The SGML Forum of New York
Re: Summary of the March 13th presentation on XML
"XML and the Future of the Web" A Summary of the March 13th meeting of
the SGML Forum of New York, Inc.
by William W. Byler
InfoStructure
212-228-3369
wwbyler@ix.netcom.com
The first meeting of the Forum's 1997 season drew a SRO audience of
60+ attendees to New York's Science, Industry, and Business Library at
34th St. and Madison Avenue. The meeting was the first in the Forum's
new bimonthly, afternoon meeting format, running from 2:30 to 6:00
p.m. Thanks are in order to Eli Wilner and Mark Gross of Data
Conversion Laboratory for organizing the meeting.
TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP FORMING
Joe Davidson of SoftQuad spoke briefly to propose creating a Technical
Advisory Group within the Forum. The goal of this group would be to
represent the business interests of the end-user community. Joe
pointed out that current organizations represent academic and
commercial (vendor) interests, but there is no organization today that
represents the needs, concerns or interests of users. A technical
committee organized by the Forum can represent users' issues both to
vendors and to standards organizations such as GCA and NISO.
While the charter for this Technical Advisory Group will need to be
agreed upon, the group already has an assignment. The GCA has asked,
at Microsoft's request, that the Forum provide input on what
features and capabilities would be desirable for an XML engine in
Internet Explorer 5.0.
A signup sheet was circulated for those interested in serving on this
group; 16 attendees signed up. Anyone receiving this message who wants
to participate should contact Joe directly at 212-880-6430 or by email
at wjd_sqny@mindspring.com.
KEYNOTE TALK: XML AND THE FUTURE OF THE WEB
The afternoon's keynote address, "SGML and the Future of the Web: XML
and Other Alternatives," was presented by Christoper R. Maden of
EBT/Inso Corporation. Maden covered XML from a technical point of
view, and outlined the implications of XML to holders of extant SGML
data.
As a member of the XML Working Group, Maden brought first-hand insight
into the standard's development, which has progressed rapidly.
Following the presentation of draft XML syntax at SGML '96 in
November, standards for linking will be proposed at WWW6 in April, and
the standard is expected to be finalized by Summer 1998.
In support of its main objective--getting SGML onto the Web--XML
focuses on simplicity of use and regularity of structure. Maden
outlined its underlying design principles, including compatibility
with SGML, ability to support a wide variety of applications, ease of
writing programs to process XML documents, and human legibility. He
then detailed the key changes from SGML that derive from these goals,
including (a short list)
(1) a single, simplified concrete syntax with unlimited capacities and
quantities;
(2) the concept of a "well formed" document--parsable but not
necessarily valid;
(3) self-identifying empty elements (<elem/>);
(4) pre-defined entities and normalized entity references;
(5) normalized attribute value specifications; and
(6) a formal comment syntax.
Optional features, including LINK, OMITTAG and SHORTREF, have been
eliminated from XML to the extent possible. XML linking--both internal
and document-independent--derives from HyTime, and relies on URL
standard addressing. Through the addition of extended linking groups
and extended linking documents, Maden said, XML will permit "the
hyperlinking ability of the Web [to] grow by several orders of
magnitude."
As some of the changes listed above suggest, implications for legacy
SGML data could be significant. However, Maden contended, XML's
benefits for Web publishing will be liberating. Not only will HTML "no
longer have to stretch [but simply] do what it's designed for," the
Web will have "real hypertext," along with the ability to pass rich
markup all the way to the end user. Maden believes that the
introduction of XML marks a point of maturation for the Web, and that
support will follow rapidly.
VENDORS TALK ABOUT XML & SGML PUBLISHING
Two vendors offered presentations in the second half of the program.
First, Lori DeFurio of Adobe presented a FrameMaker+SGML case study in
which Frame was used to support Web publishing. Kodak's Technical and
Training Communication Group had been working in SGML since 1988
(using WriterStation), and FrameBuilder since 1993. Using a single
DTD, they wanted:
(1) to create/edit in an SGML-compliant, WYSIWYG, hypertext
environment;
(2) to deliver print output in PostScript; and
(3) to deliver electronically via Acrobat, HTML, PostScript to
faxback, DynaText, and/or Folio.
DeFurio didn't cover XML, but the Q&A came back to XML support several
times. Adobe is currently observing XML interestedly, and has not made
a decision about support yet.
Cynthia Shern, a Technical Consultant at ArborText, spoke about her
company's endorsement of, and planned support for, XML. Shern
protrayed XML, as its supporters do, as a means to span the gap
between HTML and rigorous SGML. It will offer a key publishing
advantage, she pointed out, for companies seeking ISO 9001 compliance
(and which therefore must maintain all data in a single source).
ArborText forsees the emergence of XML tools that will create "well
formed" markup without DTDs, but these will not make XML a threat to
SGML, since the absence of DTDs would inhibit automation and document
reuse. ArborText also forsees XML supporting high-content (or more
highly formatted) Web publishing via interfaces to style sheets.
Although both MS Explorer and Netscape Navigator selected CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets), ArborText prefers (and promotes) DSSSL for
presentation semantics.
In a following Q&A session, DSSSL's potential as a solution to "the
external author problem" was also advocated.
______________________________________________________________
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Following the meeting, a press release was brought to our attention in
which Microsoft announced "it has developed and submitted the industry's
first channel definition format (CDF) for push technology to the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C). CDF is an open and easily authored format
for the
publishing of Web-standard channels that will allow Web publishers to
optimize the broadcast of their content to millions of Internet users."
AOL also announced support for the standard.
In the press release, Microsoft states that "CDF will be easy for Web
developers to adopt because it is based on XML, which has support among
many third parties. ... The CDF specification submission extends XML and
Web Collections work that the W3C has in progress."
The complete text of the press release can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1997/Mar97/Cdfrpr.htm
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