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Re: XML Primer Re: TECHWR-L Premium Jobs, Events, and Announcements

Subject: Re: XML Primer Re: TECHWR-L Premium Jobs, Events, and Announcements
From: Lou Quillio <public -at- quillio -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 12:51:32 -0400


Just a few fine points, which might help clarify things for others.

Sean Hower wrote:

True that there is no requirement [to embed formatting instructions].

Far from there being no requirement, doing so is poor practice. One wants to embed semantics, to provide hooks that a separate transformational layer can exploit. Or not exploit, depending on the application.

The main point is that we don't know how the XML file will be used. There's no default application for creating, viewing or manipulating XML data, unless it's a text editor.

But even if you put format information into an XML
document, if you don't tell a parser what to do with that
information, you're not going to get format. This is different
from, say a word processor, where if you mark something as bold
you get bold. My intention in including this point was to relate
and contrast what a technical writer might typically be used to
as far as document production goes and how using XML for document
production is different.

This is all correct, but it's important not to play it down the middle. If I copy-paste text appearing in MS Word into, say, Notepad, all the formatting is of course gone. It really only existed in the context of using the file with MS Word. The application, its tools, and the file format are bound.

That XML is not bound to a presumed renderer is one of the tough things for GUI document app users to get their brains around. If they dive-in without getting this, they'll end up with crufty XML, and be frustrated.

If you're looking at output, without a stylesheet, you ain't
gettin squat. :-) Well, you'll get the default "style" as you do
when opening an XML document in a browser.

This is what I mean. Because MS Windows often associates XML files with MSIE, there's already growing danger that _people_ are mentally associating XML with web browsers. That's mistaken, and confuses the issue. For Windows users, it's more instructive to think of the default app for XML files as being Notepad (or another plaintext editor).

Thanks. There's a lot
to cover and my hope was to provide enough information to get
someone started. The second half has many resources to learn
more.

I agree there's a lot to cover, and that you've made the beginnings of a good primer. I've found, though, that it's important to steer folks away from mental traps when talking about XML for documents. It's almost better _not_ to use familiar metaphors. Just tear it all down and build the explanation from scratch.

OpenOffice Writer is instructive here, too:

Make a sample OO Writer document (keep it short). Open it with an archive manager, say WinZip. Inside you'll see five files: content.xml, meta.xml, mimetype, settings.xml, and styles.xml (plus the directory META-INF, containing the file manifest.xml, which contains pointers to the other files). Viewing each of these in a text editor (Notepad) lends real insight into how the data making up a typical word processing document can be stratified into layers of XML. The layers themselves are discrete, but within the context of OO Writer they mean something together.

To get an even clearer idea of what's going on, open these component XML files in an app that parses XML and displays hierarchy. A web browser will do, say Mozilla or Firefox. In particular, open content.xml. Sure, there are some style declarations and other tags only meaningful to OO Writer, but your text is also there, with your paragraphs and lists and whatnot neatly marked-up and unsullied by style info.

I've had good luck using OO.o's file formats to explain XML for documents. You might want to work it into your discussion.

Best,

LQ

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XML Primer Re: TECHWR-L Premium Jobs, Events, and Announcements: From: Sean Hower

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