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Flex Template Components Rock

By Amy Blankenship
November 15, 2009

Flex comes with a full spectrum of components, but once in a while you get hit with a request to do something that is difficult to shoehorn into what already exists, but seems even more difficult to do as...

My feed

By Rick Jelliffe
November 14, 2009

A couple of people have asked again this week for the RSS feed address for my blog. Here is is: I believe you can get the individual feeds for other bloggers on OReilly sites using the same URL and the...

Schematron and time: complex event processing?

By Rick Jelliffe
November 14, 2009

I have been thinking a little bit about whether Schematron's pattern approach could be applied to complex event processing where the input is a stream of discrete XML documents, for example each one being a reading from a set of...

Adam Bosworth on picking standards - Rare nerdy technical post

By Rick Jelliffe
November 11, 2009

I enjoyed Adam Bosworth's Talking to DC. But don't his points apply to most software/interface specifications, without being doctrinaire? What is the difference between his Standards work best when they are focused and, say, Agile's YAGNI?...

Leaked Draft of EU Interop Framework

By Rick Jelliffe
November 11, 2009

A Dutch website has what is claimed to be a leaked late draft in English of European Interoperability Framework for European Public Services (EIF) Version 2.0

Tactical and strategic XML design

By Rick Jelliffe
November 6, 2009

So I guess when we look at a system's architecture, the first thing we can do is ask 'Is this XML here being used strategically or tactically?' A strategic use might be, for example, to allow long-term archiving; a tactical use might be XML in AJAX (where using JSON would be another tactic.) If the answer is tactical, then we can ask 'Is it implemented in a way that allows flexible rearrangement, when a different tactic becomes appropriate?'

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

By Allen Noren
November 4, 2009

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Dynamically Creating Classes From XML

By Jesse Freeman
October 18, 2009

Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. Each AFT is designed to be quickly digested, usually only taking a few minutes to get up and running, and contains valuable information you can directly apply to your next Flash campaign. In this AFT I will go over - Dynamically Creating Classes From XML.

The indexed XML website as a commodity - Syndication gone mad?

By Rick Jelliffe
October 14, 2009

The client-person doesn't GET a webpage, they get a whole website (this is for B2B not B2C.)

What are useful Software Engineering approaches for legislated requirements?

By Rick Jelliffe
September 30, 2009

More projects seem to be coming across my desk that ultimately involve building information systems whose primary requirements come from legislation or regulations. And sometimes even the detailed requirements. Legislation is sometimes quite a nice Requirement Specification: it is expressed...

Now I have seen everything! - Context-free XML

By Rick Jelliffe
September 30, 2009

I have always thought the context-senstive { a^n, b^n, c^n: n >=1} s was a kind of theoretical construct that you would never see in a real-life XML document. Today, I have actually seen one!

Linking a public government dataset into the semantic web with RDF - Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

By Rick Jelliffe
September 28, 2009

A few months ago, a client wanted to dip their toes in the semantic web. So I took a fresh look at the status quo, and where the current sweet spot is. Here are my conclusions, and how things panned out for this particular job. Your mileage may vary.

The Norwegians still get it! - Surfer dudes go with Ogg

By Rick Jelliffe
September 28, 2009

These all seem the right way to do things: a user decides what it needs for specific uses, is pragmatic or generous about timing, and doesn't exclude any of the technical eco-systems from equal participation. I think it also represents a real challenge to the software vendors: starting 2011 they will have to compete on features, quality and support, not file format: they won't have the supposed lock-in to benefit or excuse them from providing value.

Programming languages available in-house determines architecture? - Same ingredients + different cooks = much the same salad

By Rick Jelliffe
September 22, 2009

A solid refactoring, the kind that you don't do every year, also needs to involve a tooling up, but scoped to making the new desired architecture something that programmers won't subvert but find natural. In a way, the programming languages become the interfaces that provides the boundaries for the layers of the system.

W3C Widgets: Yet another XML-in-ZIP file format? - Looks good

By Rick Jelliffe
September 21, 2009

It will be interesting to see how big a widget can get: can it be a full word processor? And what make's widget so different from applets?

The Grammar of Schematron

By Rick Jelliffe
September 15, 2009

A lot of Schematron can be implemented directly in a mildly enhanced version of RELAX NG without (I think) explosions, before it all runs out of steam.

XProc and SMIL: Orchestrating Pipelines

By Philip Fennell
September 14, 2009

Although the W3C's XML Pipeline Language (XProc) hasn't even left the stable yet, people are already looking beyond its original purpose. XProc was designed to solve the problem of how to describe the joining together of multiple XML processing steps. So, the question is, how do you extend XProc to handle new features like explicit concurrency...

HTML 5 comics

By Rick Jelliffe
September 11, 2009

CSS quirrel is an online comic that is good for a few laughs. You can tell it would be funny if you knew what on earth they all were talking about. Actually, most of the comics are really paired with...

Do we need lazy loading XML parsers to make XHTML scalable?

By Rick Jelliffe
September 10, 2009

W3C does not want to cop having to serve dumb XHTML requests.for DTDs and schemas. A different DOCTYPE and a lazy loading parser policy would help. But I think all the ISO/MathML special character public entity sets should be built into XML.

Jotting on parsers for SGML-family document languages: SGML, HTML, XML #5 - Collapsing bubbles

By Rick Jelliffe
September 10, 2009

Collapsing bubbles. Converting a DTD with tag omission to a regular grammar. Needing the stack for less. Term rewriting.On the fly addition of rules. Are SGML-family documents trees? SGML as a centre of gravity no more?

Weak validation using hash codes

By Rick Jelliffe
September 7, 2009

High performance gateways are a potential use case for efficient weak validation systems.

Jotting on parsers for SGML-family document languages: SGML, HTML, XML #4 - Some links to research

By Rick Jelliffe
September 6, 2009

We seem to be getting to the stage of finally having several credible candidates for language class that can cope with SGML-family systems.

Jotting on parsers for SGML-family document languages: SGML, HTML, XML #3 - Putting it together more

By Rick Jelliffe
September 6, 2009

Now by now you may be saying Rick, are you really saying that SGML can only be described by some kind of seven-level grammar? Zut alors! And HTML and XML too?

Jotting on parsers for SGML-family document languages: SGML, HTML, XML #2 - Stateless semicoroutines may be convenient

By Rick Jelliffe
September 5, 2009

Here is Melvin Conway's foundation point from his 1963 paper defining coroutines: "That property of the design which makes it amenable to many segment configurations is its separability."

Rikipedia: stuff deleted from Wikipedia - Ken Krechmer on OOXML Standardization - Both ODF and OOXML only support flexibility, but adaptability is better?

By Rick Jelliffe
September 1, 2009

I found that that an interesting section Ken Krechemer had contributed to the Wikipedia article on the Standardization of OOXML had been deleted for being an editorial. Anyway, I hope Ken doesn't mind me taking the liberty of reprinting it here.

Experiments with numbering and horizontal rule in AbiWord - Grumpy old guy thinks word processing was better 15 years ago

By Rick Jelliffe
September 1, 2009

One thing it demonstrates, I think, is the fallacy that presentation-driven user interfaces are easier to use or implement than structured document editors: and they look like becoming adequate for interchange only with great difficulty. Show me the tags!

Jotting on parsers for SGML-family document languages: SGML, HTML, XML - You say automata and I say automata

By Rick Jelliffe
August 30, 2009

But it is no use me sitting here complaining that people are saying "drop SGML" without even knowing what it is they are dropping. So I thought I'd make some little diagrams roughly scoping a basic machine for SGML family parsers.

USPTO gets its prongs in order: but what about schema patents? - Interim New Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidelines

By Rick Jelliffe
August 28, 2009

A counter-reformation rather than a reformation? But welcome none-the-less.

PDFXML versus XPS versus SVG Print?

By Rick Jelliffe
August 25, 2009

I think we have to be much smarter in how we think about standards. It is easy to think about them in terms of agreements or libraries or mandates: all planned and directed activities. But I don't think that will work in this kind of case, where there are multiple, rival technical ecosystems. They don't want to agree. They have fans who don't want to look at alternatives. And they all are probably open enough to squeeze under the rosy gate of legitimacy from a public policy view. So to get convergence we need some other strategy. I suspect that the situation with SVG Print, PDF and XPS is the same as with OOXML and ODF: the route to convergence may not happen at the level of markup harmonization at all, but instead by the support of plurality.

Validating Luhn algorithm checksums with Schematron

By Rick Jelliffe
August 25, 2009

The Luhn algorithm is a simple checksum used to detect simple kinds of transcription errors, such as with credit card numbers. Here is how to do that kind of thing in Schematron. (Untested, it is just to indicate an approach...

Supporting plurality in standards: Scheme looks at a new direction - The Scheme Language Is to Be Split in Two

By Rick Jelliffe
August 23, 2009

When there is a long-time standard with no shortage of goodwill, but we see a proliferation of dialects, then there is something wrong with the standard.

Test-Driven Development for standards-makers - Connexions with XML, XSD and Schematron

By Rick Jelliffe
August 23, 2009

Fans of nerdy men with beards will enjoy the InfoQ website. Watching Freeman and Feather's TDD - Ten years later, a few things stuck out relevant to standards-makers and to Schematron.

Key Fraunhofer study released on ODF and OOXML

By Rick Jelliffe
August 21, 2009

It says "It may be concluded that many of the functionalities, especially those found in simpler documents, can be translated between the standards, while the translation of other functionalities can prove complex or even impossible." I say "The lack of support for plurality almost guarantees acrimony, and winners and losers."

OASIS CAM versus ISO Schematron - A new technique for Schematron: exemplars

By Rick Jelliffe
August 21, 2009

My normal initial reaction when reading the CAM spec is to huff and puff about borrowing ideas badly. No patterns! No phases! No diagnostics! No roles! No assertion text! And so on. But it is to compare apes and orangutans: the things I consider important are not the things CAM was developed for.

Was the success of XML due to the price of RAM? - The triumph of simplicity just wishful thinking?

By Rick Jelliffe
August 19, 2009

In the late 1980s, RAM cost about 10^5 per dollar, and in the early 1990s it was cheaper but still fairly flat. But a big price fall started in about 1996, so that by 2000 RAM was about 10^7 per dollar.

Simplistic conversion from word proccessor formats to plain text is unsafe - OOXML, ODF, HTML

By Rick Jelliffe
August 17, 2009

There are a number of ways in which text can be introduced, changed or disappeared, though each format will have a different mix of possibilities.

Microsoft and the two XML patents #4 - HyTime's dataloc

By Rick Jelliffe
August 15, 2009

To allow in 1994 that out-of-line markup was somehow original when there was already an ISO standard to allow it that was then two years old, shows how incompetent or inept the USPTO was at that time:

Microsoft and the two XML patents #3: before the patent - Emacs and Ted Nelson

By Rick Jelliffe
August 14, 2009

Embedded Markup Considered Harmful

Page models and geometries of ODF and IDML

By Rick Jelliffe
August 14, 2009

The page models and geometries of two current XML-in-ZIP publishing formats for text documents: ODF and IDML.

Mircrosoft and the two XML patents #2 - More on the I4i patent for Word's custom XML

By Rick Jelliffe
August 13, 2009

Here is a better overview of the i4i patent.

Microsoft and the two XML patents

By Rick Jelliffe
August 12, 2009

Microsoft has been in the news in the last month in relation to two patents, one it received and one it has been ordered to pay $200 million in damages for infringing. I've been looking through both, and the patents seem to bear little resembles to their reports.

Should OOXML be a national standard? - Strict OOXML: probably not; Transitional OOXML: surely not?

By Rick Jelliffe
August 11, 2009

There is no inconsistency in ajudging that a particular technology would be usefully written up as an international standard but yet not appropriate for a national standard.

Balisage 2009 - Running Bright in Montreal

By Kurt Cagle
August 10, 2009

Balisage has become for many XML (and the occasional SGML) coders the must-attend conference of the year. Run for many years as the Extreme XML Conference, the shift to the use of Balisage - a French term best translated as running lights, such as those used to highlight a ship or an airplane runway. These markings then translate into the syntactic markings found as a key part of XML. (That Balisage continues to be hosted in Montreal, that most French belle dame of Canadian cities, probably accounts for the name as well )