XML

W3J Issue on XML: Call for Papers

In order to supplement the XML specifications with usage guides, implementation details, application notes, history, and rationale, W3C and O'Reilly are dedicating the Fall 97 issue of the World Wide Web Journal to XML. The title is XML: Principles, Tools, and Techniques and the guest editor is yours truly.

I'm interested in articles on implementation techniques, document production with xml, and other novel applications, but other ideas are welcome too.

I'm mostly interested in articles that have already been written, and just need editing for publication--the deadline is very soon. If you're interested in contributing, drop me a note.

Implementation Techniques

a well-formedness checker on one page of code

perhaps in perl4, to demonstrate the "trivial grammar"

stream-editing in XML

demonstrates a useful class of processing that doesn't require a DTD: for example, update cross-references, spell-checking, etc. (demonstrate this without using an XML parsing library-- just open code it.)

test suite

in addition to examples in spec, the article should show a few tricky cases and boundary conditions, with a link to a larger, collaboratively developed test suite online

Java Beans for XML/CSS display.

(hark back to MiasWWW widgets)

XML libraries: interfaces and components/modules

• a Java interface
• a modula-3 interface/module for XML
• a perl 5 module for XML
• an XML interface in scheme
• a python module for XML
• C/C++, packaged as a COM component for use from Java, python, perl, javascript, vbscript, etc.

Document Production with XML

an emacs mode for XML

revision of psgml mode?
demonstrates forward and backward parsing, random-access to the document, editing operations that invalidate the document structure

Java Beans for editing XML/CSS

XML/CSS to "legacy" HTML

production tool: (ad-hoc perl thingy?)

XML to PS/PDF tool/application

provide a service ala HTML validation service?

Novel Applications

aside from the use of XML for traditional documents...

chemical markup

Rust @@xml-dev

database interchange

using XML for knowledge representation