[XML VQG] (Introductory sections)

• Introduction
  
  
  
  • HTML is the first language of the web, and XML is the second language.
    
  • "HTML was designed to display information, XML was designed to manage it."
    
  
  
• What is XML?
  
  
  
  • XML is a specification for;
    
    
    
    • storing information,
      
    • describing the structure of the information.
      
    
    
  • Here, the author try to explain these two points with a tiny example of XML documents. I felt something not so comfortable with the author's attitude, i.e. the author didn't mention explicitly the fact that the meaning of the tag or the information completely depends on the vocabulary of English (as a natural language).
    
  • In the end, XML is a set of rules for defining new markup languages whatever you like. This reminds me of FOL.
  
  
• The Power of XML
  
  
  
  • XML suits for storing and carrying information, more that HTML do.
    
  • XML is easily extended and adapted, as compared with HTML.
    
  • XML document is simply a text file.
    
  • XML is open standard.
    
  
  
• Extending XML
  
  
  
  • XML tags have no inherent formatting.
    
  • We have to define how to display it using other facility like XML (eXtensible Stylesheet Language).
    
  • XSL is composed of three parts;
    
    
    
    • XSLT
      
    • XPath
      
    • XSL-FO
      
    
    
  • There are also several ways to define the structures of XML document. DTD, XML Schema language and so on. We can use XML Namespace to extend XML Schema.
    
  
  
• XML in Practice
  
  
  
  • RSS and Ajax are the good examples on how to use XML in practice.
    
  
  
• About This Book
  
  
  
  • A Guided Tour
    
  • XML2e Companion Web Site (http://www.kehogo.com/xml2e)
    
  • From 2001 to 2008
    
  
  
• What This Book is Not
  
  
  
  • This book is not exhaustive but introductory.
    
  
  

Oops. Learning something related to programming made me happy.