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XML for the absolute beginner
A guided tour from HTML to processing XML with Java
Page of 3
- There are so many XML resources on the Web, I've had to categorize. The first section here is the most useful, since the documents are either high-level summaries or excellent link sites. Apologies to anyone who was omitted.
- XML and JavaGeneral XML resources
- "XML, Java and the Future of the Web," Jon Bosak. The paper that started it all, at least from a Java programmer's point of
view. Definitely worth a read, even if it's a bit dated. Jon is commonly considered to be the father of XML. Funny how all
of these technologies seem to have paternity
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/why/xmlapps.html - "Media-Independent PublishingFour Myths about XML" Jon Bosak
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/why/4myths.htm - Robin Cover's XML-SGML site is, according to my SGML buddies, the bible of XML resources
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/ - The W3C's XML resource page lets you cheer from the sidelines as XML technology proposals develop into recommendations, or
join in the fray on their active mailing lists
http://www.w3.org/XML/ - OASIS, the Web site of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, offers general news and information
about XML
http://www.oasis-open.org - The Graphics Communications Association, host of the XTech '99 conference (March 11 to 13, 1999, San Jose, CA) and the upcoming
XML Europe '99 conference in Granada, Spain, (April 26 to 30, 1999) has a Web site packed with XML information
http://www.gca.org/ - XML.com is great for watching trends and digging up XML news
http://www.xml.com - Textuality hosts Tim Bray's site. Check it out for a look at the "big picture" of how XML fits into the structured document
universe -- and for a look at Lark, Tim's nonvalidating XML processor
http://www.textuality.com/ - The XML FAQ
http://www.ucc.ie/xml/ - IBM's XML Website is an outstanding supplement to alphaWorks
http://www.software.ibm.com/xml/index.html - XML and Java
- "XML and JavaThe Perfect Pair" by Ken Sall (Internet.com, November 1998) provides information about XML, Java, and why these
two are a match made in heaven
http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/Java/index.html - Tutorials and training
- Generally Markup, Richard Lander's Web site may be of interest to you if you haven't yet read enough about markup languages
http://pdbeam.uwaterloo.ca/~rlander/ - The Mulberry Technologies Web site is a good resource for commercial training in XML, as well as general XML and SGML consulting
by seasoned SGML experts
http://www.mulberrytech.com - The Web Developer's Virtual Library Series on XML offers good summaries of various XML technologies, as well as annotated
indices of XML software
http://wdvl.com/Software/XML - Microsoft's Site Builder Network provides a series of articles called "Extreme XML," one of which appears in the following
link. While some of it focuses on Microsoft-only, Windows-only technology, there's still some great stuff here
http://www.microsoft.com/sitebuilder/magazine/xml.asp - Webmonkey has a good series of articles introducing readers to XML. The index is at
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/xml/?tw=xml - "What the ?xml!" by L.C. Rees offers an interesting take on XML and why it's necessary -- nicely written and entertaining
to boot
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/5957/wxml.html - "The XML Revolution" by Dan Connolly is a quick backgrounder on XML (Nature)
http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/xml.html - Cascading Style Sheets
- W3C's CSS page will get your started learning about CSS
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ - "Cascading Style Sheets Designing for the Web" by Hakom Wium Lie and Bert Bos (Addison-Wesley, 1997) Sample chapters from
the book appear at
http://www.awl.com/cseng/titles/0-201-41998-X/liebos/ - Extensible Style Language (XSL)
- The W3C's XSL page
http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ - Read (and comment on) the W3C's XSL Working Draft (currently dated December 16, 1998)
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl - "The Extensible Style LanguageStyling XML Documents" (WebTechniques Magazine) XSL tutorial information and examples
http://www.webtechniques.com/features/1999/01/walsh/walsh.shtml - Microsoft's XML and XSL tutorial site is especially interesting because of the recent release of client-side XSL in Internet
Explorer 5.0. Extensive and excellent
http://www.microsoft.com/xml - If you're still using IE 4.0, you can still experiment with XML, using Microsoft's internal DOM
http://www.microsoft.com/xml/articles/xmlmodel.asp - If you want to experiment with XSL, try downloading IBM's LotusXSL. It's all Java, and for the time being, it's free
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/LotusXSL - Or, you can try James Clark's XT XSL engine, downloadable from
http://www.jclark.com/xml/xt.html - Upcoming XSL contest
- Though the details aren't yet worked out, Sun Microsystems will soon announce a call for proposals for a 0,000 grant to develop a client-side processor for full XSL implementation in Mozilla. It will also announce, in conjunction with Adobe, a contest (first prize 0,000, second prize 0,000) to develop a pure-Java, server-side processor of the entire XSL language, to format XML to PDF (Adobe's document format). Keep watching the Java Developer Connection (requires free registration), and Mozilla sites for the eventual announcements.
- "XTech '99Java and the XML wave" by Mark Johnson (JavaWorld, April 1999) offers the most current information on the contest
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-1999/jw-04-xtech.html - Simple API for XML (SAX)
- The definitive description of SAX is available online. You can also download free SAX software here
http://www.megginson.com/SAX/index.html - Document Object Model (DOM)
- The W3C information page for the Document Object Model appears on the W3C site
http://www.w3c.org/DOM/ - Among other things, you'll find the W3C Recommendation for DOM Level 1
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/ - The Java bindings for DOM, for both XML and HTML, are in this Recommendation appendix
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/java-language-binding.html - A great DOM tutorial by William Robert Stanek appears on PC Magazine Online in "Object-Based Web Design." This tutorial includes a discussion of using DOM with IDL, CORBA's Interface Definition Language
http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/content/17/13/tf1713.001.html - Dynamic HTML
- The Dynamic HTML Resource page contains several links to DHTML articles
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/dynamic_html/?tw=dynamic_html - Software
- Epicentric, Inc.
http://www.epicentric.com - More XML (and other Java) technology than you can shake a stick at is available at IBM's alphaWorks
http://alphaworks.ibm.com - Version 2 of IBM's excellent XML parser package, xml4j, is available for download. This package includes several parsers,
both validating and nonvalidating
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xml4j - See also IBM's exciting Bean Markup Language project, which uses XML to represent and manipulate JavaBeans
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/bml - Another free Java XML parser was written by the indefatiguable James Clark, download at
http://www.jclark.com/xml/xp/index.html - XEENA is IBM alphaWorks's DTD-guided XML editor. You want it, you need it, you gotta have it
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xeena - Mozilla.org is the open source community's effort to extend the Netscape source code. Find out about it at
http://www.mozilla.org - Information about XML and CSS in Mozilla appears at
http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/doc/xml.html - You can read about Sun's XML and Java initiatives at
http://www.sun.com/990310/java_xml.jhtml - In addition, Java Project X includes source code downloadable from
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/earlyAccess/xml/index.html - ArborText has a suite of sophisticated tools for editing SGML, XML, and XSL
http://www.arbortext.com/Products/products.html - Oracle8i from Oracle corporation uses XML inside the Oracle core
http://www.oracle.com/xml/ - Download Oracle's free XML for Java parser
http://technet.oracle.com/direct/3xml.htm - Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0, released this month, implements part of the XSL spec. You can find it on Microsoft's Web
site -- and also just about anywhere else
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm - You can also download a beta release of Microsoft's XML Notepad editor (limited to running only on Microsoft Windows)
http://www.microsoft.com/xml/notepad/download.asp - Vervet Logic of Bloomington, IN, has announced XML <PRO>, a commercial XML editor
http://www.vervet.com/ - Majix, to transform XML to HTML via XSL, is available at
http://www.tetrasix.com/ - If your French is rusty, you might want to try the English-language site at
http://www.tetrasix.com/english/default.htm - History
- Read about the history of HTML here. It's part of an online book, so there's no telling for how long it will be available
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~wwwbtb/hardcopy/book/chap4/origins.html - The two chapters listed below (of the book "HTML Unleashed" by Rick Darnell, et al., also cover some of the technical background of these languages.
- SGML history http://www.webreference.com/dlab/books/html/3-2.html
- XML history (such as it is)
http://www.webreference.com/dlab/books/html/38-0.html - Nothing to do on Friday night? Why not read up on the history of SGML? Charles Goldfarb, considered by many to be the "father
of SGML," reminisces publicly at
http://www.sgmlsource.com/Goldfarb/history/index.htm - Useful XML and SGML information appears at Goldfarb's Web site, including a comprehensive XML book list
http://www.sgmlsource.com - Miscellaneous links
- Uche Ogbuji has written an interesting article in LinuxWorld about using XML on Linux in the Enterprise. It's at
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-03/lw-03-xml.html - Bluestone Software has recently made a splash with pure-Java XML application servers, and a freely downloadable Swing package
called XwingML
http://www.bluestone.com - Everyone (except Microsoft) is pretty freaked out about the US Patent Office awarding Microsoft a patent for certain kinds
of functionality in style sheets. What happens with this patent, and its impact on developing technology, remains to be seen.
Judge for yourself by reading the patent at
http://www.patents.ibm.com/patlist?icnt=US&patent_number=5860073 - The title of the sample recipe is actually the title of a very funny song by William Bolcom. Similar recipes may be found
at
http://www.b4uby.com/granny/gsoup.htm - The song appears on a compact disc (with other odd songs) available from the Public Radio Music Source at
http://75music.org/best/docs/keepers.htm