More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
XML Personas
February 10, 2009 | 2:24 pm
|
By Robert Nagle
While looking over the slides for the Tools of Change presentation, I came across this fun presentation(PDF) by Bill Kasdorf to explain different versions of XML for publishing. The graphics are under the fold. (Also interesting: Michael Smith’s presentation about ebook business models (and especially this table). Read also the latest TOC-tweets.
By the way, the presentation goes into more detail about these XML dialects that is shown below!
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
But what’s a DTD?
Me bad. A DTD defines the elements and syntax which can be included in a a XML doc. Actually, from what I hear, XML Schemas are preferred to DTDs because they are easier to validate. Basically what DTD/Schema you choose for XML says a lot about what kind of content you are dealing with and how easily you can repurpose/convert/reuse them. XML/DTDS is generally used in more sophisticated server-based publishing workflows. Generally, the reader only sees the output from these master XML documents (which is HTML, PDF, .epub), not the source itself.
Wikipedia: “A DTD is primarily used for the expression of a schema via a set of declarations that conform to a particular markup syntax and that describe a class, or type, of document, in terms of constraints on the structure of that document.”
I was wading through the ROMA tool on the TEI site and thinking 1)wow, this ability to customize TEI DTD to accomodate every whim is both awesome and terrifying. (To be fair, a good set of instructions will walk you through it).
ooops… the comment machine stripped the DTD. View the source of any web page and the first line will usually be that docs type. Don’t have to have one but it is better form to include one. XML tends to be more strict about requiring things but I’m not sure if a DTD is required.