Andy Updegrove is keeping a running tally over at Standards Blog.
UPDATE: Updegrove is now reporting OOXML will pass the vote, and Slashdot has a roundup that includes reports of irregularities in the voting.
Category: Web technologies & information standards (Page 31 of 59)
Here we include topics related to information exchange standards, markup languages, supporting technologies, and industry applications.
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.
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/
For those of you who follow structured FDA submissions such as RPS (Regulated Product Submissions) and SPL (Structured Product Labeling), you should be interested in XPortal.,a portal for preparing electronic submissions for the FDA. Under the direction of the FDA, GlobalSubmit has developed XForms that capture these submissions.
There’s an interesting discussion about XML repositories going on over at the XQuery Talk mailing list at Stylus Studio’s website. Also, if you are interested in XML repositories, the best publicly available deep-dive is over at Ron Bourret’s site.
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:
- General CMS blogs like Trendwatch at CMS Watch and the blog Conquering Information Chaos by AIIM’s John Mancini
- Two titans of the general technology blogosphere, Dave Winer and Jon Udell.
- The DITA blogs at XML.org.
- The blog by Mark Logic CEO Dave Kellogg.
- The amazing eBook blog at TeleRead, maybe the most in-depth technology blog on a single subject out there.
- The blog by Brian Jones at Microsoft, who is fronting a lot of their work with Microsoft Office file formats at ISO.
- For DRM, the one and only source, Bill Rosenblatt’s DRM Watch.
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?
MadCap Software unveiled its roadmap for a complete, native XML software family designed to solve all of a company’s documentation and authoring demands. The MadCap family will include five new products– MadCap Blaze, MadCap Press, MadCap Team Server, MadCap X-Edit, and MadCap X-Edit Express, as well as enhanced versions of MadCap Analyzer, MadCap Flare, MadCap Lingo and MadCap Mimic. The integrated MadCap family will provide companies with a solution for developing and delivering content in print, online and on the Web in their language of choice. The entire MadCap product family is based on a common native XML architecture to provide a complete workflow solution, from authoring and multimedia creation; to collaboration, reporting and analysis; to translation and localization. The MadCap family features twelve integrated products for content development and delivery, collaboration, and localization. The solutions are based on the same XML architecture with Unicode support that drives MadCap’s main product, Flare, a native XML multi-channel, single-source content authoring solution. All products also utilize MadCap’s XML user interface, which enables users to take advantage of XML without writing code. The beta version of Blaze is now available as a free 30-day trial release, which can be downloaded at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/
- Apropos of nothing: when I hear people talking about “tagging” songs in a radio ad, I know that the average person understands markup and metadata even if they don’t necessarily use those words.
- Over at CMSWatch, Shawn Shell has a report on last week’s SharePoint conference. Shawn notes that SharePoint has now excelled a billion in revenue and 100 million licenses.
- Jeff Potts has some thoughts on the clash of cultures with the recent co-location of AIIM and DrupalCon.
- CM Pros has just put out their call for papers for their spring conference, to be co-located with Gilbane San Francisco in June.
- Bob Ducharme has a new tutorial about DITA specialization over at IBM’s developerWorks site.
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