The Gilbane Advisor

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First Public Working Draft of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Requirements Version 2.0

Some news from the W3C:

The XSL Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Requirements Version 2.0. This document enumerates the collected requirements for a 2.0 version of XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO), not for XSLT. XSL-FO is widely deployed in industry and academia where multiple output forms (typically print and online) are needed from single source XML. It is used in many diverse applications and countries on a large number of implementations to create technical documentation, reports and contracts, terms and conditions, invoices and other forms processing, such as driver’s licenses and postal forms. The XSL Working Group invites people to help prioritize the feature set of XSL 2.0 by completing a survey until the end of September 2008.

I talk to developers who have ideas about improving XLST. Now is your chance.

W3C Publishes “XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0” and Use Cases Draft

The World WIde Web Consortium XML Query Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts: “XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0” and “XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0 Use Cases.” The former defines an extension to XQuery 1.0 and XQuery Update facility. Expressions can be evaluated in a specific order, with later expressions seeing the effects of the expressions that came before them. This specification introduces the concept of a block with local variable declarations, as well as several new kinds of expressions, including assignment, while, continue, break, and exit expressions. The latter specification includes the usage scenarios that motivate the changes in the former. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-xquery-sx-10-20080328/. Also see https://gilbane.com/2008/03/first_public_working_draft_of/

Reading Online

So I have been reviewing an eBook device, the eBookWise-1150, for an upcoming issue of eContent Magazine, and I have to say that I am sold with the reading experience. More detail to come in the actual review of course, but I tried reading in a few settings–indoor evening light, on the subway aboveground and below, outdoors a bit–and I could read comfortably in each setting. I also like the size. This picture is my crude attempt to show the screen size of the eBookWise device against the other devices I often read on–my notebook, a desktop computer in the Gilbane office, and my tiny Motorola cell phone.

IDPF Digital Book 2008 to Present eBook Standards and Global Markets

Michael Smith, the new Executive Director at the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), writes with some news about their upcoming conference in New York, Digital Book 08. Michael notes that the emerging global eBook market and the adoption of the EPUB digital publication standard will be high on the agenda. Included in the program will be a session on “The eBook Industry in Japan.” Mikio Amaya, President and CEO of PAPYLESS Co Ltd, Tokyo, the number one retailer for PC and mobile eBooks in Japan, will be presenting. Michael reports that the number of visitors to PAPYLESS sites is up to 4,800,000 people monthly, with 43,000,000 monthly page views.

XML Resources

Jabin White from Silverchair was interviewing me the other day for their newsletter, and one of the questions was about which blogs I read. Of course, I read a lot–a quick count of my RSS reader shows me about 50 blogs under “content management” and “XML.” I also have a few RSS feeds for vendor press releases (and a note to vendors–I vastly prefer RSS delivery of press releases over email delivery, so if you have an RSS feed, please email me).

I need to do some housework in my blog list. Out of those 50 or so blogs, at least 10 seem to be completely dormant, and a number are very rarely updated. But there are some I read regularly. These include:

Aside from blogs, I read XML.com of course, and Robin Cover’s Cover Pages. (You have XML pretty much covered if you read these two things–and Gilbane.com of course!)

One other thing I do is use Google news and blog alerts, though sparingly, as you can really get overwhelmed. I get a daily Google Alert on XForms, for example, that is usually very good.

Note that I didn’t mention email. I do get a lot of things in my inbox, and read some, but I spend more time pruning my email than I do reading it. I also periodically unsubscribe to email lists and then curse myself for joining them in the first place. I read a few yahoo groups regularly (notably dita-users, now 1824 members strong!), but use the browser interface for that more and more.

So that’s my bag of tricks. Any thing else I should be reading?

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