xml-dev - Re: Hello, I am new

[Peter Murray-Rust <peter@ursus.demon.co.uk>]

At 12:19 27/10/97 +0200, Teknik Kullanici wrote:
>I want to know is there any browser that I can browse xml files,
>May be that will be too stupid but I said I am new at this subject,

I have written a browser (JUMBO) and I plan a new release in a few days' time.
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms/java/jumbo
is the current location.

Note that an XML browser has a lot of differences from an HTML browser. XML
has no fixed tags, and only one fixed attribute (XML:space, if I have the
punctuation/case correct :-). Therefore the semantics have to come from
somewhere other than the browser. At present the possibilities are:
	- using stylesheets (proposal for XSL still under discussion)
	- linking Java classes to tags (or groups of tags). This is what JUMBO does.
	- hardcoding the semantics (e.g. some constructs in XLL such as XML:link)
	- assuming that humans are smart enough to interpret the browser output
(and all speak the author's language). [This is not facetious - JUMBO can
read and display Jon Bosak's Shakespeare without stylesheets or Java code
and it is very readable because every <LINE> is a separate element.]

Writing a browser is not trivial because there is quite a lot of implied
processing defined in the spec and it is not totally clear yet where this
takes place. Among the things that browser writers have to cope with are:
	- error management in parsing
	- where the parser/processor boundary lies
	- what information is passed
	- expansion of defaults (e.g. XLL attributes)
	- namespaces
and in addition how to implement XLL behaviour in as general a way as
possible.
	There is also the general issue of linking code. e.g. XSL - which is still
a proposal, but a promising way forward - requires the linking of
ECMAScript.  Parsing HTML in conjunction with XML takes additional effort,
both because HTML is usually not well-formed and because the HTML/XML
interface has not been addressed formally. 

	The new release of JUMBO will address some of these issues (e.g.
namespaces) and also allow limited editing facilities.  It is unlikely to
include stylesheet provision.

	P.
Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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