Introducing the Extensible Markup Language (XML)
I realize that XML has been so important to how information is shared on the Internet but I’m not sure I understand the details. The jargon is a bit over my head.
A Survey of XML Standards: Part 1
A good overview of the basics with short definitions of XML standards. I used this as a reference when I was reading the other articles for this week. The XPointer, XLink, and XPath sections helped me the most.
In general, though, I don’t understand the why of many of these standards. For example, why would you use the XInclude specification? I’m having a hard time visualizing many of the components of XML.
Extending Your Markup: An XML Tutorial
XML is different (and an improvement) from HTML because it allows you to “meaningfully annotate text” – good in theory, but I don’t really understand what that means. Reading this article, I realized I’m still confused about namespaces and DTDs. And XSLT. And a whole lot of other stuff.
XML Schema Tutorial
Yikes, this is complicated. I like the tutorial but I’ll need to read it a few more times before anything sinks in. It doesn’t seem geared towards beginners – and I’m very much a beginner.
"Meaningful annotation" also caught my eye as a helpful way of understanding what the big ideas are here. If I"m getting this right, the main advantage is that HTML tells us about the layout,but not the content of the data. It does sound helpful and more simple that way, but then again, I'm kinda having to take their word on that being true.
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