Plea for help: The detriment of using Microsoft products

[smith at missioncriticallinux.com (Jeffry Smith)]

On Mon, 15 May 2000, Niall Kavanagh wrote:

> Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 16:26:46 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Niall Kavanagh <niall at kst.com>
> To: Jeffry Smith <smith at missioncriticallinux.com>
> Cc: Derek Martin <ddm at mclinux.com>, Paul Lussier <pll at mclinux.com>,
     GNHLUG <gnhlug at zk3.dec.com>, BLU Users' Group <discuss at Blu.Org>
> Subject: Re: Plea for help: The detriment of using Microsoft products
> 
> On Mon, 15 May 2000, Jeffry Smith wrote:
> 
> > Actually, it would be more to say that HTML is a select subset of XML 
> > (eXtensible Markup Language), which is itself a subset of SGML
> > (Standard Generalized Markup Language).  SGML was developed as a Gov't 
> 
> HTML a subset of XML? I wish!! ;) XHTML is a subset, HTML is not unless
> the author has taken great pains to ensure conformancy.
Well, the concepts were based on SGML, and yes, XHTML is the true XML
subset.

> 
> XML isn't exactly a subset of SGML either, more like a restricted form of
> it. 
> 
> > the transform does not take place via XML.  XML is a markup
> > language, XSL (Extensible Scripting Languguage) is a programming
> > language designed to manipulate XML, and XML can be manipulated by
> > other programming languages (perl::XML, Java XML parsers, etc).  
> >
> 
> XSL actually stands for Extensible Style Language I believe. Taking your
> description a bit further: XSL stylesheets are actually XML documents
> themselves, making it even easier to work with them. You can also use
> plain ol' CSS (cascading style sheets) to format XML-- this is infact how
> Mozilla formats XML documents (since it doesn't support XSL, yet).
You're right, got the name wrong.  The idea is a restricted language
for manipulating XML documents.  From what I understand, XSL has
nowhere near the power of perl, C, Java, etc (then again, if you need
that power, use perl, C, Java, etc).  Good for basic transforms.
According to a Lotus talk I attended, another item for manipulating
XML is FO - Formatting Objects.  This is for transforming XML
documents into precise formatted structures (example:  XML describing
an ad for web, newspapers, & posters.  for the web, basic XSL.  for
newspapers, you need more precise control, so the FO would allow you
to specify that an element goes, say 34 points from the right edge).

>  
> > Very "Unixy" in design & feel (lots of small tools doing one thing
> > only, instead of one big thing).  It's not the Silver Bullet that some
> > make it out to be (every new thing in SW is a silver bullet, yes?),
> > but, because, if you have the DTDs, you know the structure, and the
> > clean separation of structure, info, presentation, and manipulation,
> > once you have a tool that reads DTDs and can apply transform rules, to
> > manipulate another document written to another DTD, you just plug in
> > the new DTD.
> > 
> 
> Silver bullet? It's Java for the new millenium!! ;)
> 
> For those interested, more reading on xml.com, xmlhack.com, and
> xmlsoftware.com. As Jeffrey said, it's no silver bullet, but it can make
> your life a lot easier in certain situations.
> 
> --
> Niall Kavanagh, niall at kst.com
> News, articles, and resources for web professionals and developers:
> http://www.kst.com
> 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Smith      Technical Sales Consultant     Mission Critical Linux
smith at missioncriticallinux.com phone:978.446.9166,x271 fax:978.446.9470
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought for today:  There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking
about.
		-- John von Neumann


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