Dave Winer: XML

We're taking a look at NewsML. Here's an example of a source file, and here's an HTML rendering of that content. [Scripting News]

Slashdot: Netscape Says No RSS 0.91 For You

Jon Udell: "Most of us, I guess, don't try to eat the whole XML layer cake, and would get sick if we tried."

Edd Dumbill: "Clark, the technical lead for XML 1.0 and author of influential XML open source software, noted that he was reluctant to hurt the feelings of the XML Schema Working Group, but then expressed his view that the XML Schema effort was 'little short of a disaster.'"

DJ Adams: "In this article, I'd like to show you how easy it is to put together a simple system for pager-style notification of incoming mail, using some standard tools, Perl and, of course, Jabber."

Intuit is operating an XML-over-HTTP programmable database called QuickBase. It's free. Interesting.

I'm taking a few minutes to explore the NASDAQ stock-quote-in-XML service. Looks like a tremendous amount of thought has gone into this service. One of the elements of the quote record is the logo and url for the company. So it's a directory of images as well as numeric stock data.

WebTools: Creating an RSS Channel. "By any name, RSS means really simple syndication."

David Singer wants a WDSL description of the Manila-RPC interface. I don't begin to know how to create one, but I'd like to see it too, if anyone is up for it.

Jeff Barr started a Manila site to highlight XML newsfeeds he discovers. Jeff has the best collection. This is the biggest problem-opportunity in RSS space. Discovery can be overwhelming. Too many channels, too hard to find the good ones. We need curators and critics -- people who appreciate a good channel. Let's also learn what makes a channel good. What's your favorite and why? As the tools get better we'll be asking these kinds of questions.

Eric Kidd: XML-RPC Howto. "It includes sample clients and servers in Perl, Python, C, C++, Java and PHP. It shows you how to implement an XML-RPC server as a CGI, using either Perl or C." A tour-de-force.

XML Powers QuickTime's Media Skins : In version five, QuickTime has provided content creators with a new tool: Media Skins. These enable artists to control not only the content of their presentations, but the appearance of the player itself. (WebReview)

Morphon XMLEditor 1.0 arrives. Morphon has announced the release of version 1.0 of XMLEditor, offering a powerful set of features, but falling short on performance.

There's a big debate on the XML-DEV list about a Sun patent interfering with the W3C Xpointer activity. A famous pundit, the W3C, a major platform vendor, and a browser feature that (as far as I know) no major browser implements. Possible prior art. A disruption in the flow of new ideas. (xmlhack has been covering the story.)

Two-Way-Web: Payloads for RSS. "When I started talking with Adam late last year, he wanted me to think about high quality video on the Internet, and I totally didn't want to hear about it."

PyXML 0.6.3 available. Martin von Loewis has announced version 0.6.3 of PyXML, a toolkit for Python comprising several XML parsers, a SAX interface, and DOM interfaces.

XML.Com is helping spread the news about OPML and XSLT.

Eric Kidd released XML-RPC for C/C++.

SlashDot: MathML 2.0 Becomes W3C Proposed Recommendation.

Today's Bionic Page: XML News. Recursing!

Very interesting. Check out the XML behind Blogger.

TREX: a language to describe XML document structure. James Clark has announced Tree Regular Expressions for XML (TREX) a new simple and flexible schema language focusing on the structure of XML documents.

A group of developers including Jonathan Borden and Tim Bray are discussing a new format called RDDL to give meaning to URIs that identify XML namespaces. Bray says: "Namespaces have names, and the names are URIs, which usually means URLs. What does the URL point at? So far, nothing in particular. RDDL is an attempt to imagine something useful to have a namespace name point at. It's mostly a human-readable discussion, with labeled links built in, pointing at... well anything that might be helpful with that namespace. Like a stylesheet, or some useful code, or some copyright notices."

Two-Way-Web: SOAP meets RSS.

phpSyndication 0.0.3. Syndication PHP class.

Adobe release second beta of SVG Viewer 2.0. Michael Bierman has announced the release of the second public beta of Adobe SVG Viewer 2.0, adding more support for the SVG Candidate Recommendation spec.

Distributed XML storage with Mnesia. Nat Makarevitch writes with news of IDX XMnesia, an Erlang library allowing storage of XML data in an Mnesia database.

DW: mySubscriptions.opml contains the RSS channels I'm tuned into.

WebReference has updated RSSViewerApplet. "First and foremost there is better compatibility with the RSS 0.91 version upgrade from 0.9."

XML Magazine: More than just Jabber. "Although Jabber was designed as an instant messaging system, its XML architecture enables it to do a whole lot more "

Mary Jo Foley: Web services, few actually deliver. "Are the industry leaders onto a hot trend? Or are the emperors parading around without clothes?"

Love-hate relationships with XML. Two sites which both embrace XML and criticize its flaws have appeared in the last few weeks: xmlsuck.com and xmlbastard.com.

New versions of Perl RDF tools RDF::Service and RDFStore. RDF::Service 0.4, part of the Wraf Perl RDF application framework, and RDFStore 0.31, a Perl API for RDF Storage, have been released.

XML Spy 3.5 beta 3 out. The third beta of the XML Spy 3.5 development environment for XML has been released, adding several new features to the recently-added support for XML Schema.

Heads-up, I'm working on new features for RSS that build on 0.91. Calling it 0.92. I am not doing this as part of a working group, or in collaboration with anyone else. I'm doing an app that requires more functionality than 0.91 provides. I think the enhancements will be useful for other developers. There's already been enough discussion, and a lot of wasted time. I just want to make software. We did RSS for a reason, and the reason didn't disappear. We need the functionality.

VorteXML "converts existing, recurring structured text data into valid XML using any DTD on an ad hoc or automated, programming-free basis!"

Microsoft throws more muscle into SOAP. Microsoft have released SOAP Toolkit 2.0 Beta 1, which integreates WSDL more thoroughly, and is also billed as a "fully Microsoft supported product."

SlashDot: W3C Announces XHTML As Its Recommendation.