dougBlog

IMS Content Packaging & Content Interoperability Call-for-Issues

I see from the IMS Content Packaging & Content Interoperability Call-for-Issues that they're debating the introduction of some useful flexibility in the Content Packaging Spec., via support for packages with resources located elsewhere.

Continue reading "IMS Content Packaging & Content Interoperability Call-for-Issues"

sXBL: Beyond FO and CSS

W3C Publishes Initial Working Draft for SVG's XML Binding Language (sXBL).
An early look at sXBL.

How do you do present markup that doesn't describe text, e.g. MathML or MusicML? Enter sXBL, the SVG XML Binding Language. To quote Elliotte Rusty Harold, author of the IBM article:

SVG's XML Binding Language -- sXBL -- is an XML vocabulary being developed at the W3C as a means of mapping XML elements in arbitrary vocabularies to SVG pictures that represent those elements. For example, an XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) document can be turned into SVG code that shows the actual Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram encoded in the XMI document. But sXBL takes the separation of presentation from content one step further: It is a generic language for rendering documents as arbitrarily complex two-dimensional pictures.

This is a promising technology for rendering MathML...this XSLT alternative is daunting

Finally, RSS feeds from the CBC

It's taken them a while, but they finally have a comprehensive set of feeds available, which they've also consolidated together into a single OPML file for convenience. My only complaint is that they don't provide descriptions in the <item> elements...we'll have to work on them for that.

...BTW, who else but the CBC would provide a feed devoted solely to Hockey?

XSL-FO straw-man?

XML.com: Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

The authors of this article are taking a dig at a statement made by Norman Walsh, who has probably forgotten more about markup languages and their manipulation than I'll ever know. In a blogged article in December, Norman states that browsers suck at printing, and that CSS will never provide a fix for that.

The authors take exception to that statement, and attempt to prove that CSS is not only adequate, but better than XSL-FO for 'most printing needs'. They point to the existence of a number of CSS 2 and 3 features, such as running headers, pagination, cross-references from TOCs to page numbers, and multiple-column support. But one important point that is definitely understated in the article is that their examples presuppose an XML document which:

• already contains a TOC
• has no requirement for other auto-generated content, e.g. indexes, glossaries, or lists of figures
• already has its nodes arranged in a document order suitable for the printed output

To be fair, Norman's original statement implies a single document in a browser, so the discussion was originally confined to one-to-one printing, however the title of the article, coupled with their statement about suitability for 'most printing needs', suggests that they see CSSx as  magic bullet, suitable for printing of more complex documents. And I don't see any attempt here to draw the important distinction between XSLT as a transformation language, and XSL-FO as a formatting language. Everything is referred to generically as 'XSL', which ignores the possibility of generating FO via a DOM-based procedure

It turns out that Michael Day and Håkon Wium Lie are both members of the W3C CSS working group, and involved in the creation of CSS print tools, so maybe this is one of those feuds that happen across W3C WGs, however I'm surprised that the editors of XML.com let the article through as written. It's more in keeping with the kind of controversy-generating article one sees at ZDNet.

Fangs: The Screen Reader Emulator Plugin for Mozilla

EdTechPost: Fangs: The Screen Reader Emulator Plugin for Mozilla.

I attended the Jaws demo that Scott speaks of. Having done some support for a visually-impaired computer user in the mid-nineties using a different product called WinVision, I was expecting great things from Jaws. What a disappointment it turned out to be; the demo was four years later but nothing had changed.

If Fangs allows content creators to experience their pages in the same way users of screen-readers do, we may get sites that are much easier for visually-impaired people to access....

XML File Formats for Office Documents

Speaking of XML office file formats, the Cover Pages at OASIS hosts a resource describing many formats, with links to specs, white papers and other bits of information. This is a timely resource for me, as I spent today with members of other institutions discussing interoperability standards, including office file formats. I came away from the meeting wondering about how MS Office formats interoperate with other office suites.

Microsoft Dodges a Bullet in Boston...

Microsoft has bowed to pressure from the Massachusetts Software Council (a govt. body), and agreed to ease licensing restrictions on its XML-based Word and Excel '03 file formats. This is the first North American jurisdiction I've heard of that's contemplated legislation similar to Peru, China, Israel and others, mandating the use of open-source or standards-based technologies for storage and exchange of public information. Some open-source advocates feel that the Commonwealth of Mass has compromised the definition of 'open' by accepting MS formats, however any pressure to open up ubiquitous Office file formats can do nothing but good IMHO....

First Post via Quickpost Bookmarklet

After spending a year or so skirting around blogging technology, researching, reading, discussing and presenting on  it, it's about time that I actually set one up....

I've set this Blog up on Typepad as the BCOU is transitioning to become a component of BC's newest university, Thompon Rivers University (TRU). Later on I may find a more permanent home for it, in which case I'll dump the content out via the API and import it to a local product.

I must say that Typepad does a lot to insulate the user from the code, however having spent some time tinkering with a Moveable Type blog hosted elsewhere, it's a bit frustrating trying to find where to get at certain templates, variable definitions, etc....