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I went back and read about entities. I take it that you think I need to
know General and Parameter, Internal and External entities, right?
If a document has a Schema, it can't have a DTD right? Can I use
entities in an XML document with a Schema without a DTD?
Although I now know more about the "pieces and parts" of entities, I
still am unclear about best-practice uses.
And why aren't I using Xlink instead of DTD entities? After all the
xml-dev discussions on Xlink I went to Microsoft's site and searched for
the term and found almost nothing. I also heard no reference to it in
the video about the future of .NET (even though I heard the words
Infoset, Xpath and Xquery - which I would guess may be at about the same
level of standardization as Xlink).
My guess would be that Schemas don't include entities because they knew
that Xlink, or something like it, would be along. But if that's not the
case then why aren't entities included in the Schema? Just wondering.
Pam Ammond
Empowering You!
website: http://www.empoweringyou.com
Please buy the "Wow! Look At Windows XP" book I wrote at
http://www.windowsxpbook.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Dare Obasanjo [mailto:dareo@microsoft.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 1:12 PM
To: pam@empoweringyou.com; Vijay Polina; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] dtds, schemas, xhtml, and multimedia technologies
If you are trying to describe the structure of an XML document then you
should use W3C XML Schema especially if you will be working primarily in
the .NET Framework since there is so much support for it in Microsoft
technologies from XML serialization to DataSets to SQLXML. However DTDs
are still needed for declaring entities. It is unlikely that W3C XML
Schema will have an entity declaration mechanism in future so (then
again misfeatures like default element declarations exist for "DTD
compatibility" so I may be proved wrong) you should at least learn that
aspect of DTDs.
-----Original Message-----
From: Empowering You [mailto:pam@empoweringyou.com]
Sent: Sun 11/10/2002 9:38 AM
To: 'Vijay Polina'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Cc:
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] dtds, schemas, xhtml, and multimedia
technologies
No, I'm not Microsoft R&D.
I am just someone with a degree in accounting and computers that
back in 1985 decided I wanted to do multimedia. I took 5 years to learn
photography, graphics, Macromedia Director and Authorware, and video
production. Then the web took off and I moved into that.
One of the people I worked for gave me the opportunity to learn
Visual Basic so I took it further and ended up being one of the first
100 MSCDs (but never kept up the certification. I am currently
certified in Windows 2000, A+, and wrote a book on Windows XP simply
because I need to know the OSs and hardware well enough to answer client
questions and install Visual Studio.NET beta, which was a nightmare
install.) I used Unix, mainframes and minis in college; but no longer
use them since my clients don't.
Cold Fusion seemed to be the best web development language back
5 years ago, so I decided to use it for all our clients - it was a lot
better than ASP.
I tried working with Java but never thought it was marketed well
enough to really take off. And development of the Java language seemed
really slow, I kept waiting for it to mature so I could make money with
it. If I use HTML then all my clients can always see the result, and
what I can't do with HTML I can process on my server using Cold Fusion.
So I went that way instead. Less problems.
Then the .NET Framework came out and I loved it. And since
Microsoft essentially combined everything they had ever done, plus many
of the newer standards, into one huge interactive technology - to me it
seems limitless and pretty much came out fully grown (with lots of
things that need improvement, but that's to be expected from version 1),
unlike Java that seemed to take forever to grow up.
It seems to me that Microsoft finally 'got it', made the
paradigm shift to the Internet, and appeared to work with the standards
boards to become less proprietary - so I decided to bet my whole
business on .NET technologies. Microsoft has their act together and
they have enough money for R&D to do things right. I just hope they
don't get greedy and decide to go back to proprietary (that's what
killed Apple and IBM) or decide to enforce patents which would get every
one totally anti-Microsoft again.
So that's pretty much how I got here. Now it seems like it's
taking me forever to learn all this new technology. Since I didn't use
Microsoft technology before, like ADO or ASP, I have to learn everything
from the ground up. Like I said, I'm betting my whole business on .NET.
I reduced client work (and therefore income) to the minimum possible and
am spending at least 8 hours a day trying to learn everything (mostly
late at night so current clients are still serviced) and expect to move
all our current clients to .NET and only take on future clients in .NET.
We were a Cold Fusion partner last year, but I dropped it.
I'm learning through books, which so far has cost me thousands;
but there is no way I could afford to retrain using someone good like
DevelopMentor - it would probably cost tens of thousands that way.
There is just so much I need to know. And when I'm done learning it,
and can guide my employees, then I have to teach them how to understand
all of this (they are pretty much procedural oriented, not object
oriented, at the moment. Just getting them to make that jump will be a
huge battle.). Hopefully by then our income will be back up and they
can learn the easy way - through classes and hands on with guidance from
me on client projects. I'm trying to make sure I don't just learn the
pieces and parts but also learn everything the right way so I don't make
mistakes, (like the initial dev-xml discussion on InnerXML and resultant
problems).
So here I am, lurking for months in xml-dev, and now finally
asking questions, hoping to learn from your experience.
Pam
Pam Ammond
Empowering You!
website: http://www.empoweringyou.com
<http://www.empoweringyou.com/>
Please buy the "Wow! Look At Windows XP" book I wrote at
http://www.windowsxpbook.com <http://www.windowsxpbook.com/>
-----Original Message-----
From: Vijay Polina [mailto:vpolina@attbi.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 3:00 AM
To: pam@empoweringyou.com; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] dtds, schemas, xhtml, and
multimedia technologies
Do you work for microsoft R & D?
----- Original Message -----
From: Empowering You
<mailto:pam@empoweringyou.com>
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Sent: Saturday, November 09, 2002 10:50 PM
Subject: [xml-dev] dtds, schemas, xhtml, and
multimedia technologies
I'm an ex-HTML and ex-Cold Fusion programmer
retraining for the future. I started learning XML technologies and .NET
in January 2002 and skipped learning anything about DTDs in favor of
learning about Schemas. However, in reading the last 3 months of the
xml-dev posts I find that you all are referring to DTDs a lot in your
posts. Do I need to go back and learn about DTDs? When will I need to
use DTDs instead of Schemas?
I intend to ONLY be in the Microsoft .NET
environment and only use C#, ASP.NET, XML (XSLT, XPath, XQuery, SQLXML,
Schemas), Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Access, ADO.NET, web services,
Javascript/ECMA and Visual Studio.NET. I am not using Java and my
clients are only running in the Windows 98 or later operating systems,
no Unix. At this point I've got my work cut out just learning the above
technologies well, unless you all tell me I need to learn more (what?).
I also intend to use XHTML wherever possible
instead of HTML. However, it appears to me that Microsoft isn't fully
supporting it. If I remember correctly, one line I wrote in XHTML got
"changed" to standard HTML by Visual Studio.NET's editor. Any comments?
Is XHTML widely supported or do I have to continue using HTML? I
thought standards had moved to favoring XHMTL instead of HTML.
One of my clients asked me to do a multimedia CD
project with time lines, audio voice overs, background music, video, and
animation. I finally ended up quoting it in Macromedia technologies
(mostly Flash) instead of using the above technologies. Anything out
there that I missed that I could have used to stay true to the
programming technologies I want to use (.NET, XML, and the list of
technologies above) and still get the job done as well as I could have
in Flash? Please email me in the future if you find something. I am
definitely interested, not just for this one project.
I realize this is an XML forum and apologize for
getting off of XML in some of my questions. I hope I haven't strayed
far enough off to offend you, and intend to stick closer to XML
technology questions in the future. Thanks in advance for any answers
you choose to provide. Please feel free to email me directly instead of
through the forum if your answer is not related to XML technologies.
Pam Ammond
Empowering You!
website: http://www.empoweringyou.com
<http://www.empoweringyou.com/>
Please buy the "Wow! Look At Windows XP" book I
wrote at http://www.windowsxpbook.com <http://www.windowsxpbook.com/>
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