Microsoft has been awarded a patent for XML word processing.
Author: Bill Trippe (Page 20 of 23)
Every now and then I look at IBM’s alphaWorks, their web site for emerging technologies. A recent addition is a Compound XML Document Editor. The Editor is an Eclipse plug-in, and supports multiple namespaces, XForms, SVG, MathML, and a number of other document types.
I remain a fan of Onfolio, which began life as kind of a personal knowledge manager for Web-based content, but has evolved to also handle RSS feeds and provide more publishing capabilities. I have used it for quite a while now to maintain my eForms Resources page, and am currently using the new version, 2.0, which supports Firefox, which is now my primary browser.
I’ve had some correspondence with Sebastian Gard, who does product marketing for Onfolio. He asked me for some feedback on 2.0 compared to the earlier version of the product, and I offered the following.
We had an interesting briefing with Jerry King, Vice President & General Manager, XML Products, for Data Direct Technologies. Jerry champions DataDirect’s XQuery initiatives and products, including Stylus Studio, their XML IDE.
Jerry makes a great case for XQuery being a game-changing technology. That’s his job, of course, but I tend to agree. I am involved in a project now where XQuery is the central technology, and I am convinced of its core benefits for this client and for others. There is also this roundup about XQuery on Internetnews.com that makes some of the points Jerry did, and includes some interesting quotes from Sandeepan Banerjee of Oracle, who leads their XML initiatives.
Writing for Publish.com, Matt Hicks provides a very good update on SVG support in the browser, putting in perspective recent announcements about SVG support in upcoming versions of Opera and Mozilla Firefox.
John Yunker is speaking on globalization, as part of the session, Content Management Globalization. John’s a great speaker, and has a very useful blog, Web Globalization News.
Eric Silberstein is the founder of Idiom and an expert on DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Eric and I have done a couple of webinars recently on DITA and globalization, and his presentation today is a more comprehensive version of the one he has given in the Webinars. Eric is also an excellent speaker, and has a lot of credibility on this topic. Click here for the Idiom-sponsored white paper on DITA, and click here for Robin Cover’s resource page on DITA.
I am sitting in on the session, A Look at Some Management & Technical Challenges, which is moderated by Seth Gottlieb of Optaros. The speakers are Ann Rockley, Jan Johnston-Tyler, Hardware Writing Manager at Juniper Networks, and Scott Handley, Master Technologist at Hewlett-Packard.
I am liveblogging the Keynote Debate between Microsoft and Sun on what is the right strategy for information interchange. The panelists are Tim Bray, Director, Web Technologies, Sun Microsystems, and Jean Paoli, Senior Director, XML Architecture, Microsoft. Jon Udell is moderating.
- Actually Frank Gilbane is moderating, and not Jon, so we will hear some of Jon’s thoughts as well
- Frank: the session is really about strategies for sharing, preserving, and integrating document content, especially document content with XML.
- Frank gave some background about the European Union attempts to standardize on Microsoft Office or OpenOffice
- Tim elucidated some requirements of your data format. (1) Technically unencumbered and legally unencumbered (2) High quality (and a notable aspect of quality is allowing a low barrier to entry). Tim: “As Larry Wall (the inventer of Perl) noted, easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible).”
- Jean predicted that by 2010, 75% of new documents will be XML.
- Tim agreed with Jean that 75% of new documents will be XML by 2010, but asked how many of them will be XHTML (as opposed toa more specialized schema, I assume).
- Some agreement by all that electronic forms are an important aspect of XML authoring, but Tim thinks the area is “a mess.” I’m paraphrasing, but Tim commented on the official XForms release, “Well, it’s official.”
- Jean commented that XML-based electronic forms are made more difficult because forms themselves require consideration of graphical user interface, interactivity, and even personalization to a degree. This suggests forms are more complex than documents. (And this reminds me of a comment Mark Birbeck made about there being a fine line between an electronic form and an application.)
- Good question from the audience. So much time has elapsed since SGML got started, and we are still only have XSL-FO (which this person was not happy with). What does this suggest about how long it will take to get better, high-quality typographically sophisticated output?
- Tim would suggest we are seeing some improvement, beginning with better resolution on the screen.
- Another commenter weighed in, suggesting that format is important and format does convey meaning. Would like to hear that the tools are going to get better.
- Frank: when do you need a customized schema?
- Jean: best way to safeguard your data and systems is to have an XML strategy. You can gain efficiencies you never had before. Also suggested that the Microsoft schemas will not somehow trap your content into Microsoft’s intellectual property.
- Jon’s takeaways: (1) software as service (2) XML-aware repositories and (3) pervasive intermediation (the content flows in such a way that you can intermediate it)
