Re: [xml-dev] XML basics

[Amelia A Lewis <amyzing@talsever.com>]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:33:55 -0500, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-02-28 at 16:32 +0000, Joe Fawcett wrote:
>> Does anyone have any suggestions on other XML related activities 
>> that they feel should be included in an introductory text?
>> The list so far (those with an asterisk are tentative depending on 
>> how large the publisher wants the book).
>> Uses
>>   Configuration files
>>   RSS
>>   SVG
>>   Web Services (RPC, SOAP, REST, WCF)
>>   WSDL
>>   XHTML (and how HTML 5 may replace)
>>   XForms*
> 
> DocBook and TEI are worth mentioning. Most RSS is not well-formed XML
> (sigh).

But Atom is, and might be mentioned under RSS.  Might be better to 
mention it as Atom, though.

WeDAV?  A lot of XML gets transmitted back and forth that way; maybe 
that could be included under REST (hey, it oughta have *some* content 
beyond the acronym ;-).  That includes subversion, btw.

There're scads of XML document transmission formats used primarily in 
the enterprise.  Probably best just to look them up and list them, 
rather than investigating or explaining at any length, for a book on 
XML basics.

XMPP (otherwise known as Jabber).

I second Liam's comment on DOM, with an additional question: the list 
of APIs mentioned seems rather Java-centric (SAX, StAX also 
mentioned).  Is this Basics of XML in Java?  If not, then you'd 
probably be well-served to determine what other significant languages 
should be mentioned (DOM is equally foul in every language, except 
javascript in the browser, which is where it's more or less at home, 
but other APIs may be more or less Java-specific, as mentioned).  If 
you're going to mention tree model APIs, you might be well-served to 
mention the alternatives (though the network effect works for DOM to 
make anything less egregious also less usable; if you're going to talk 
about DOM, you prolly ought to talk about the other times, outside 
javascript in the browser, when you're going to be forced to hold your 
nose and use it).

Amy!
(ha! a DOM-specific random .sig! synchronicity *good*)
-- 
Amelia A. Lewis                    amyzing {at} talsever.com
A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.