WLA Preconference Workshop: XML

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WLA Preconference Workshop XML

• Wooseob Jeong
• Assistant Professor
• School of Information Studies
• University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
• October 28, 2003 - Milwaukee, WI

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Why XML?

• Simply because its already everywhere.
• MS Office
• XHTML - WYSIWYG
• PDF
• RDF - Dublin Core
• MARC in XML
• E-books
• Extensible Markup Language

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What is XML?

• XML is a concept, not an application.
• Meta Language
• Linguistics for individual language
• XHTML is an application of XML.
• Brief history of XML
• SGML HTML
• Not enough why?

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Learning XML

• No technical experience needed.
• Even no HTML experience is welcome.
• Again, XML is a concept.
• Good starts on XML
• http//www.infomotions.com/musings/getting-started
  /
• http//xmliseasy.com/

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XML is simple but very strict.

• You can make your own mark up set as you like
  with minimal requirement.
• Every tag should be paired.
• Tags should be in a hierarchy.
• However, once you establish the set, you have to
  follow it. Its the law! No exception. Otherwise,
  your document wont be displayed at all.
• Well-formedness minimum requirement
• DTD (Document Type Definition)

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Philosophy of XML

• Separation of presentation information from its
  content. No decorating information allowed in
  contents.
• Presentation should be rendered by methods
  outside the document, currently either CSS or
  XSLT
• CSS has been used in HTML as well as in XML.
• Ex) http//www.uwm.edu/dhedberg/MENU.xml
• XSLT is more powerful.
• Ex) http//web.utk.edu/rgilmou1/xml4lita/

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Markup information

• Presentational Markup Describe Appearance
• ltblockquotegt
• 1234 N. Oakland Ave.
• Milwaukee, WI 53201
• lt/blockquotegt
• Semantic Markup Indicates Meaning
• ltaddressgt
• ltstreetgt1234 N. Oakland Ave.lt/streetgt
• ltcitygtMilwaukeelt/citygt
• ltstategtWIlt/stategt
• ltzipgt53201lt/zipgt
• lt/addressgt

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Restaurant Menu Exercise

• Well-formedness
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
• Simple but not flexible
• XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language
  Transformations)
• It is a xml document itself.
• Complex but really powerful

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CSS Exercise

• Use NotePad and type yourself, please!
• Watch out save as option.
• Modify menu.xml with your favorite foods,
  adding CSS info.
• Modify menu.css with your prefences.
• Comprehensive CSS reference
• http//www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

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XSLT Exercise

• Modify menu2.xml by adding XSLT info.
• Modify menu2.xsl with your preference.
• It is like a limited programming language.
• Selective displays with the same data.
• Examples
• You may use HTML tags freely, but every
  attributes value should be quoted.
• Watch out typos!

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Unicode in XML

• Unicode is the default character set in XML.
• Whats Unicode?
• http//unicode.org/
• Why is it so important?
• Where is ASCII?
• Multilingual vs. Multiscript

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Unicode Exercise

• Multilingual/multiscript sources
• United Nations
• International Bible Society
• Since a XSLT is a XML document, you can use any
  language or any script in your XSLT.
• Only Windows 2000 or XP supports Unicode fully.
• Copy various scripts into your xml file.
• Modify bible.xml with your text.

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SMIL Exercise (1)

• Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
• Still a XML application!
• Multiple media are played together.
• Example Closed Captioning.
• RealText Exercise
• Based on Real Player setting

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SMIL Exercise (2)

• Locate an audio source.
• Ex) Voice of America at http//voanews.com
• Locate its transcript.
• Modify example.smil file according to your
  information.
• Modify example.rt file with your transcript.
• It can be a Karaoke application.

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Summary Before Lunch Break

• Power of XML
• Presentation information separated from its
  contents.
• XML is not a application.
• Rather, it defines any application
• XML has many advanced features.
• Unicode, multimedia support,

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Document Type Definition

• What is DTD?
• The master plan dictates all the rules for
  elements, attributes, and entities.
• You may make your own DTD, but once you make it,
  you should follow the rule. No exception!
• Why is DTD important?
• Data Exchange

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Elements, Attributes, and Entities

• Elements
• Building blocks of markup (tags)
• Attributes
• Qualifying Elements (properties)
• Entities
• Referencing External Content and Saving Typing
• Ex) special characters

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DTDs

• XHTML
• TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)
• EAD (Encoded Archival Description)
• RDF (Resource Description Framework)
• Dublin Core

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Validation

• To be a same type of document, it should be valid
  for its DTD.
• lt!DOCTYPE TEI.2 PUBLIC "-//TEI//DTD TEI Lite XML
  ver. 1.1//EN" "http//www.tei-c.org/Lite/DTD/teixl
  ite.dtd"gt
• Online validation tool
• Well-formedness vs. Validation

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TEI Letter Transcript Exercise

• The purpose of this exercise is to make a valid
  TEI document transcribing a letter.
• Use a remote TEI DTD
• TEIXLite DTD
• lt!DOCTYPE TEI.2 PUBLIC "-//TEI//DTD TEI Lite XML
  ver. 1.1//EN" "http//www.tei-c.org/Lite/DTD/teixl
  ite.dtd"gt
• Modify letter.xml and letter.css with your
  text and preference.
• Do a validation test, please.

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Other important parts in XML (1)

• XSL
• XSL Transformations
• XSL Formatting Objects
• Ex) PDF
• URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers)
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
• ISBN/ISSN

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Other important parts in XML (2)

• XLINK
• More than what HTML links do
• Ex) inbound link information, behavior of links
  (when, how to activate)
• XPointer
• More than what HTML anchors do
• XPointers refer to particular parts of or
  locations in XML documents.
• Ex) linking to the third sentence of the
  seventeenth paragraph in a document

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Other important parts in XML (3)

• Namespace
• An XML namespace is a collection of names,
  identified by a URI reference
• Problem same element names
• Ex) title in HTML and title of a book
• Schema
• Alternative to DTD
• Data type

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Popular E-book Formats

• Adobe basically PDF
• Microsoft
• Palm
• Free E-book Projects
• http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ebooklist.htm
  l
• http//www.sois.uwm.edu/xml/

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E-book Authoring

• TOO simple!
• Microsoft E-book Authoring Plug-in
• Palm E-book Dropbook
• Good text sources Project Gutenberg
• However, background processes are done in XML
  with various tagging systems.

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Palm DropBook

• Prepare a source file in a plain text format.
• Open DropBook program.
• Click Make Boo.
• In the Open dialog box, choose Text as file
  type.
• Pick up the text file that you want to convert
  into Palm E-book format.
• Fill out the metadata.
• Click OK.

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Microsoft Word Plugin

• Open a new document in Microsoft Word.
• Copy the text you want to convert.
• Format the text as you want and do proof-reading.
  
• Click Reader icon.
• Fill out the metadata.
• Click OK.