Surprise: XML-based Document Formats Can Be Smaller
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IT managers worry that XML documents will be bloated, but compression can yield smaller files and storage savings.
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Jonathan Robie explains the role of XQuery, a query language for XML data, and its importance to IT business users.
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One of the major contributors to the leading open source alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite announced early this morning it will be offering additions to OpenOffice enabling it to support Office 2007's new XML-based Office Open XML format.
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Asymptote (http://asymptote.sourceforge.net) is a powerful descriptive vector graphics language for technical drawing, inspired by MetaPost but with an improved C++-like syntax. Asymptote provides for figures the same high-quality level of typesetting that LaTeX does for scientific text.    A new picture size routine, which maps specified user coordinates to a given final size, provides a convenient way of forcing the plotted  subregion of a graph to have a fixed size. The correct surface normal is chosen when calculating lighting. The comment character can now be escaped when reading strings from data files (but is disabled when reading raw characters with getc). The new word file mode is useful for reading  white space-delimited strings. PostScript output files are now explicitly designated as EPSF in the header line. The minimum width and height of flowchart blocks may now be controlled separately. Interpolation and knot theory modules were added. The usage of path vs. guide in the base files was  standardized.   https://sourceforge.net/projects/asymptote
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The first major upgrade to the HTML specification since 1997, HTML 5, was published in an early draft form Tuesday by the World Wide Web Consortium, featuring APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics and control of audio and video content. The final version of the specification is not expected until late-2010, and it will be up to browser vendors to support it, one analyst stressed.HTML serves as the base markup language for building Web pages. HTML 5 is intended to boost interoperability and reduce software costs by providing rules on handling correct HTML documents and recovering from errors.With version 5, W3C has two main intentions: Catching up to how HTML actually is practiced versus what the specifications say should be practiced and adding new features, said Dan Connolly, a co-chair of the W3C HTML Working Group. "We've been doing a lot of things [since the last upgrade], but basically, the scale of the Web went way up, and the scale of our efforts really didn?t match it until now," he said.New features mostly pertain to Web applications and integrating video as a first-class medium on the Web, Connolly said. In proposing its new features, W3C studied what people do on the Web and what leading-edge Web sites do. "Now it's time to standardize them," so these capabilities can show up in authoring tools, said Connolly.By standardizing these capabilities, they become easier to learn, and it is easier to hire someone who can tackle these tasks, according to Connolly.Other new capabilities planned for HTML 5 include the ability for users to edit documents and parts of documents interactively. Also planned are features to make it easier to represent familiar page elements, including section tags, page footers, and navigation elements. Maintenance of persistent client-side storage is another highlight in version 5.In developing a new standard, W3C was mindful of Web progressions, such as the emergence of media-rich Web sites over static page collections, and innovations like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Recent innovations have boosted demand for a standard for building Web applications that interoperate across mobile and desktop platforms, W3C said.W3C will need adoption of HTML 5 by companies supplying browsers, said Jeffrey Hammond, Forrester senior analyst. "I guess the big comment that I would have is [HTML 5 is] going to be important to the extent that browsers move forward and adopt it," he said. "Developers are interested in writing HTML that goes to as many browsers on as many devices as possible."Mozilla already is supporting HTML 5 in its Firefox browser, the company said."Mozilla has been actively involved in the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) applications spec, which is the basis for HTML 5," said, Vlad Vukicevic, infrastructuralist for Mozilla, in a statement released by the company. "Firefox 3 supports many parts of the proposed standard, including DOM (Document Object Model) Storage, offline apps, the HTML Canvas, and many smaller features. While we are supporting these parts, there are other parts of the full HTML 5 proposal that are still under discussion."Other browser companies, including Microsoft, Apple and Opera, are active participants in the HTML Working Group, W3C said.Capabilities offered in HTML 5 currently are being offered through plug-in technologies, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, Hammond said."The most interesting thing will be what happens when those capabilities get into native HTML and what impact that has on the rich Internet development market," he said. Specific plug-in technologies are not supported on every platform, he said. "[Thusly], as a developer I might be more interested in writing HTML 5," Hammond said.The finalization of the specification will take some time, though. The plan is to have it available in a preliminary candidate recommendation form in the middle of 2009 and as a formal, final recommendation by September 2010, Connolly said. The process is lengthy because it takes time to get the technology to the point where Web authors can rely on it, he said. "It's up to each Web author to decide when he wants to implement new features," he noted.Also new to HTML 5 is it will be the first version implemented under the W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy. This gives implementers greater assurance that standards can be implemented free of royalties, W3C said.
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New version allows users to categorize entries and make layout changes more easily.
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Related to an issue from a previous post, Greg Beaver has posted a solution to his Relax NG schema problem in PHP.   Shortly after my last blog post, I got a very helpful email from Rob Richards, who offered to help me with my trials and tribulations. He took a quick look at the schema for package.xml, and a sample package.xml and was able to find two small tweaks to make parsing actually work (gasp). This changes everything. I am abandoning the creation of a relax NG schema in favor of the battle-tested xsd. The error messages for xsd validation are far clearer than the rng ones.   The code included shows how much simpler the error messages are with the XSD validation option versus the RNG ones.
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Bigger and brawnier isn't necessarily better for everyone. FileMaker's new desktop database adheres to the Apple division's credo that ease of installation and use is more important to its user community than whizzy new features that add bulk and complexity.
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In a new post on his blog, Kore Nordmann takes a look at a feature that's been around a long time (first introduced in a message board application) - BBCodes.   The discussion on my blog post "Do not use regular expressions for parsing" ended in a discussion about BBcodes in general. I just used them as an example to demonstrate why it it is impossible to parse such a language with regular expressions - and mentioned in a subclause, that I don't see any sense in using them at all.   He looks at some of the myths surrounding them and their use (more secure, easier to use, safer than HTML) and gives some reasons for making teh choice of HTML over them.
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See how smarter documents are working for others at
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(Source: Xythos)  Many organizations still wrestle with how to address compliance requirements through document management. They know that file management and collaboration tools lack many required features and high-end document management systems can be expensive to deploy and difficult for the average team member to use. What's needed is a solution that is "just the right size". Find out how Basic Content Management can be a critical component to transform compliance projects from a burden into an investment.
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One thing Tantek  is good at pointing out is that for the most part RDF is a failure in the wild.  I don't think the problem is RDF itself or even that the RDF/XML serialization format is so difficult.  The major problem is that developers are lazy and most of them aren't as smart as RDF format creators and specification authors.  In a former life I was a member of the RSS 1.0 Working Group and once argued that RDF was inevitable .  The theory being that people are going to want to extend RSS and stretch it into new and complicated areas and that only RDF could accomplish this.  The problem is that the RDF/XML serialization format is beyond horrible.  As an olive branch I presented my though ...
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The U.S. government's weather data is now available in a more friendly XML format, so everyone can make use of it. By Daniel Terdiman.
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On the PHP-Tools Blog, there's a new posting about a new library for PHP based off of the original XJConf and ported over to make XJConf For PHP.   XJConf allows you to map complex XML documents to data structures by defining the mapping rules in a simple XML-based language. You may define the type for each tag (objects, arrays, primitives) as well as how its attributes, child elements and enclosed character data should be treated. When creating objects, you may also define the setter methods to nest the objects.   There are examples and documentation if you'd like to give it a try and, when you're ready, you can grab it from their PEAR channel or http://svn.xjconf.net/XJConfForPHP/
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The O'Reilly Network has a new article posted for all of those out there that are looking to make writing large documentation/publications much simpler.
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Microsoft's Open XML format has won ECMA approval as a standard, giving Redmond, so often the opponent of open-source software, a better footing to compete with OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument Format (ODF).
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The defeat of Microsoft&#39;s Open XML proposal before the International Standards Organization is more than a small hiccup in the software giant&#39;s plans to make its document file format a global standard, some analysts now say.