XML.org

While XML has benefited from free and open source tools since its beginning, the open source and free software community has taken a measured approach to XML. Daniel Veillard gave the XML-centric crowd at XML Europe 2003 a look at XML from a different perspective.

Rather than looking at the tools created by and for the XML community, Veillard stepped back and looked at what the broader open source and free software communities have done with XML. While some of this sounded like the familiar list of XML toolkits and markup-oriented processing, much of it focused instead on how different projects were using XML. [more]

Living with Topic Maps and RDF
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopia

This paper is about the relationship between the topic map and RDF standards families. It compares the two technologies and looks at ways to make it easier for users to live in a world were both technologies are used. This is done by looking at how to convert information back and forth between the two technologies, how to convert schema information, and how to do queries across both information representations. Ways to achieve all of these goals are presented. [more]

eXtreme extensibility
Roger L. Costello

This document describes a way of designing XML Schemas which enables data to be collected (and stored as XML) in an independent, distributed fashion, and with no restrictions on the XML vocabulary. [more]

Adobe PDF Conversion: How, for Whom, and When?
Lazar Weisz, Data Conversion Laboratory

PDF Normal is an exact print-ready representation of the source format, whether paper or electronic. All page layout information, such as font properties, resolution and compression of images, and their location on the page, is contained within this format. The easiest way to understand PDF Normal is to think of it as a viewing platform for documents created in a word processing or publishing application: it displays exactly what the author has created. This allows for the most realistic representation of the source. Text in PDF Normal documents are not scanned bitmap representations of the original, as is the case in PDF Searchable Image. It comes directly from the application in which the document was authored. [more]

Validating XML with Schemas Part I
Whichman DeWhich

This tutorial basically shows you the necessary steps on validating an XML file with a schema file. It is adapted from the one found on java.sun.com which I thought was somehow not very explicit. The source code is clearer and has been tested with JAXP 1.2 running on J2SE 1.4.1. [more]

PDF and Acrobat in Federal Enterprise Architecture [pdf]
Chuck Meyers, Adobe Systems

Comparing Markup Languages
Jenni Tennison, Jenni Tennison Consulting

XML [Extensible Markup Language] is named after its extensibility, which gives us the ability to create markup languages tailored to suit our data and processing requirements. And, indeed, our ability to create our own markup languages has led to us using XML for representing a huge variety of information in many different ways. [more]

A Decade of DTDs and SGML in Scholarly Publishing
Bruce Rosenblum and Irina Golfman, Inera Inc.

From 1665, with the advent of Oldenburg's Philosophical Transactions, until recently, the primary method of scholarly communication was the printed journal [Eisenstein, 1979]. Easily read on paper and archived on long library shelves, the printed journal serves as the "social registry of scientific innovations" [Guédon, 2001].

With the growth of computer use, the invention of the World Wide Web, and the increased pace of scientific research, publishers realized that making research available electronically was vital to both researchers as well as their own business interests. To fulfill this requirement, publishers of scholarly journals turned to two formats, SGML and PDF [Bide, 2000]. [more]

The Topic Maps Handbook
empolis

Surely you have already heard of "Topic Maps", the latest ISO standard for knowledge management - supported by empolis' products. And you might have asked yourself "what are topic maps?" or, "what are topic maps actually good for - might they be the solution for my business problems?" To answer these and many more questions, the empolis white paper "The Topic Maps Handbook" has been written by our own expert and member of the ISO Standard Committee for Topic Maps Dr. H. Holger Rath. [more]

XSD Schemas in Book and Journal Publishing
Alex Brown, Griffin Brown Digital Publishing Ltd.

For publishers, SGML and XML have held out the prospect of achieving greater consistency and integrity of content; in other words, greater quality. Most people who have worked with large volumes of human-created SGML or XML data, however, will confirm that consistency and integrity are the exception, rather than the rule. This is hardly surprising: SGML and XML have presented publishers with technological challenges which they are typically not equipped to handle. Management of digital information requires working practices and tools closer to those used in the software development industry, than those used in the publishing and print industry. [more]

XML and PDF in Digital Printing
Kenneth Brooks Jr., Barnes & Noble, Inc.

In the world of trade book publishing where PDF workflows are just beginning to be accepted, XML workflows are still largely unknown. This discussion highlights one approach to merging the two types of workflow to create a highly successful digital printing and eBook distribution operation. [more]

What Is XSL-FO and When Should I Use It?
Stephen Deach, Adobe Systems, Inc.

A spate of recent product announcements regarding XSL-FO raised a number of questions in our minds: What is it? Which documents are a good fit for XSL-FO? Which aren't? What skills do publishers need to use XSL-FO? An author of the XSL-FO spec, Stephen Deach of Adobe Systems, offers these answers. [more]

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