XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 11 October 2006

[Robin Cover <robin@oasis-open.org>]

XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 11 October 2006
A Cover Pages Publication http://xml.coverpages.org/
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

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This issue of XML.org Daily Newslink is sponsored
by Sun Microsystems, Inc.  http://sun.com

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HEADLINES:

* XForms Basics: Essentials for Creating the Next Generation of Forms
* Open Source, the New Front: The Future is All About Interoperability
* Google Combines Writely and Spreadsheets
* Microsoft Offers Office Integration Sample Code
* W3C Last Call for CSS3 Module: Paged Media
* Review: Create Powerful XML Solutions Without Coding

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XForms Basics: Essentials for Creating the Next Generation of Forms
Nicholas Chase, IBM developerWorks

Web forms have been around for a long time, but there's only so much
you can do with them. XForms provides a host of new capabilities for Web
authors and developers who want to create Web forms that include rich
interactive experiences while still maintaining many of the familiar
aspects of creating forms in HTML. This article explains the basics of
creating an XForms form, including the structure of the form itself;
basic controls, or fields; and the most common submission options.  The
first thing you need is a browser capable of displaying XForms. For this
article, you will be using Firefox, along with the XForms extension,
available at Mozilla.org; if you prefer Microsoft Internet Explorer, you
can download Formsplayer. You'll need to make some minor changes to the
top of the file to load Formsplayer, and your files will need to use
.htm instead of .xhtml, as you'll be using for the Firefox forms, but
other than that they should work just fine. The article should enable
you to create both simple and relatively complex XForms forms. These
forms rely on the structure of an XML "instance" for both receiving and
storing data, but they can also be made to emulate many of the more
familiar capabilities of HTML forms. They provide enhanced interactivity,
as well as a separation of data and presentation that makes it possible
to use the same form on multiple devices. From here you should be able
to understand what is necessary to build on these capabilities to create
even more useful forms.

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-xformsbasics/index.html
See also XML and Forms: http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlForms.html

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Open Source, the New Front: The Future is All About Interoperability
Simon Moores, Silicon.com

Often tired and over-discussed, the debate of open source vs proprietary
software has over the summer, opened a second front: interoperability.
This is injecting more life into an argument of increasingly strategic
importance. For a while now, the discussion about the introduction of
open source solutions has surrounded fundamental questions of
reliability, security and total cost of ownership (TCO). A search for
the 'silver bullet' argument in the analyst reports on any one of the
vendor websites remains elusive. What one finds mostly surrounds the
question of why one side's TCO benefit is greater than another's. Has
business and in particular the public sector started along a path which,
though recognising the benefits of interoperability, pays only
lip-service to flexibility by electing a narrow, 'single-source' route?
[...] By interoperability, I simply mean the ability of different IT
networks, applications or components to exchange and use information,
i.e. to 'talk' to each other. This goal can be achieved by four means
-- through the development of software that is 'interoperable by design'
(e.g., inclusion of XML technology in software to facilitate the easy
exchange of data across different applications); through licensing and
cross-licensing proprietary technologies and essential intellectual
property; through collaboration with partners, competitors and
customers; and through the implementation of industry standards
(including open standards and broadly accessible proprietary standards)
in products and services.

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39163112,00.htm

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Google Combines Writely and Spreadsheets
Juan Carlos Perez, InfoWorld

Google has integrated its formerly separate spreadsheet and word
processing applications, giving them a uniform user interface and a
unified document repository. By creating a common platform, Google
seeks to make it easier for people to switch between Writely and
Google Spreadsheets. Noticeable changes include a more Google-like
interface for Writely, which Google acquired in March when it bought
the creator of the software, Upstartle. Another change will be the
single list for documents and spreadsheets, with a shared search box.
Users will also be able to publish spreadsheets and word processing
documents to an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) page, such as a blog,
as well as share them with others in view-only mode... [according to
the documentation:] Owners can edit the document or spreadsheet and
invite more collaborators and viewers. They own the document or
spreadsheet and can choose to delete it, which removes access for
collaborators and viewers as well. Collaborators are allowed to edit
the document or spreadsheet, and can invite more collaborators and
viewers -- although owners of a spreadsheet can revoke this privilege
if they choose. Viewers can see the most recent version of a document
or spreadsheet, but can't make any changes.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/11/HNgooglecommonplatform_1.html
See also Collaborating and Publishing: http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/topic.py?topic=8624

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Microsoft Offers Office Integration Sample Code
Andy Patrizio, InternetNews.com

With Office 2007 rapidly approaching final code, Microsoft announced
plans for a series of sample code packs called Office Business
Applications Reference Application Packs (OBA RAPs), which show
developers how to create new business applications using the Office
interface. The OBAs are designed for use with Office 2007 only. They
show how to connect existing line-of-business (LOB) systems with
Office applications. The purpose is to provide users with a familiar
environment rather than force them to learn a new interface for
accessing back office systems. The OBAs will use Word, Excel and
Outlook as the interfaces to back-end systems through Microsoft's
SharePoint, InfoPath, Windows Server, SQL Server and Active Directory.
OBA RAP for Supply Chain Management (SCM) will come with demo
websites and site templates, reference documents, .NET code, Web
services references, XML, and XSLT files and scripts. Using the
Office applications instead of writing custom front-ends means less
time spent writing the UI, and not forcing users to context switch
from one application to another.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3637126

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W3C Last Call for CSS3 Module: Paged Media
Hakon Wium Lie and Melinda Grant (eds), W3C Technical Report

W3C's CSS Working Group has released a Last Call Working Draft for
"CSS3 Module: Paged Media," a part of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
language Level 3. Built on the box model, the page module adds
functionality for pagination, margins, size and orientation, etc.
Paged media (e.g., paper, transparencies, pages that are displayed on
computer screens, etc.) differ from continuous media in that the
content of the document is split into one or more discrete static
display surfaces. To handle pages, CSS3 Paged Media describes how:
(1) page breaks are created and avoided; (2) the page properties such
as size, orientation, margins, border, and padding are specified;
(3) headers and footers are established within the page margins; (4)
content such as page counters are placed in the headers and footers;
(5) orphans and widows can be controlled. CSS3 defines a page model
that specifies how a document is formatted within a rectangular area,
called the page box, that has finite width and height.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-css3-page-20061010
See also the W3C news item: http://www.w3.org/News/2006#item186

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Review: Create Powerful XML Solutions Without Coding
Mario Morejon, DDJ Magazine

DataDirect Technologies' Stylus Studio 2007 XML Enterprise Suite comes
with two new tools -- XML Pipeline and XML Publisher -- that help
developers create powerful XML solutions without coding. The new XML
pipeline is essentially a chain of XML operations that control data
transformations of XML and non-XML data. XML pipelining seems to be
the counterpart to SQL stored procedures. Unlike procedures that use
code to process data flows, Stylus Studio uses graphical map diagrams
to elegantly control many data sources using validations and conditions
based on XML Schemas, XSLT and XQuery. Stylus uses six graphical icons
to describe XML piping between nodes and ports. Like process flows,
pipeline outputs can be diverted to multiple sources and can be
stopped if necessary. Stylus provides an additional pipeline step
called XSL-FO using XQuery that can transform XML documents into a
PDF output. Undoubtedly, XQuery is the most powerful operation used
in the new Stylus XML pipelines. Perhaps the easiest way to build
XQueries is by using the Stylus Mapper, which combines source and
target documents graphically. Mapper also can use XSD or DTD to build
XQueries as long as XML documents are collected by the tool. XSD or
DTD sources are used to generate XPath document functions in XQuery
code. Once an XML document is uploaded, Mapper provides all document
details, including connections between source elements and Schemas.
In addition to linking source and target elements, developers also
can add source document nodes as child elements or by copying entire
nodes into target structures. Mapper can help create new structures
by simply connecting source and target elements with FLOWR (For, Flow,
Where, Order, Return) operations.

http://www.ddj.com/dept/webservices/193200325
See also XML Schema: http://xml.coverpages.org/schemas.html

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BEA Systems, Inc.         http://www.bea.com
IBM Corporation           http://www.ibm.com
Innodata Isogen           http://www.innodata-isogen.com
SAP AG                    http://www.sap.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc.    http://sun.com

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