Weekly XML News Archives - March 2000
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This page collects recent
XML developments from many
different sources. It is updated monthly.
Contributions
of newsworthy items will be considered.
Older news items are also archived.
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Week Ending March 5
New XSL Working Draft
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)
is presumably nearing Last Call since the
new March 1, 2000 Working Draft
follows the Jan. 12, 2000 version so quickly. It is unfortunate that XSL,
one of the longest W3C specs at over 360 pages
(not counting the separate
XSLT document), does not contain a Changes section so
we can more easily see how new versions differ.
W3C also published a new update to the
XML-Signature Syntax and Processing
Working Draft, a joint effort with the IETF.
SVG Enters Second Last Call
The Scalable Vector Graphics spec
entered second "Last Call" with a
new Working Draft.
Last Call ends March 31, 2000. The new draft includes
a big change: there are now two SVG variants:
Stylable SVG and Exchange SVG, described below.
"The SVG language has two distinct forms, each with its own DTD and its
own MIME type. Each form of SVG serves a particular purpose....
Stylable SVG
is the recommended storage format for SVG content targeted
at web environments.... [using] Cascading Style Sheets [CSS2] or XSL Transformations
[XSLT]....
Exchange SVG
is a language primarily targeted at tool interoperability."
An example showing the differences
is included in the new working draft.
Free SVG Authoring Tool from Jasc
In last month's news, we reported that Adobe released a free beta version of its
SVG browser plugin.
Jasc, the makers of the excellent
Paint Shop Pro software,
are offering a free preview of their new
SVG authoring tool called Trajectory Pro. You do not need to own Paint Shop Pro.
Both products support the Dec. 1999 SVG Working Draft, but presumably will be
updated to the March 2000 version before long.
XML Revolution: New XML Tutorial Slides
An ambitious 130-slide tutorial
covering XML, Namespaces, DTDs, XLink, XPointer, XPath,
XSLT, XML-QL, and DSD (Document Structure Description, a non-W3C schema language)
has been made available by
Anders Møller and Michael I. Schwartzbach of the
BRICS Research Centre in Denmark.
The slides contain links to many other references, include WDVL's XML section.
RDF Parser and Tutorial
In February, W3C published an
RDF Tutorial
(PostScript only, for some reason).
An older RDF tutorial
in HTML is also available, as is the
ICS-FORTH Validating RDF Parser (VRP).
XML Namespaces FAQ
A badly needed
XML Namespaces FAQ
was announced by Ronald Bourret. The FAQ includes
an executive summary of what XML namespaces are
and are not.
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