- Markup Languages
- What Does XML Look Like?
- What Does XML Look Like in a Browser?
- What's So Great About XML?
- Well-Formed XML Documents
- Valid XML Documents
- Parsing XML Yourself
- XML Resources
- XML Editors
- XML Browsers
- XML Parsers
- XML Validators
- CSS and XSL
- XLinks and XPointers
- URLs Versus URIs
- ASCII, Unicode, and the Universal Character System
- XML Applications
XML Resources
A great many XML resources are available to you online. Because it's very important to know about them to get a solid background in XML, I'm going to list them here.
The XML specification is defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and that's where you should start looking for XML resources. Here's a good starter list (we'll see all these topics in this book):
http://www.w3c.org/xmlThe World Wide Web Consortium's main XML site, the starting point for all things XML.
http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points"XML in 10 Points" (actually only seven), an XML overview.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xmlThe official W3C recommendation for XML 1.0, the current (and only) version. It won't be easy to read, howeverthat's what this book is all about, translating that kind of document to English.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-stylesheet/All about using stylesheets and XML.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/All about XML namespaces.
http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/All about Extensible Stylesheet Language, XSL.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xsltAll about XSL transformations, XSLT.
http://www.w3.org/XML/Activity.htmlAn overview of current XML activity at W3C.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/, http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/, and http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/XML Schemas, the alternative to DTDs.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink The XLinks specification.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xptrThe XPointers specification.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/The XHTML 1.0 specification.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/The XHTML 1.1 specification.
http://www.w3.org/DOM/The W3C Document Object Model, DOM.
Many non-W3C XML resources are out there, too (a casual search for the word XML on the Web turns up more than 13 million matches). Here's a list to get started with:
http://www.xml.comThis site is filled with XML resources, discussions, and notifications of public events.
http://www.oasis-open.orgOASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is dedicated to the adoption of product-independent formats such as XML.
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http://www.xml.orgXML.ORG is designed to provide information about the use of XML in industrial and commercial settings. It's hosted by OASIS and is a reference for XML vocabularies, DTDs, schemas, and namespaces.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/default.aspMicrosoft's XML page.
There are also quite a few XML tutorials out there online (searching for "XML Tutorial" brings up more than 2,300 matches). Here are a few to start with:
http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/xml-onlinecourse-bytitle/8C8A8628B3DD7EDB852567BD000A8A64?OpenDocument IBM's free tutorials.
http://www.ucc.ie/xml/A comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list about XML, kept up by some of the contributors to the W3C's XML Working Group. Considered by many the definitive FAQ on XML.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/tutorial/default.aspMicrosoft's XML tutorial.
http://www.xml.com/pub/98/10/guide0.htmlXML.com's XML overview.
In addition, you might find some newsgroups on Usenet useful (note that your news server might not carry all these groups):
comp.text.xmlA good general-purpose, free-floating XML forum.
microsoft.public.dotnet.xmlXML discussions and questions concerning using XML with Microsoft's .NET initiative.
microsoft.public.xmlThe general Microsoft XML forum.
That's a good start on XML resources available on the Internet (note that you can use a search engine such as http://groups.google.com to search these groups for XML material). What about XML software? I'll take a look at what's out there, starting with XML editors.