..." For related XML query tools, see "XML and Query Languages - Software."
[December 02, 1999] X2X - XML XLink Engine from STEP UK. A posting from Jason Markos describes the release of 'X2X - An XML XLink Engine' by STEP UK. "STEP UK Ltd. announces the beta programme of X2X the XML XLink engine. X2X allows for the creation, management and manipulation of links. X2X allows linking between documents and information resources without needing to change either of the source or target documents that are being linked. X2X removes the requirement to insert link information inside document content. The Links are NOT in the document. X2X has an extensible architecture to allow resources to reside in any data repository. X2X stores links independently of any documents and provides facilities to dynamically insert external link structures into documents on-demand. X2X stores all the link information within a ODBC/JDBC enabled database, e.g., Oracle or SQL Server. X2X is initially developed in Java for cross platform operation. X2X is implemented using fundamental linking concepts and understands links defined using the latest draft of the W3C XLink proposal. This scalable technology delivers the ability to associate different data resources regardless of their location. X2X allows for the retrieval of resources and can dynamically add the external link information without altering the original document/ information. The power of linking has been harnessed to allow structured information objects such as XML to be associated with information lacking structure. The architecture enables organizations to store data in the repository of their choice; while XLink adherence means that link information can be authored using a variety of applications. X2X works independently of the storage, authoring and delivery applications. X2X exposes its powerful functionality allowing it to be integrated into any static or dynamic application or service. With X2X it is possible to deliver richer information streams to users with little or no impact on existing data management procedures. The X2X technology preview is available for download at http://www.stepuk.com/x2x/x2x_dem.asp." See the Overview, the Technical Overview, API Notes, Usage Case #1, Usage Case #2, and the API Guidance - X2X Developer Guide. For related XLink references, see "XML Linking."
[December 02, 1999] DSSSLprint Version 1.0 Available for Review. Fumihito Matsumoto (Next Solution) recently announced the beta/demo release of DSSSLprint Version 1.0, which supports PDF/Postscript printing of XML documents. "DSSSLprint 1.0 is an SGML/XML formatter, and its output formats are PostScript and PDF. The utility converts an SGML/XML document into PostScript or PDF by following the layout, style and pagination descriptions in a DSSSL (Document Style Semantics and Specification Language) script conforming to the International Standard (ISO/IEC 10179:1996). The demo/evaluation version of DSSSLprint1.0 is available for Sun Solaris 2.4 or above. A layout sample created by DSSSLprint1.0 is on Next Solution's web site. DSSSLprint implements the DSSSL formatting language. By writing a style script that specifies how to format the structures found in an SGML document, you can format and print out on any PostScript Level II printer any document that conforms to the expected hierarchy. Furthermore, by creating other scripts, you can create other presentation styles for the same set of documents. The documents themselves are not altered in any way and once the script is created, the formatting process is automatic and independent of the content of any single document instance. DSSSLprint transforms the document straight into PostScript or PDF code, so there are no problems with intermediate files or programs like TeX or LaTeX. Features: (1) Layout results can be previewed on the display before printing on film or paper; (2) All PostScript Level II printers supported; (3) Supports TIFF, EPSF, JPEG and CGM graphic images referenced in the SGML/XML file; (4) DSSSLprint can be easily invoked from a GUI."
[December 02, 1999] Wattle Software Announces Release of XMLwriter 1.0. Wattle Software recently announced the release of XMLwriter 1.0 for Windows 95/98/2000 and Windows NT4. From the announcement: "Wattle Software today announced the release of XMLwriter 1.0, a new release of its XML and XSL editor for the Windows platform. XMLwriter 1.0 builds on the success of the Beta version released earlier this year, and remains competitively priced. A free, fully-functional evaluation version of XMLwriter 1.0 is available from http://XMLwriter.net/ . Volume licensing terms are available on request to sales@XMLwriter.net XMLwriter is written entirely in C++, which makes it more integrated with the Windows environment and faster than existing Java-based XML editors. XMLwriter has been designed to meet the Windows user interface guidelines, so users can expect a familiar look and feel. This release of XMLwriter leverages the wide range of vendor support for XML by providing users with the flexibility to incorporate other XML tools into the XMLwriter Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Users can select third-party XML parsers, XSL engines, and other tools to process XML documents without leaving XMLwriter. In response to user feedback, the new version includes improvements to usability, extended multilingual support, and features to help new XML users. Major features of XMLwriter include: (1) Validation of XML documents against a DTD or XML Schema; (2) Conversion of XML documents into other file formats using XSL/T; (3) Visual structural representation of XML Schemas, enabling mouse-driven editing; (4) Useful project management features in the Integrated Development Environment; (5) Advanced editing features such as: real-time colour syntax highlighting of tags and keywords, extensive drag and drop support, unlimited undo/redo, find and replace, auto-indent; (6) Fully customizable menus, toolbars, and workspace environment; (7) Extensive online help and an XML specification guide."
[December 02, 1999] EZ/X - XML/XSL Processor Preview Available. A posting from Rick Ross announces the recent release of 'EZ/X - a suite of core XML/XSL Processor tools for Java', available for download as a preview. From the announcement: "Activated Intelligence (http://activated.com) invites you to preview our EZ/X suite of core XML tools for Java. EZ/X combines world-class XML parsing and XSL processing in a compact, pure Java package. We're seeking a major industry partner who can leverage EZ/X as part of its XML leadership strategy... EZ/X has been in production use for over a year at the JavaLobby (http://javalobby.org) - which was probably the world's first 100% dynamically generated XML/XSL site. EZ/X has delivered consistently there under grueling circumstances and extreme heavy loads. We've worked hard to make EZ/X fast, reliable, and conformant to prevailing standards. Preliminary testing by Activated and third-parties suggests that EZ/X should give a great performance boost to your mission-critical XML projects. XSL processing with EZ/X [arguably] is usually 2-3 times faster than Lotus/IBM/Apache or Oracle, and even faster than that when dealing with complex XML/XSL..." For related software, see "XSL/XSLT Software Support."
[December 01, 1999] Datatypes for DTDs. A draft specification residing on the Extensibility Web site (and looking suspiciously like a W3C 'NOTE') proposes a mechanism that allows the declaration of datatypes for XML content (PCDATA) and attributes. To wit: Datatypes for DTDs (DT4DTD) Version 1.0 (November 1999) is a 'Public Specification' edited by Lee Buck (Extensibility), Charles F. Goldfarb, and Paul Prescod (ISOGEN International). Initially posted as a public document: '10/31/99'. "Abstract: The presented specification allows legacy systems that may presently be unable to convert their DTD markup declarations to XML Schema, to utilize XML Schema conformant datatypes. With it, DTD creators can specify datatypes for attribute values and data content, thereby providing the foundation for a smoother future transition path... Free open-source code that supports this specification for both SAX and DOM is available at www.extensibility.com/dt4dtd." According to one of the authors, the specification represents just "a little convention for getting around the limitations of notations as applied to attributes and contents for datatyping." The markup facility uses NOTATIONs, and relies upon two 'fixed' attributes, e-dtype and a-dtype. Declaring a datatype for an element is permitted only if associated element type's content allows data but no sub-elements. The background: "XML 1.0, using DTDs, provides a strong foundation for validating the syntax of a document and ensuring that all the necessary pieces of information are present (i.e., necessary elements are included, inappropriate ones are not, attributes are supplied when required, etc.). DTDs do not, however, offer much help in constraining the value of a particular attribute or element: a.k.a. datatypes to those with programming backgrounds. DT4DTD brings this important capability to XML. Specifically it: (1) Provides compatibility with XML Schema data types; (2) Provides compatibility with XML-Data data types; (3) Provides programmatic extensions for DOM and SAX; (4) Provides an extensible architecture for custom datatypes; (5) Provides runtime support for data typed schemas created in XML Authority. The DT4DTD [package] consists of a two major parts: a) The draft specification, and b) The SDK [in Java]." Note:(?) similar datatype declaration mechanisms (appropriate for 'architecture-engine' and 'notation-engine' processing aka 'handwaving') are available in SGML, and particularly in Web SGML, where the added 'data specification declared value' allows arguments to be passed to notation processors. For related work, see the references in XML Schemas."
[December 01, 1999] Signiform Introduces XML NewsForms and NewsExtract. A communiqué from Erik T. Mueller (founder and CEO of Signiform) reports on the introduction of XML NewsForms/NewsExtract by Signiform. "NewsForms are XML documents that represent seventeen (17) types of news events: competitions, deals, earnings reports, economic releases, Fed watching, IPOs, injuries and fatalities, joint ventures, legal events, medical findings, negotiations, new products, management successions, trips and visits, votes, war, and weather reports. NewsExtract is Signiform's information extraction technology for assisting with conversion of text news stories into NewsForms. Instead of simply classifying a story according to topic or company, NewsExtract pulls the essential information out of a story. For example, instead of classifying a story as a deal involving Xedia Corp, NewsExtract tells you specifically that Xedia is the target of the deal." Justification and elaboration for XML NewsForms and NewsExtract are provided in several documents available from the Signiform Web site: (1) "Making news understandable to computers"; (2) "Signiform information extraction technology"; (3) "NewsForms - XML-based forms for representing the content of news events." Additionally, Padoof is a NewsForm/NewsExtract-powered search engine. The NewsForm document type definition is also available online. For related work on XML and news delivery, see (for example) "News Industry Text Format (NITF)," "XMLNews: XMLNews-Story and XMLNews-Meta," and "NewsML and IPTC2000."
[December 01, 1999] Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0. The W3C Math Working Group has published a revised Working Draft document for the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0. References: W3C Working Draft 01-December-1999, edited by Nico Poppelier (Salience), Robert Miner (Geometry Technologies, Inc.), and Patrick Ion (Mathematical Reviews, American Mathematical Society). The document is also available as a ZIP archive. MathML "is cast as an application of XML. As such, with adequate style sheet support, it will ultimately be possible for browsers to natively render mathematical expressions. For the immediate future, several vendors offer applets and plug-ins which can render MathML in place in a browser. Translators and equation editors which can generate HTML pages where the math expressions are represented directly in MathML will be available soon." The W3C Amaya editor provides support for MathML editing. The present draft "is a revision of the earlier corrected W3C Recommendation MathML 1.01. It differs from it in that several chapters have been modified and one added. The introductory Chapters 1 and Chapter 2 are almost unchanged in this draft. They remain essentially correct, but will later be revised to reflect the changes in the rest of the document when these have settled down. It is expected that there will be at least two more Working Drafts, appearing at roughly one month intervals, before finalization of the Working Group's proposed specification MathML 2.0. The W3C Math working group will continue to work with the working groups for the Document Object Model (DOM) and the Extensible Style Language (XSL) to ensure that the needs of the scientific community will be met in the future." The document abstract: "This specification defines the Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. This specification of the markup language MathML is intended primarily for a readership consisting of those who will be developing or implementing renderers or editors using it, or software that will communicate using MathML as a protocol for input or output. It is not a User's Guide but rather a reference document. This document begins with background information on mathematical notation, the problems it poses, and the philosophy underlying the solutions MathML proposes. MathML can be used to encode both mathematical notation and mathematical content. About thirty of the MathML tags describe abstract notational structures, while another one hundred provide a way of unambiguously specifying the intended meaning of an expression. Additional chapters discuss how the MathML content and presentation elements interact, and how MathML renderers might be implemented and should interact with browsers. Finally, this document addresses the issue of MathML entities (extended characters) and their relation to fonts. While MathML is human-readable it is anticipated that, in all but the simplest cases, authors will use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized software tools to generate MathML. Several early versions of such MathML tools already exist, and a number of others, both freely available software and commercial products, are under development."
[December 01, 1999] Using P3P for E-Commerce. The W3C has acknowledged a submission from Microsoft and Citibank, N.A on Using P3P for E-Commerce. Reference: W3C Note, 29-November-1999, edited by Joe Coco, Saul Klein, Dan Schutzer, San-Yuan Yen, and Alan Slater. "P3P [Platform for Privacy Preferences] does not currently have a data schema that allows merchants to express privacy practices or present to users P3P proposals for data required as part of an electronic commerce transaction. Given that online shopping is one of the most popular uses of the Internet, it is important for P3P to address ecommerce. The proposal being submitted herein provides an ECML compliant ecommerce schema and some simple privacy and security guidelines businesses can follow when using P3P to express ecommerce privacy practices and proposals. This document describes how P3P can be extended to support e-commerce. Specifically, we: (1) Define how the Ecommerce Modeling Language (ECML) can be used within P3P; (2) Define schema for additional elements that are not part of ECML 1.0; (3) identify privacy and security guidelines that merchants and technology companies can optionally employ to make e-commerce safer for both consumers and merchants. The document does not define schema or address privacy/security issues associated with other sensitive data (e.g., medical information, social security number, etc). In addition, this document does not define ECML -- ECML was developed separately by the members of the ECML consortium." Coded examples in XML instance syntax are provided in the document section 'Expressing ECML using the P3P XML Schema Notation' and in a formal P3P XML schema definition for a sample extended schema. Note that the 'last call' W3C Working Draft (The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification) was published on November 02, 1999. "P3P policies use an XML encoding of the P3P vocabulary to identify the legal entity making the representation of privacy practices in a policy, enumerate the types of data or data elements collected, and explain how the data will be used. In addition, policies identify the data recipients, indicate whether or not the data will be used in an identifiable way, and make a variety of other disclosures including whether or not a site has a data retention policy, information about assuring parties, and the address of a site's human-readable privacy policy."
[November 30, 1999] SML-DEV Mailing List Announced. A posting from Don Park announces a new mailing list 'SML-DEV' as "a place for those interested in SML to continue work on SML ['Simplified Markup Language']. "The mailing list is hosted by eGroups.com. You can join by sending a message to sml-dev-subscribe@eGroups.com. The SML-DEV archive, calendar, chat, poll, and other goodies can be found at http://www.egroups.com/group/sml-dev/info.html. SML-DEV is described as "the primary mailing list for SML developers. Discussion on this mailing list should be contained to SML in general and to SML/XML compatibility issues. General XML discussions should be brought up in the XML-DEV mailing list... The administrator of this mailing list is Don Park, the rascal who proposed SML in XML-DEV." For related lists, see "SGML/XML Discussion Groups and Mailing Lists."
[November 30, 1999] NewsML Mailing List Announced. A recent posting from Jo Rabin (VP of Development Reuters, and Chair of the IPTC News Structure and Management Working Group) announced a new 'NewsML' email forum. In support of the IPTC's NewsML standard and IPTC2000 initiative, there is a public discussion forum for NewsML, and [for] representation of news in XML. This list is open both to IPTC members and non-members. To join it, send mail to newsml-subscribe@egroups.com. You can post messages to its members via e-mail at newsml@egroups.com. The list archive (at http://www.egroups.com/group/newsml/) is open to the public. Those who have joined the list may contribute and can view list membership. For other references, see "NewsML and IPTC2000."
[November 30, 1999] New Working Draft: Character Model for the World Wide Web. A new W3C Working Draft document has been published describing a proposed Character Model for the World Wide Web. References: World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft 29-November-1999, edited by Martin J. Dürst (W3C) and François Yergeau (Alis Technologies, Inc.). The WD has been published as part of the W3C Internationalization Activity by the Internationalization Working Group (I18N WG), with the help of the Internationalization Interest Group (I18N IG). The character model "provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers a common reference for interoperable text manipulations on the World Wide Web. Topics addressed include encoding identification, early uniform normalization, string identity matching, string indexing, and URI conventions, building on the Universal Character Set (UCS); see ISO10646 and Unicode. Some introductory material on characters and character encodings is also provided." The document is also available in a ZIP archive. The rationale for the specification: "Starting with RFC 2070, the Web community has recognized the need for a character model for the World Wide Web. W3C's first step towards building this model was the adoption of the UCS (Universal Character Set) as the document character set for HTML 4.0. This choice was motivated by the fact that the UCS: (1) is the only universal character repertoire available, (2) covers the widest possible range, (3) provides a way of referencing characters independent of the encoding of a resource, (4) is being updated/completed carefully, (5) is widely accepted and implemented by industry. The UCS meant that HTML documents were not limited to containing ASCII characters. After HTML 4.0, W3C adopted the UCS for other specifications such as XML and CSS 2. UCS now serves as a common reference for W3C's specifications and applications. Where data transfer on the Web remained unidirectional (from server to browser) , and where the main purpose was to render documents, the use of the UCS without specifying additional details sufficed. However, the Web has grown: (1) Data transfers among servers, proxies, and clients, in all directions, have increased, (2) Non-ASCII characters are being used in more and more places, (3) Data transfers between different protocol/format elements (such as element/attribute names, URI components, and textual content) have increased, (4) People are defining more and more APIs, and not just protocols and formats. In short, the Web may be seen as a single, very large application, rather than as a collection of independent small applications. While these developments strengthen the requirement that UCS be the basis of a character model for the Web, they also create the need for additional specifications on the application of UCS to the Web. Some properties of the UCS that require additional specification for the Web include: (1) Choices of binary encoding forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, UCS-4); (2) Variable length encodings (e.g., due to the use of combining characters, surrogates, etc.); (3) Duplicate encodings (e.g., precomposed vs. decomposed); (4) Control codes for various purposes (e.g., bidirectionality control, symmetric swapping, etc.). It should be noted that such properties also exist in legacy encodings, and in many cases have been inherited by the UCS in one way or another from such legacy encodings. [This] document presents the additional specifications and requirements to ensure an interoperable character model for the Web."
[November 30, 1999] Revised W3C Working Draft - XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language. The W3C HTML Working Group has released a revised working draft specification for XHTML; it is "a revision of the Proposed Recommendation dated 24-August-1999 incorporating changes as a result of comments from the Proposed Recommendation review, and comments and further deliberations of the W3C HTML Working Group." References: XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language. A Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0, W3C Working Draft 24-November-1999. The draft document is also available in Postscript, PDF, ZIP archive formats. The Working Draft specification "defines XHTML 1.0, a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an XML 1.0 application, and three DTDs corresponding to the ones defined by HTML 4.0. The semantics of the elements and their attributes are defined in the W3C Recommendation for HTML 4.0. These semantics provide the foundation for future extensibility of XHTML. Compatibility with existing HTML user agents is possible by following a small set of guidelines." The W3C WG has reversed itself on one contentious point found in the preceding version of XHTML ('W3C Proposed Recommendation 24-August-1999'): in the PR, three separate namespaces for XHTML 1.0 (viz., a document rooted at <html>) were defined: (1) xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/strict" for the XHTML 1.0 Strict document type, (2) xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/transitional" for the XHTML 1.0 Transitional document type, and (3) xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/frameset" for the XHTML 1.0 Frameset document type. In the current WD, the (single) namespace for XHTML is defined to be http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml.
[November 24, 1999] XTech 2000: Call for Papers and Tutorials. David Megginson has posted an announcement and call for papers in connection with the XTech 2000 conference. "Together with my co-chairs, Jon Bosak and Tim Bray, I would like to invite the members of XML-DEV to submit proposals for papers and tutorials at the XTech 2000 conference, which will be held from February 27 to 2 March 2000 in San Jose, CA. XTech is sponsored by the GCA and is the major west-coast XML conference: it has a technical (rather than marketing) focus, and it is an excellent place for introducing or debating new ideas and technologies. For more information about the conference, please see http://www.gca.org/attend/2000_conferences/xtech_2000/. Presentations at XTech 2000 will be 30-45 minutes in length or featured in panel discussion format. Suitable topic areas may include, but are not limited to the following: Open Source XML, XML inside the firewall, XML and Non-Roman character sets, XML and portable devices (palmtops, cell phones, embedded systems), XML and Java, XML and Python, XML and publishing, XML/EDI XML and e-business, XML and Perl, Vocabularies, Query languages, Information Content and Exchange (ICE), Stylesheets, rendering and printing XML and co-existence Web graphics, Linking Core technology developments, Multipart document packaging, Schemas XML and ActiveX Authoring, XML and Unicode, Repositories XML for the individual user, Browsers Developer tools Application requirements, Transition considerations, and more." For other references, see the main conference entry.
[November 24, 1999] RDF::Graph V1.00b Perl Module. Janne Saarela recently posted an announcement for the release of an RDF::Graph V1.00b Perl Module. "Pro Solutions Ltd. is pleased to announce a Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model & Syntax Specification (22-Feb-99) API in Perl. Please note that this is a beta release. The API is implemented as a Perl module that works on top of the RDF::Parser module. Both modules are available for download at the Pro Solutions Warehouse. RDF::Graph enables an application to browse a spanned RDF graph. While browsing, the application can add and remove nodes or arcs. The nodes in the graph correspond with URI addressable resources or literal nodes (strings or well-formed xml markup). The arcs correspond with predicates defined by RDF schemas. Finally, the application can at any time export the graph into an RDF/XML encoded document. RDF::Graph also allows simple queries on the graph. For example, one can query for all properties of a given resource or values of a given property of a given resource. This querying satisfies also the closure requirement for a query language, i.e., running the query on one graph will result in another graph." Unrelated RDF news: (1) David Megginson posted a set of three examples of RDF (varying degrees of minimization/normalization); (2) Tim Berners-Lee has sketched a draft for a "Simpler Syntax for RDF" ['A strawman Unstriped syntax for RDF in XML'] - "The Cambridge [communique] meeting had a consensus that a simpler syntax for RDF. At the time I mentioned that I had done some thinking about it. The basic idea is that XML elements represent RDF properties: there is no 'striping' as in the standard RDF syntax, in which alternate layers in the nesting represent node types and arc types. In the 'unstriped' syntax, node types (if used) can be made explicit by an arc, or can be deduced from the domain and range of properties."
[November 24, 1999] Stylesheets for the XML and XSL Recommendations and Working Drafts. [Q] Stefano Mazzocchi asked on the XSL-List "Is there a public W3C Specification XSLT?" - I would like to play around with a W3C Specification DTD' -> 'XSL Formatting Objects DTD' stylesheet that allows me to create PDFs of W3C specifications and create a solid example to be included in Apache FOP which could be useful even for W3C people (I presume). Is there general interest for such thing? Is there a public 'W3C Specification DTD' -> 'HTML 4.0 Strict DTD'? [A] James Clark answered: "The ones used for the XSLT and XPath Recs are at [FTP locations named as follows]. xmlspec.xsl [Style Sheet for the XML and XSL Recommendations and Working Drafts] handles the standard W3C DTD. xpath.xsl imports xmlspec.xsl and adds rules to deal with the customizations used by the XPath specification; xslt.xsl imports xpath.xsl and adds rules to deal with the customizations used by the XSLT specification."
[November 23, 1999] W3C XML Linking Working Group Publishes XInclude. A posting from Daniel Veillard to XML-DEV announces the publication of a W3C 'NOTE' from the XML Linking Working Group: XML Inclusion Proposal (XInclude). References: W3C Note 23-November-1999, edited by Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft) and David Orchard (IBM). The note is from the XML Linking Working Group as part of the W3C XML Activity. "The purpose of this document is to set forth a minimal set of requirements and introduce a processing model and syntax for a general purpose inclusion facility. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML Infosets into a single composite Infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process uses an XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI-References). The general purpose inclusion mechanism is usable in well-formed but not necessarily valid XML documents. The XML Linking Working Group has decided to publish the XInclude proposal as a W3C Note from the XML Linking Working Group. This is the result of the evolution of the show="parsed" behaviour found in early XLink Working Drafts. It was decided that this functionality would be better handled in the core XML specification. Hence, at this time, this document is for discussion purposes only." Comments should be sent to www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org. For related specifications from the XML Linking Working Group, see "XML Linking Language."
[November 23, 1999] New W3C/IETF Working Draft for XML-Signature Core Syntax and Processing. A revised working draft document XML-Signature Core Syntax and Processing has been published simultaneously as a W3C Working Draft and an IETF Internet Draft ('draft-ietf-xmldsig-core-02.txt'). References: W3C Working Draft 19-November-1999, edited by Donald Eastlake, Joseph Reagle, and David Solo. The WD constitutes an editorial revision of the W3C Working Draft 20-October-1999 under the same title. This working draft document "specifies the syntax and processing rules for the encoding of digital signatures using XML. Such signatures can provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or locatable elsewhere." [...] This document describes the proposed syntax and processing rules for the XML Digital Signature specification. This specification provides a mechanism for applying digital signatures to XML documents and other Internet resources and encoding those signatures as XML. The structure allows for both embedded and detached signatures. An embedded signature can include the signature within the signed object or embed the signed object within the signature. A detached signature allows the signature to be independent of the object. The processing structure allows for switching between embedded and detached signatures without necessarily invalidating the signature. This document also defines other useful types including methods of referencing collections of resources, and key management and algorithm definitions. XML digital signatures are very flexible and may be used to apply signatures to any type of resource. The resource(s) being signed may be included within the signature, outside the signature in the same document, or completely outside of the document. XML digital signatures are represented by the Signature element which has the following structure: <Signature>(SignedInfo) (SignatureValue) (KeyInfo)? (Object)* </Signature>. This is a public WG Draft that follows the November IETF meeting. Consequently it includes a editoral changes and recrafting though no major design changes. This version includes the experimental use of XML Schema and XML entity references. The XML schema declarations within the specification may contain errors, though the complete WG schema definition does validate to the Schema DTD. We expect the final draft will include a DTD and schema. Please send com


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