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SGML and XML News

By: Robin Cover

October 30, 2000]
RDF Schema Explorer for Querying/Validating/Extending RDF Models.
Wolfram Conen recently announced RDF Schema Explorer -- a service based on Jan Wielemaker's SWI-Prolog (3.4.0), his SGML/RDF parser, and an adaptation of his CGIServ code. RDF Schema Explorer can be used as follows: "(1) You can feed some RDF into the Explorer, either by keying it directly into the text field below or by uploading a file. This will be parsed with Jan Wielemaker's SWI-Prolog parser and the resulting triples will be asserted to the fact base. (2) You can check/validate your model against the rule set provided in version 1.2 of the paper 'A logical interpretation of RDF.' (3) You can query the model repeatedly by using the provided rule/fact set and by providing your own additional rules/queries. (4) You can define/extend the semantics for your own predicates directly from within your RDF document, along the guidelines presented in RDF Semantic Extensions. Version 1.2 of the paper 'A logical interpretation of RDF' is currently under public review in the Semantic Web (SEWEB) area of the web site Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI), where it is possible to comment/discuss the paper." For related resources, see "Resource Description Framework (RDF)."
[October 27, 2000]
Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) Working Group Publishes Digital Rights Specification.
The Technical Committee of the Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) Working Group has published an initial draft digital rights standard "for protecting copyright in electronic books and for distributing electronic books among publishers, distributors, retailers, libraries, and consumers." The Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) Working Group "is an organization of companies, organizations, and individuals developing a standard for protecting copyright in electronic books and for distributing electronic books among publishers, distributors, retailers, libraries, and consumers. The draft EBX specification accommodates a variety of content formats for electronic books, including Open eBook Publication Structure and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). The EBX Working Group operates under the auspices of the Book Industry Study Group." The draft specification is The Electronic Book Exchange System (EBX). Version 0.8. July 2000 Draft, 109 pages. [An interim, incomplete draft and has not been approved as a standard by the EBX Working Group.] "[This is] the complete technical specifications for the Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) system for interoperable applications and devices that use public-key cryptography for copyright protection and distribution of electronic books. The EBX system is being developed by the EBX Working Group, whose members are Adobe Systems Incorporated, the American Library Association, Audible, ContentGuard, DigitalOwl.com, Glassbook, GlobalMentor, Nokia, RightsMarket.com, SoftLock.com, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Versaware, and Yankee Rights Management." This document describes the Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) system. The EBX system defines the way in which electronic books (e-books) are distributed from publishers to booksellers and distributors, from booksellers to consumers, between consumers and between consumers and libraries. It describes the basic requirements of electronic book reading devices and the electronic books themselves. It also describes how these 'trusted' components interact to form a comprehensive copyright protection system that both protects the intellectual property of authors and publishers as well as describes the capabilities required by consumers. In addition, the model describes in general how products and revenue for those products are generated and managed." While the The EBX system does not define a specific 'content' file format, it does define vouchers, which are encoded in XML. "EBX is primarily concerned with the creation and transfer of digital objects called vouchers. A voucher is an electronic description of e-book permissions transferred from one book owner in the network to another book owner. EBX vouchers are encoded in XML." A sample EBX voucher encoded in XML is available for inspection. See in this connection the feature article by Mark Walter and Mike Letts "Mad Scramble for Mindshare In Digital Rights Management. [Digital Rights Management: Peacekeepers Needed]," in The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 5, Number 2 (October 2000), pages 9-15. For DRM in relation to XML, see: (1) Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML); (2) Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL); (3) Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) Working Group; (4) Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL); (5) Open eBook Initiative; (6) "IOTP Requirements for Digital-Right Trading."

[October 27, 2000]
Payment API for Internet Open Trading Protocol Version 1.

Members of the Internet Open Trading Protocol Working Group have published a specification for the "Payment API for v1.0 Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP)." IETF Internet Draft. TRADE Working Group. By Hans-Bernhard Beykirch, Werner Hans, Masaaki Hiroya, and Yoshiaki Kawatsura. Reference: 'draft-ietf-trade-iotp-v1.0-papi-02.txt'. September 2000. "The Internet Open Trading Protocol provides a data exchange format for trading purposes while integrating existing pure payment protocols seamlessly. This motivates the multiple layered system architecture which consists of at least some generic IOTP application core and multiple specific payment modules. This document addresses the common interface between the IOTP application core and the payment modules, enabling the interoperability between these kinds of modules. Furthermore, such an interface provides the foundations for a plug-in-mechanism in actual implementations of IOTP application cores. Such interfaces exist at the Consumers', the Merchants' and the Payment Handlers' installations connecting the IOTP application core and the payment software components/legacy systems. . .The Payment API is formalized using the Extensible Markup Language (XML). It defines wrapper elements for both the input parameters and the API function's response. In particular, the response wrapper provides common locations for Error Codes and Error Descriptions. It is anticipated that this description reflects the logical structure of the API parameter and might be used to derive implementation language specific API definitions..." Relevant XML DTDs are presented in the draft document. The Internet Open Trading Protocol "provides an interoperable framework for Internet commerce. It is optimized for the case where the buyer and the merchant do not have a prior acquaintance and is payment system independent. It will be able to encapsulate and support payment systems such as SET, Mondex, CyberCash's CyberCoin, DigiCash's e-cash, GeldKarte, etc. IOTP is able to handle cases where such merchant roles as the shopping site, the payment handler, the deliverer of goods or services, and the provider of customer support are performed by different Internet sites." See related specifications referenced in "Internet Open Trading Protocol (IOTP)."

[October 26, 2000]
XML Encoding for Sumerian Literary Texts.

A recent communiqué from the University of Oxford Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature reports on initial work toward the creation of XML DTDs for transliteration-level encoding and publishable translations for a large online corpus of Sumerian texts. This markup language design is part of a broader project endeavor to analyze the digital library corpus in order to document and describe aspects of its style, lexis, grammar and register. The goal of the Sumerian Literature project, now substantially completed, has been "to produce a 'collected works' of over 400 poetic compositions of the classical [Sumerian] literature, equipped with translations. This standardised, electronically searchable SGML corpus, which is based to a large degree on published materials, comprises some 400 literary compositions of the Isin/Larsa/Old Babylonian Period, amounting to approximately 40,000 lines of verse (excluding Emesal cult songs, literary letters, and magical incantations). The full catalogue can be found on the project web site. The online compositions are presented in single-line composite text format (in a standardised transliteration) with newly-prepared English prose translations, and a full bibliographical database, thereby making available for the first time a collected works of Sumerian literature. The corpus is freely available to anyone who wishes to use it via this World Wide Web site... The literature written in Sumerian is the oldest human poetry that can be read, dating from approximately 2100 to about 1650 BC. The main 'classical' corpus can be very roughly estimated at 50,000 lines of verse, including narrative poetry, praise poetry, hymns, laments, prayers, songs, fables, didactic poems, debate poems and proverbs. The majority of this has been reconstructed during the past fifty years from thousands of often fragmentary clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform writing. Relatively few compositions are yet published in satisfactory modern editions. Much is scattered throughout a large number of journals and other publications. Several important poems must still be consulted in twenty-year-old unpublished doctoral dissertations, some with translations which have now become unusable because of progress in our knowledge of the language. Major compositions have not yet been edited at all. The slow progress of research, with little organised collaboration until recently, means that Sumerian literature has [hitherto] remained inaccessible to the majority of those who might wish to read or study it, and virtually unknown to a wider public." This University of Oxford project is representative of a large number of academic digital library projects which are migrating from SGML to XML-based markup for document structuring and delivery. The extraordinary "Perseus Project" -- with its thousands of SGML-encoded Greek and Latin texts -- provides another example. For additional description and references on the Oxford project, see "Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL)." The development of online reference materials for ancient civilizations presents significant challenge to the extent that the ancient writing systems (especially cuneiform and hieroglyphic) are very complex, and the literary traditions very rich recensionally. Standards efforts have been painfully slow, but collaborative work is now being done in several research initiatives. See a partial listing of projects in the document "Encoding and Markup for Texts of the Ancient Near East." Readers are encouraged to send notification concerning related ancient language projects.

[October 25, 2000]
Transaction Authority Markup Language (XAML).

From a recent announcement: "Leading proponents of e-business interoperability Bowstreet, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Oracle Corporation, and Sun Microsystems, today announced they are leading an initiative to define a vendor-neutral industry standard that will enable the coordination and processing of on-line, multi-party transactions in the rapidly emerging world of XML-based web services. The initiative is called XAML (Transaction Authority Markup Language). [The XAML initiative addresses] coordinated processing of transaction-supporting web services between internal fulfillment services (the chemical provider's inventory system) and external services such as: (1) An insurance policy service to insure the product being shipped; (2) A financing service to ensure payment according to vendor terms; (3) A transportation service to guarantee timely shipment/delivery of product; (4) A regulatory service to ensure compliance with government safety requirements. The XAML standard will: (1) Provide a specification for the XML message interfaces and interaction models of web services to support the coordination and processing of multi-stage transactions on the Internet; (2) Specify interfaces and protocols that preserve investment and strengths in transaction monitors and resources; (3) Specify interfaces and protocols that can be 'added on' to existing and emerging web service interfaces and protocols; (4) Specify interaction models for software systems to provide business-level transactions that coordinate the processing of multiple distributed web services; (5) Build on existing and emerging industry standards. The XAML initiative is so-named because it is an extension of XML, the common language of e-commerce, which supports transactional semantics as defined by the widely adopted standard for two-phase commit, XA (Transaction Authority). XAML intends to provide a means for transaction supporting web services to participate in higher-level business transactions. The XAML proposal will be submitted to one or several standards bodies that may include the W3C, OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and/or the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)." For other details, see: (1) the "XAML Transaction Authority Markup Language White Paper" and (2) the full text of the announcement: "Bowstreet, HP, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems Join Forces to Create Standard for e-Business Transactions Across the Internet. XAML proposal focuses on creating XML standard to guarantee multi-vendor transactional integrity across web services... There are emerging standards for web services (such as SOAP, ebXML, XP, UDDI, e-Speak and WSDL), and there are existing transaction management standards (such as XA and JTA); XAML ties the two groups of standards together..." For other references, see "Transaction Authority Markup Language (XAML)."

[October 25, 2000]
XLink Markup Name Control.

W3C has published a NOTE under the title XLink Markup Name Control. Reference: W3C Note 24-October-2000, edited by [W3C XML Linking Working Group co-chairs] Eve Maler (Sun Microsystems) and Daniel Veillard (W3C). Document abstract: "This document proposes a possible XML Schema-based solution to the need to use XLink in XML-based languages such as XHTML 1.0." The note addresses the particular problem of 'namespaces' when attempting to upgrade existing document markup to be interpreted as XLink syntax. "Currently, XLink requires applications to recognize a particular set of attribute names in the XLink namespace in order to do their work... [suppose] you already have some marked-up information that provides some of the same kinds of linking information that XLink is designed to provide: in order to incorporate XLink usage directly into the existing vocabulary as a first-class construct, you would have to force the vocabulary to undergo a backwards-incompatible change from href to xlink:href. XLink's attributes must have namespace prefixes on them because of the way XML namespaces work; 'global' attributes that can be attached to any element must be prefixed because they cannot identify themselves in any other way..." The NOTE's proposed solution builds upon a suggestion from Henry Thompson of the W3C XML Schema Working Group. A future version of W3C XLink might allow applications "to take advantage of XML Schema datatypes instead, or in addition, as a way to recognize Schema-XLink data. The idea is that any attribute name could be used, as long as the attribute were 'marked' with an appropriate datatype, made available through a post-schema-validation information set or by other means. . . If Schema-XLink were to define such datatypes, it could provide a normative XML Schema module that merely contains a series of type definitions. Note, however, that as of this writing, XML Schema does not have facilities to specify additional normative constraints of the style that XLink needs; prose would still be needed to specify the combinations of attribute types that are expected to appear on particular 'XLink element types'..." For related references, see "XML Linking Language."

[October 25, 2000]
Using CSS for Everything.

As part of the W3C style activity, the W3C CSS Working Group has produced a "work in progress" Working Draft specification Syntax of CSS Rules in HTML's "style" Attribute. Reference: W3C Working Draft 25-October-2000, edited by Tantek Çelik (Microsoft) and Bert Bos (W3C). Document abstract: "HTML provides a 'style' attribute on most elements, to hold a fragment of a style sheet that applies to those elements. One of the possible style sheet languages is CSS. This draft describes the syntax of the CSS fragment that can be used in the 'style' attribute." The WD illustrates how one can directly express and control processing behaviors on an element-by-element basis throughout a document (whether visual, aural, tactile, or other behaviors) through the use of a globally-defined style attribute. Thus, from the examples offered, one can: (1) specify display behavior by "setting properties on the element itself, [using] no pseudo-elements or pseudo-classes; (2) colorize a first letter (by "setting properties on the element, as well as on the first letter of the element, by means of the ':first-letter' pseudo-element"; (3) regulate other appearances and effects, by "setting properties on a source anchor for each of its dynamic states, using pseudo-classes." The Working Draft document "defines both the simple case (only properties on the element itself), as well as the more complex case (properties on the element's pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes), and generalizes the cascading order rule for "the case where the inline fragment contains inline rule-sets: the declarations are treated the same as if they occured in the same order at the end of the author's style sheet with a specificity equal to that of a selector with one ID-selector and as many pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes as in the inline rule-set." The working draft would appear to extend the life of HTML 4.0's style attribute, along with the HTML META HTTP-EQUIV Content-Style-Type selector mechanism, since the processing specification principle is to be applied generally to any XML vocabularies (document types) in which designers want to be able to control processing directly from within the document instance. The WD states: "This document recommends that any future XML based languages which have presentational information (whether visual, aural, tactile, or other) also add a STYLE attribute which similarly permits the user to use CSS to style the document and elements in documents written in that language." For one person's doubts about this apparent notion of a 'global use' attribute without (apparent) namespace declaration mechanism, see the W3C comment list. For other references on CSS, see "W3C Cascading Style Sheets."
[October 24, 2000]
XML Schema Becomes a W3C Candidate Recommendation.
A W3C press release announces the publication of XML Schema as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued XML Schema as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. Advancement of the document to Candidate Recommendation is an invitation to the Web development community at large to make implementations of XML Schema and provide technical feedback. Simply defined, XML Schemas define shared markup vocabularies and allow machines to carry out rules made by people. They provide a means for defining the structure, content and semantics of XML documents. 'Databases, ERP and EDI systems all know the difference between a date and a string of text, but before today, there was no standard way to teach your XML systems the difference. Now there is,' declared Dave Hollander, co-chair of the W3C XML Schema Working Group and CTO of Contivo, Inc. 'W3C XML Schemas bring to XML the rich data descriptions that are common to other business systems but were missing from XML. Now, developers of XML ecommerce systems can test XML Schema's ability to define XML applications that are far more sophisticated in how they describe, create, manage and validate the information that fuels B2B ecommerce.' By bringing datatypes to XML, XML Schema increases XML's power and utility to the developers of electronic commerce systems, database authors and anyone interested in using and manipulating large volumes of data on the Web. By providing better integration with XML Namespaces, it makes it easier than it has ever been to define the elements and attributes in a namespace, and to validate documents which use multiple namespaces defined by different schemas. XML Schema introduces new levels of flexibility that may accelerate the adoption of XML for significant industrial use. For example, a schema author can build a schema that borrows from a previous schema, but overrides it where new unique features are needed. his principle, called inheritance, is similar to the behavior of Cascading Style Sheets, and allows the user to develop XML Schemas that best suit their needs, without building an entirely new vocabulary from scratch. XML Schema allows the author to determine which parts of a document may be validated, or identify parts of a document where a schema may apply. XML Schema also provides a way for users of ecommerce systems to choose which XML Schema they use to validate elements in a given namespace, thus providing better assurance in ecommerce transactions and greater security against unauthorized changes to validation rules. Further, as XML Schema are XML documents themselves, they may be managed by XML authoring tools, or through XSLT. . . Candidate Recommendation is W3C's public call for implementation, an explicit invitation for W3C members and the developer community at large to review the XML Schema specification and build their own XML Schemas. This period of implementations and reporting allows the editors to learn how developers outside of the Working Group might use them, and where there may be ambiguities for implementors. Public testing and implementation contribute to a more robust XML Schema, and to more widespread use." The CR specification is published in three parts: (1) XML Schema Part 1: Structures. W3C Candidate Recommendation 24-October-2000, edited by Henry S. Thompson (University of Edinburgh), David Beech (Oracle Corp.), Murray Maloney (for Commerce One), and Noah Mendelsohn (Lotus Development Corporation). Part 1 defines the XML Schema definition language, "which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML 1.0 documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The schema language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0 and uses namespaces, substantially reconstructs and considerably extends the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs). This specification depends on XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. Appendix A supplies a normative "Schema for Schemas"; Appendix F contains a non-normative "DTD for Schemas"; Appendix J gives brief summaries of the substantive changes to this specification since the public working draft of 7 April 2000. (2) XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. W3C Candidate Recommendation 24-October-2000, exited by Paul V. Biron (Kaiser Permanente, for Health Level Seven) and Ashok Malhotra (IBM). Part 2 of the specification for the XML Schema language "defines facilities for defining datatypes to be used specifications. The datatype language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs) for specifying datatypes on elements and attributes." Appendix A provides the normative "Schema for Datatype Definitions" and Appendix B gives the non-normative "DTD for Datatype Definitions." (3) XML Schema Part 0: Primer. W3C Candidate Recommendation 24-October-2000, edited by David C. Fallside (IBM). "XML Schema Part 0: Primer is a non-normative document intended to provide an easily readable description of the XML Schema facilities and is oriented towards quickly understanding how to create schemas using the XML Schema language. XML Schema Part 1: Structures and XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes provide the complete normative description of the XML Schema language -- this primer describes the language features through numerous examples which are complemented by extensive references to the normative texts." In connection with this CR publication, Henry Thompson announced the availablility of a self-installing version of XSV, the W3C/University of Edinburgh XML Schema validator; 'WIN32 for now, UN*X coming soon'. See also: (1) Testimonials for XML Schema Candidate Recommendation; (2) the longer memo from Henry S. Thompson (Janet Daly) explaining why the I18N WG dissented from the specification's treatment of dates and times, and the CR exit criteria; (3) W3C XML Schema; and (4) full references in "XML Schemas."
[October 24, 2000]
Rapid Progress on XML Topic Maps.
Several subgroups working within the TopicMaps.org initiative are making noteworthy progress: these include the Interchange Syntax Subgroup (ISS), Conceptual Model Subgroup (CMS), Authoring Group (AG), XTM Syntax Subgroup, and XTM Modeling Subgroup. Murray Altheim (Sun Microsystems) recently announced the availability of minutes from the October 13-15 XTM meeting in Swindon. This document is available on the XTM Repository web site, which provides also the current 'discussion DTD', the Topicmaps.Org Charter and By-laws, and other relevant resources. The eGroups mailing list 'xtm-wg@egroups.com' serves as host for XTM email. The XTM Conceptual Model Subgroup (CMS) is attempting to explicate the relationship between the Topic Maps and RDF models, and has participated in a number of discussions with W3C's RDF design teams; the XTM syntax may be recommended for the interchange ('serialization') of RDF statements. See further references in "(XML) Topic Maps."
[October 24, 2000]
XSLTMark: XSLT Benchmark and Compliance Testing Suite.
Eugene Kuznetsov has announced the availability of XSLTMark, an XSLT benchmark and a small compliance testing suite. "XSLTMark Version 1.1.0 is available now and is the first release to the general public. The XSLTMark test cases have been designed to challenge processors with a variety of tasks and input conditions in order to provide a well-rounded benchmark and to facilitate analysis of which processors perform best for various applications. XSLTMark measures performance in four major categories: (1) Pattern Matching - this category covers XSLT template pattern matching and template instantiation. This performance category is important to stylesheets with many template rules and with many expected apply-template invocations. (2) XPath Selection - this category covers nodeset selection through the evaluation of XPath path expressions. This performance category is crucial for stylesheets that contain lots of xpath expressions, particularly ones with predicates. (3) XPath Library Functions - this category covers the execution of XPath library functions, particularly the frequently used string functions. This category is most important to stylesheets that perform a lot of string processing. (4) XSLT Control - this category covers the control structures defined by XSLT elements, including variable and parameter handling. This category is most relevant for stylesheets that perform tricky calculations involving calling templates with parameters. . . There are about 40 different testcases in this release; see documentation for descriptions and several third-party credits. A variety of java and C/C++ processors are supported, and drivers for other XSLT engines are easy to add. Source and makefiles are being released (with an emphasis on Linux X86, although Win32 X86 and Solaris SPARC are also supported, and other platforms should be fairly straightforward). We are also making available some initial benchmark results for several popular and well-regarded XSLT processors. We welcome comments, benchmark results submissions and new test drivers for other XSLT processors. DataPower's XSLTMark is the first comprehensive benchmark for measuring the performance of XSL processors. It can be used to test the XSLT performance of XSL processors for XML-to-XML and XML-to-HTML transformations. It also provides basic compliance testing to ensure that benchmark results are not distorted by incorrectly functioning processors. The benchmark is a java application that uses a 'Driver' class to communicate with the XSL processor under test. Both java and native (C/C++) processors are supported, with driver modules available for many popular XSLT engines on a variety of platforms. XSLTMark is currently being used for performance and compliance testing at DataPower, but also has a core suite of tests to yield benchmark figures for external comparison purposes. The tool features: (1) Processing throughput measurement; (2) Normalized score calculation; (3) Balanced test suite; (4) Optional standards compliance testing; (5) Support for processors written in both java and C/C++; (6) Cross-platform operation; (7) Test drivers for most popular XSLT processors [XT (James Clark), Saxon (Michael Kay), Transformiix (Mozilla), Xalan-J (Apache), Xalan-C++ (Apache), MSXML (Microsoft)]. For related topics, see "XSLT/XPath Conformance."
[October 24, 2000]
W3C Specification for Modularization of XHTML Advances to Candidate Recommendation.
The W3C specification for the Modularization of XHTML has been promoted to the status of a Candidate Recommendation. Reference: W3C Candidate Recommendation 20-October-2000, edited by Robert Adams (Intel Corporation), Murray Altheim (Sun Microsystems), Frank Boumphrey (HTML Writers Guild), Sam Dooley (IBM), Shane McCarron (Applied Testing and Technology), Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer (Mozquito Technologies), and Ted Wugofski (Phone.com). The new Candidate Recommendation "specifies an abstract modularization of XHTML and an implementation of the abstraction using XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs). This modularization provide a means for subsetting and extending XHTML, a feature needed for extending XHTML's reach onto emerging platforms." Status: This version of XHTML "incorporates some comments from the Last Call Working Draft review period. A diff-marked version from the Last Call draft is available for comparison purposes. Major changes in this version include: (1) Re-integration of the Building document into this document; (2) Incorporation of the Henry Thompson/Dan Connolly XML Namespace handling process with substantial additions by the Math and HTML working groups; (3) Complete worked examples including modules and miniature DTDs; (4) Minor restructuring of abstract module definitions, including the creation of a 'style attribute module', a 'name identification module' and a 'target' module; (5) Tweaking of some of the module contents based on review comments. On 20 October 2000, this document enters a Candidate Recommendation review period. From that date until 17-November-2000, W3C members are encouraged to review and implement this specification and return comments to w3c-html-editor@w3.org. W3C is looking for testimonials from users of this specification. Additionally, experience using all of the modules is being sought to create a coverage table of the use of each module. These two criteria are needed to advance this specification to Proposed Recommendation." Available from W3C as a Single HTML file, Postscript version, PDF version, ZIP archive, or Gzip'd TAR archive. See additional references in "XHTML and 'XML-Based' HTML Modules."
[October 24, 2000]
Update of XGMML (Extensible Graph Markup and Modeling Language) Schema.
John Punin has announced an updated version of the XML Schema for XGMML (Extensible Graph Markup and Modeling Language). The revised XML Schema is based on the W3C XML Schema Working Draft 22-September-2000; it has been validated using the XSV Validator version 1.166/1.77. XGMML (Extensible Graph Markup and Modeling Language) "is an XML application based on GML which is used for graph description. XGMML uses tags to describe nodes and edges of a graph. The purpose of XGMML is to make possible the exchange of graphs between differents authoring and browsing tools for graphs. The conversion of graphs written in GML to XGMML is trivial. Using XSL with XGMML allows the translation of graphs to different formats. XGMML was created to be used for the WWWPAL System that visualizes web sites as a graph. Web Robots can navigate through a web site and save the graph information as an XGMML file. XGMML, as any other XML application, can be mixed Robots can navigate through a web site and save the graph information as an XGMML file. XGMML, as any other XML application, can be mixed with other markup languages to describe additional graph, node and/or edge information." The XGMML 1.0 Draft Specification is available online. See further reference in "Extensible Graph Markup and Modeling Language (XGMML)."
[October 24, 2000]
Pixy System 2 Astronomical Image Software Uses RELAX/Relaxer.
Murata Makoto recently announced the availability of Pixy System 2 from the MISAO Project. The MISAO Project "aims to make much use of images taken all over the world for searching and tracking astronomical remarkable objects." Pixy (Practical Image eXamination and Inner-objects Identification system) "is an automated astronomical image examination system developed by Seiichi Yoshida, used in the cource of new object survey of the MISAO Project. It automatically detects all stars from an image, collates them with star data recorded in catalogs such as GSC, USNO-A2.0, etc., and finds out new objects or variable stars. It also prints out all astrometric and photometric data of all detected stars, so it is also useful for astrometry of minor planets or photometry of variable stars." Pixy System 2 is implemented using Java language; it runs both on a Windows PC and a UNIX workstation. The software is available for download, and its API documentation may be read online. Pixy System 2 "heavily uses RELAX/Relaxer: the class files in the net.aerith.misao.xml.relaxer package are created by Relaxer from the RELAX files." Relaxer is a Java class generator that operates on a XML document defined by a RELAX grammer. In the new version of Pixy, one may 'save the examination result in XML file, and review of the desktop from the XML file'.
[October 19, 2000]
Research Information Exchange Markup Language (RIXML).

A recent announcement from a group of industry financial leaders describes the formation of RIXML.org, created to support the development of "an open protocol to improve the process of categorizing, aggregating, comparing, sorting, and distributing global financial research." The fifteen founding members of RIXML.org include five Asset Managers and ten Broker-Dealers. Details: "A group of major financial firms announced the formation of RIXML.org, a global industry association of buy-side and sell-side firms whose mission is to develop an open standard for the electronic exchange of investment research. The new specification, to be known as RIXML (Research Information eXchange Markup Language), will be based on XML, the emerging standard for data sharing between applications. RIXML will provide a structure for parsing and classifying investment research in a way that enables recipients to access information in a customizable format through standard sorting and filtering criteria. Once developed through the collaborative efforts of the association's members, the RIXML specification will be made available for use by firms within the financial services industry as well as other interested parties." See (1) the text of the announcement: "Financial Industry Leaders Join Forces to Develop a Global Standard for Investment Research", and (2) "Research Information Exchange Markup Language (RIXML)."

[October 18, 2000]
New Working Draft for W3C Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.0.
Max Froumentin (W3C XSL Staff Contact) announced the release of a new working draft for Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.0. Reference: W3C Working Draft 18-October-2000. By Sharon Adler (IBM), Anders Berglund (IBM), Jeff Caruso (Pageflex), Stephen Deach (Adobe), Paul Grosso (ArborText), Eduardo Gutentag (Sun), Alex Milowski (Lexica), Scott Parnell (Xerox), Jeremy Richman (BroadVision), and Steve Zilles (Adobe). Document overview: "This specification defines the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). XSL is a language for expressing stylesheets. Given a class of arbitrarily structured XML documents or data files, designers use an XSL stylesheet to express their intentions about how that structured content should be presented; that is, how the source content should be styled, laid out, and paginated onto some presentation medium, such as a window in a Web browser or a hand-held device, or a set of physical pages in a catalog, report, pamphlet, or book. Formatting is enabled by including formatting semantics in the result tree. Formatting semantics are expressed in terms of a catalog of classes of formatting objects. The nodes of the result tree are formatting objects. The classes of formatting objects denote typographic abstractions such as page, paragraph, table, and so forth. Finer control over the presentation of these abstractions is provided by a set of formatting properties, such as those controlling indents, word- and letter-spacing, and widow, orphan, and hyphenation control. In XSL, the classes of formatting objects and formatting properties provide the vocabulary for expressing presentation intent. The XSL processing model is intended to be conceptual only. An implementation is not mandated to provide these as separate processes. Furthermore, implementations are free to process the source document in any way that produces the same result as if it were processed using the conceptual XSL processing model." WD status: "This version supersedes the previous draft released on March 27, 2000. The working group is issuing this interim public draft as it sets out a number of changes made in response to comments received on the Last Call draft. The Working Group intends to submit a revised version of this specification for publication as a Candidate Recommendation in the near future. Items under consideration for change for Candidate Recommendation include the name of the font-height-override-before and font-height-override-after properties. Discussion is invited and comments can be sent to the editors at xsl-editors@w3.org." The WD is available in several formats: PDF, XML file, HTML single file and .ZIP file. See related references in "Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)."

[October 18, 2000]
jUDDI: Bowstreet Hosts Open Source Java-based UDDI Toolkit Development on SourceForge.

Bowstreet recently announced 'jUDDI' as "the industry's first implementation of broad industry-initiated standard to link e-businesses to the 'Yellow Pages' of B2B web services. The jUDDI implementation, available immediately, comes after Ariba, IBM and Microsoft unveiled a draft specification of the UDDI standard. Bowstreet has introduced jUDDI as free, open source software that is available for anyone to use. UDDI -- which stands for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration -- is designed to make it easy for businesses to create partnerships and new business models using platform-neutral application components called web services. The initiative will create a distributed registry, or Yellow Pages, for publishing, finding and using web services that companies wish to offer to the marketplace. Bowstreet's jUDDI (pronounced 'Judy') is an open source Java-based toolkit for developers to make their applications UDDI-ready. jUDDI-enabled applications will be able to look up a web service in a UDDI registry. A retail chain, for example, could use the toolkit to jUDDI-enable its online catalog. With jUDDI, the catalog could call another company's shopping cart and a third company's transaction web service, creating an instant web-based store. Companies will eventually create many connections like this, spawning "business webs," or dynamic collections of businesses, on a massive scale. jUDDI and UDDI will complement DSML (Directory Services Markup Language) -- the directory services standard launched last year by Bowstreet, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. Directories provide users with a powerful way to manage web services, including web services published in UDDI registries. Bowstreet sees synergy between DSML and UDDI and will actively explore a relationship between the two specifications, according to Tauber, who is chairman of the DSML 2.0 working group. The jUDDI project is hosted at SourceForge and available as downloadable software from www.juddi.org. jUDDI is the latest in a long line of Bowstreet's industry firsts that advance intercompany interoperability on the Internet. 'UDDI, Microsoft's .NET, HP's e-Speak, ebXML, DSML and a host of other initiatives confirm what Bowstreet customers already know,' said Bob Crowley, Bowstreet's president and chief executive officer. 'They know that plug-and-play e-commerce is possible and inevitable for the 21st century, because they're doing it.' Bowstreet, a founding advisor to the UDDI initiative, was one of the first companies to recognize the importance of web services and act on it commercially. In 1998, the company announced a software architecture for deploying and managing web services across multiple vendor platforms." For references on UDDI, see "Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)."

[October 18, 2000]
Revised Working Draft for W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 Specification.

As part of the W3C's P3P Activity, the P3P Specification Working Group has released a new 'last call' working draft for the The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification. Reference: W3C Working Draft 18-October-2000, edited by Massimo Marchiori (W3C/MIT/UNIVE). Description: "The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) enables Web sites to express their privacy practices in a standard format that can be retrieved automatically and interpreted easily by user agents. P3P user agents will allow users to be informed of site practices (in both machine- and human-readable formats) and to automate decision-making based on these practices when appropriate. Thus users need not read the privacy policies at every site they visit. The P3P1.0 specification defines the syntax and semantics of P3P privacy policies, and the mechanisms for associating policies with Web resources. P3P policies consist of statements made using the P3P vocabulary for expressing privacy practices. P3P policies also reference elements of the P3P base data schema -- a standard set of data elements that all P3P user agents should be aware of. The P3P specification includes a mechanism for defining new data elements and data sets, and a simple mechanism that allows for extensions to the P3P vocabulary. P3P policies use an XML encoding of the P3P vocabulary to identify the legal entity making the representation of privacy practices in a policy, enumerate the types of data or data elements collected, and explain how the data will be used. In addition, policies identify the data recipients, and make a variety of other disclosures including information about dispute resolution, and the address of a site's human-readable privacy policy." Appendices 4 and 5 of the Working Draft provide the 'XML Schema Definition' and the 'XML DTD Definition'. Status: This Last Call Working Draft is submitted for review by W3C members and other interested parties; the last call review period ends 31 October 2000. "Following this Last Call period, the Working Group intends to submit this specification for publication as a Candidate Recommendation." For related references, see "Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Project."

[October 17, 2000]
Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML).

The Caltech ERATO Kitano Systems Biology Project is developing the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), using XML and UML for representation and modeling of the information components in the system. The research team is attempting to specify "a common, model-based description language for systems biology simulation software; we call this the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML). The overall goal is to develop an open standard that will enable simulation software to communicate and exchange models, ultimately leading to the ability for researchers to run simulations and analyses across multiple software packages. SBML is the result of merging the most obvious modeling-language features of BioSpice, DBSolve, E-Cell, Gepasi, Jarnac, StochSim, and Virtual Cell. The description language is encoded in XML, the Extensible Markup Language. The XML encoding of the description language can define a file format; however, at this time, we are focusing on using the XML-based description language as an interchange format for use in communications between programs. Appendix B [in the principal specification] contains the current version of this XML schema. As XML Schemas are difficult to read and absorb by human readers, we define the proposed data structures using a succinct graphical notation based on a subset of UML, the Unified Modeling Language. . . The SBML representation language is organized around five categories of information: model, compartment, geometry, specie, and reaction. Not all ofthese will be needed by every simulation package; rather, the intent is to cover the range of data structures needed by the collection of all of the simulators examined so far..." For other description and references, see "Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML)."
[October 16, 2000]
Gnome XML Library's libxml-2.2.5 Supports XPointer and XPath.

Daniel Veillard (W3C) posted an announcement for the release of libxml-2.2.5 in the Gnome XML library with XPointer and XPath implementations, including an initial testsuite. "I usually don't post announces of new releases of libxml to xml-dev, but this this version has XPointer support which was requested previously here I think it makes sense: Libxml is the XML C library developped for the Gnome project, it allow to parse, manipulate, and save XML and HTML documents but it does not expose a GUI interface. Here are some key points about libxml (a.k.a. gnome-xml): (1) Libxml exports Push and Pull type parser interfaces for both XML and HTML. (2) Libxml can do DTD validation at parse time, using a parsed document instance, or with an arbitrary DTD. (3) Libxml now includes a nearly complete XPath and XPointer implementations. (4) It is written in plain C, making as few assumptions as possible, and sticking closely to ANSI C/POSIX for easy embedding. Works on Linux/Unix/Windows (5) Basic support for HTTP and FTP client allowing to fetch remote resources (6) The design is modular, most of the extensions can be compiled out. (7) The internal document repesentation is as close as possible to the DOM interfaces. (8) Libxml also has a SAX like interface; the interface is designed to be compatible with Expat. (9) This library is released both under the W3C IPR and the GNU LGPL; use either at your convenience. URLs for libxml include http://xmlsoft.org/ and ftp://xmlsoft.org." For related XLink/XPointer tools, see "XML Linking and Addressing Languages (XPath, XPointer, XLink)."

[October 16, 2000]
XML Developers' Day Call for Presentations.

Marion Elledge (GCA) has posted a call for presentations in connection with XML Developers' Day at the XML 2000 Conference. "Since 1984, the fall GCA SGML/XML conference has been the one annual must-attend event for the structured markup community. XML was first introduced to the world at this conference in 1996, and the event continues to be a focal point for meetings of XML-related OASIS, W3C, IDEAlliance, and ISO working groups. For information on the conference, held this year in Washington, D.C., see http://www.gca.org/attend/2000_conferences/XML_2000/. XML Developers' Day on Monday 4 December is intended for conference attendees with a special interest in the latest XML tools and advanced techniques. If you have applications that feature innovative uses of XML, this is your chance to share your accomplishments with other advanced workers. Proposals of 1-3 paragraphs clearly describing the presentation should be sent in plain text directly to the chair of the XML Dev Day track, Jon Bosak. Submissions must be mailed no later than Monday, 23-October-2000." See the text of the announcement for details.

[October 16, 2000]
HL7's Clinical Document Architecture (CDA).

A recent announcement from Health Level Seven reports on the progress of the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA): "Health Level Seven, Inc. (HL7) successfully balloted what it believes to be the first XML-based standard for healthcare -- the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA). The CDA, which was until recently known as the Patient Record Architecture (PRA), provides an exchange model for clinical documents (such as discharge summaries and progress notes) -- and brings the healthcare industry closer to the realization of an electronic medical record. The CDA Standard is expected to be published as an ANSI approved standard by the end of the year. By leveraging the use of XML, the HL7 Reference Information Model (RIM) and coded vocabularies, the CDA makes documents both machine-readable-so they are easily parsed and processed electronically-and human-readable-so they can be easily retrieved and used by the people that need them. CDA documents can be displayed using XML-aware Web browsers or wireless applications such as cell phones, as shown by Nokia at the HIMSS 2000 demonstration. The CDA is only the first example of HL7's commitment to the advancement of XML-based e-healthcare technologies within the clinical, patient care domain. Along with the CDA, HL7 is developing XML-based Version 3 messages. These Version 3 messages enhance the usability of HL7 by offering greater precision and less optionality, conformance profiles that will help guarantee compliance, coded attributes linked to standard vocabularies, and an explicit, comprehensive, and open information model-the HL7 RIM. All this, packaged in a standardized XML syntax for ease of interoperability. In 1999, HL7 also successfully balloted a recommendation for sending V2.3.1 messages using XML encoding. In 2001, HL7 will ballot, as a normative standard, a methodology for producing HL7 approved DTDs for Version 2.4 and previous versions. Said Stan Huff, chair of the HL7 board of directors: 'XML is an encoding that complements the semantic content provided by the HL7 RIM, allowing users to exploit all the possibilities of the Internet. The extensibility inherent in XML is resulting in an explosion of schemas and DTDs from diverse sources, which actually decreases the ability to provide plug and play applications. The development of a model-based, standardized and industry-accepted application of XML, as provided by HL7, will help decrease the cost of integration, and improve the reliability and consistency of communications between disparate systems and enterprises.' HL7's history with the Web and XML stretches back to the inception of the technologies. The organization is a long-standing and active member of the World Wide Web Consortium-the creators and keepers of XML. It has also exchanged sponsor memberships with OASIS, a non-profit, international consortium that operates XML.org, a global XML industry portal used to collect and distribute XML schemas." For other information, see "Health Level Seven XML Patient Record Architecture."

[October 14, 2000]
StarOffice Software 'Open' Source Available at OpenOffice.org.

A recent announcement from Sun announces the availability of StarOffice source code as 'open' source, and the decision to adopt XML to replace the old binary file format; the project is dedicated to establishing open productivity XML-based file formats and language-independent component APIs. "The source code for StarOffice software is now available under the GNU Public License at OpenOffice.org. Sun has also made the StarOffice APIs and XML file formats available as well, in an effort to drive standardization across office productivity suites. Developers around the world now have the freedom to use StarOffice technology to best suit their needs, whether to improve their own products, build new value-added products on top of the StarOffice suite, improve existing technology in StarOffice software, or contribute new StarOffice components to the open source community. This move opens up the office productivity market to unlimited possibilities for innovation. In one of the largest actions of its kind, Sun is working with the leaders of the free software and open source community to make the source code for its StarOffice software suite freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). In addition, Sun will commit the efforts of its development team, as well as the resources of a $14 billion global company, to work side by side with members of the community to continue to develop the code at OpenOffice.org, a site hosted and managed by CollabNet. No longer will any one company determine what is best for the market or the user, but the market will decide and users will choose. No longer will files and documents wear the cement shoes of a single vendor or operating system, but standards will flourish and compatibility reign across platforms. For the first time, a commercial grade, full-featured office suite will be opened up to the innovative input of the global developer community." [On the XML File Format:] "We adopted XML to replace the old binary file format and become the OpenOffice.org suite's new native file format. Our goals were twofold: to have a complete specification encompassing all components, and to provide an open standard for office documents. One single XML format applies to different types of documents -- e.g., the same definition applies for tables in texts and in spreadsheets. XML is ideal as an open standard because of the free availability of XML specifications and DTDs, and XML's support for XSL, XSLT, Xlink, SVG, MathML, and many other important and emerging standards. Beside replacing the binary file format with XML, the OpenOffice.org suite will use XML internal for exchanging any type of content between the different applications. OpenOffice.org provides today an infrastructure for using different XML components. The XML-Parser and the XML-Printer are all implemented as components. Every of these component support the Simple API for XML (SAX). This infrastructure will allow in the future to dynamically configure a pipelines of different XML components, like XML-Parser, XSLT-Processor, etc. to process XML-Input and Output. This will allow transformation of XML-Data into different formats on the fly, without storing intermediate files and parse them again for every transformation step. See the latest draft of the XML File Format Specification; the XML DTDs are available through the CVS access. There are many benefits to making StarOffice software open source, including: (1) Higher quality product. Since there are more developers on the project fixing bugs, there will be fewer bugs. (2) Faster development time. Leveraging the efficiencies of the open source model, the community will get access to new features sooner. (3) Ports to any platform. Since the code is open, anyone can port the StarOffice code to any platform. (4) Many languages. It will be possible to localize StarOffice software to any language the community has knowledge of. (5) Standard APIs. A single API set for manipulating and extending StarOffice software. (6) Standard file formats. XML will allow any XML-capable program to read StarOffice files. (7) More templates and sample documents. By building a community, users will be able to share sample documents, document templates, and macros, making it easier to produce professional-quality content. . . With XML file formats and language-independent APIs, OpenOffice.org ushers in an era of compatibility, giving developers the power to innovate and build new applications that easily work together, regardless of platform. End users will be able to choose from an array of powerful, free software, assured that their work is transportable and can be shared with anyone. Sun will continue to drive the development of the OpenOffice.org source code and distribute its own certified, StarOffice branded version of the OpenOffice.org software for free. To ensure consumer confidence and promote uniformity, OpenOffice.org will also allow other companies the opportunity to license the source for commercial release under a royalty-free Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) that requires only that they maintain compatibility with the GPL reference implementation. Companies that meet this requirement may also qualify for and license the StarOffice brand for use on their product. . . As promised, Sun Microsystems and CollabNet have worked together to build the infrastructure to put the StarOffice code into the open source arena on October 13, 2000. The CVS repository is up and running, and the code is now available for checkout and download. A complete set of technical documentation is available, including a guide to the projects, whitepapers, a 'build guide,' and a porting guide..." See (1) the Technical Overview, (2) the main development web site, and (3) "StarOffice and XML."

[October 13, 2000]
W3C Acknowledges XML Messaging Specification (XMSG).

The W3C has acknowledged receipt of a submission for XMSG - XML Messaging Specification. Reference: W3C Note 13-October-2000, by R. Alexander Milowski (of Lexica, LLC). Document abstract: "XMSG is a specification for using XML to send messages that contain a set of XML documents, embedded non-XML data, and references to non-XML documents in a fashion that supports scalable transactions and operates on a participant model." The submission forms a multi-part document consisting of: (1) the XMSG (XML Messaging) Specification, (2) an XMSG DTD, (3) an XMSG Schema, and (4) the XMSG Schema Documentation. Lexica, LLC requests in the submission that the W3C Consortium include the submission as consideration in the XML Protocol Activity. Description: The XML messaging specification "is based on the basic principle of providing a simple way to transport multiple XML documents within one logical XML construct without dictating any layered semantics of a messaging protocol that might be layered on top. The general philosophy is to provide the general structure upon which messaging protocols for specific business or technological purposes can be layered allowing the identification of that messaging intent but not dictating the exact syntax and semantics of the subject message. In this way, manifests, metadata, and other messaging specific constructs can be tailored to specific vertical markets or technology applications. In general, the idea of an XML message presented by this specification is three-fold: (1) A pair or triplet of participants involved in the message are identified by URI values. (2) Metadata may be associated with the message itself. (3) A set of documents is contained and identified by URI allowing for document specific metadata. The goals of this specification are (1) To provide the ability to transport multiple documents and references to associated data objects within a single document (a 'message') and preserve their identity. (2) To provide the ability to associate metadata with both the documents and the message without modifying the original document or schemas for those documents. (3) To provide the ability to transport non-XML data as a document within the message. (4) To provide a simple way to accomplish XML messaging." W3C Team Comment on the NOTE has been provided by Yves Lafon, W3C lead for XML Protocol Activity: "The submission provides a description of using XML to send MIME mail like messages that contain XML documents, non-XML data and references to other documents. In XMSG, a message consists of information about the message itself, such as the origin, the destination, a unique ID used to identify and track it, as well as management-oriented information, such as its priority, expire time and receipt management. XML Documents are embedded using a special tag in the message format, with an ID to provide easy reference inside the message. Even if errors codes remain application-specific, having classes of errors may be helpful for intermediaries..." [cache]

[October 13, 2000]
Redfoot RDF Store/Viewer/Editor Framework.

James Tauber (Director XML Technology, Bowstreet) has posted an announcement to the W3C 'www-rdf-interest@w3.org' mailing list for the release of Redfoot Version 0.9.0. "Redfoot is a store/viewer/editor framework for RDF that includes peer-to-peer communication between stores. It is written in Python by James Tauber and Daniel Krech, with open source development hosted on SourgeForge. "At present, Redfoot includes: (1) an RDF database; (2) a query API for RDF with numerous higher-level query functions; (3) an RDF parser and serializer; (4) a simple HTTP server providing a web interface for viewing and editing RDF; (5) the beginnings of a peer-to-peer architecture for communication between different RDF databases. Although the peer-to-peer functionality is embryonic, the RDF viewing/editing capabilities are of beta quality... In the future, Redfoot will hopefully include: (1) a full peer-to-peer architecture for discovery of RDF statements; (2) an inference engine; (3) a fully customizable UI; (4) connectors for mapping non-RDF data into RDF triples; (5) sample applications built on top of Redfoot. Redfoot is written in pure Python and is being tested on Python 1.6 and 2.0b1 (soon 2.0b2). Redfoot makes extensive use of callbacks as a means of processing RDF structures rather than building large temporary data structures in memory. For other details, see the development documentation. For related resources, see "Resource Description Framework (RDF)."

[October 13, 2000]
JDF Specification Draft Spiral Version 4.0.

A level 4.0 draft specification has been published for the XML-based Job Definition Format (JDF) and its counterpart, the Job Messaging Format (JMF). JDF is an open, extensible, XML-based print workflow specification framework. "Four companies prominent in the graphic arts industry -- Adobe, Agfa, HEIDELBERG, and MAN Roland -- have united to create this extensible, XML-based format built upon the existing technologies of CIP3's Print Production Format (PPF) and Adobe's Portable Job Ticket Format (PJTF). JDF provides three primary benefits to the printing industry. Unlike any previous format, it has the ability to unify the pre-press, press, and post-press aspects of any printing job. It also provides the means to bridge the communication gap between production services and Management Information Systems (MIS). And finally, it is able to carry out both of these functions no matter what system architecture is already in place, and no matter what tools are being used to complete the job. In short, JDF is extremely versatile and comprehensive. JMF messages are most often encoded in pure XML, without an additional MIME/Multipart wrapper. Only controllers that support JDF job submission via the message channel must support MIME for messages. Appendix A of the 389-page specification lists a number of commonly used JDF data types and structures and their XML encoding, based upon the W3C XML Schema datatypes. Data types are simple data entities such as strings, numbers and dates. They have a very straightforward string representation and are used as XML attribute values. Data structures, on the other hand, describe more complex structures that are built from the defined data types, such as colors..." For references, see "Job Definition Format (JDF)." For related initiatives, see: (1) Printing Industry Markup Language (PrintML); (2) PML: Markup Language for Paper and Printing; (3) XML for Publishers and Printers (XPP). See also the PrintTalk Consortium and PrintCafe's eProduction eCommerce eXchange (PCX), now being described primarily as 'a framework for integrating industry standards' supporting XML-based specifications for the printing and publishing supply chain. The PrintTalk implementation supports use of the proposed Job Definition Format (JDF) standard for its job specification semantic and Commercial eXtensible Markup Language (cXML) to define the business objects; four of thirteen business objects have been defined so far.

[October 13, 2000]
Tutorials and Reference for XPointer and Extended-XLink.

Jiri Jirat recently announced the availability of tutorial resources for the W3C XML Linking specifications. These materials are posted on the Zvon.org web site along with a collection of related tutorials covering XSLT, SOAP, XUL, CSS, Namespaces, etc. The online XPointer reference "allows easy access to definitions of locations, errors and functions, with links to relevant examples in XPointer tutorial. The XPointer tutorial explains the concepts of XPointer using more than 30 examples. It is aimed at 'ordinary' user, who will use XPointer mainly in the href attribute of XLink. A tutorial for extended-type XLink has also been added. The Zvon XLink reference has been updated with cross-references to examples for extended-type XLink." In this connection, note Daniel Veillard's reminder that the W3C specifications for XPointer and XLink are currently in Candidate Recommendation stage at W3C, and that the XML Linking Working Group is seeking implementation reports for XPointer and XLink. The CR stage "is dedicated to implementors, and the specifications are allowed to pursue their way toward the final Recommendation status only if the prerequisite of implementability have been verified." Implementation feedback for XPointer and Xlink may be sent to the publicly archived mailing list www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org. Review comments may also be sent to the XML Linking Working Group co-chairs, Eve Maler and Daniel Veillard. Some examples of XLink/XPointer implementations are provided in "XML Linking Language."

[October 13, 2000]
W3C Publishes CSS Mobile Profile 1.0 for Mobile Devices.

W3C has issued CSS Mobile Profile 1.0 as a working draft to define a subset of CSS2 features that provides a minimal guarantee of interoperability on mobile devices. Reference: Working Draft 13-October-2000, by Ted Wugofski (Phone.com), Doug Dominiak (Motorola), and Peter StarkEricsson). Document abstract: "This specification defines a subset of the Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 specification tailored to the needs and constraints of mobile devices." The Working Draft of the CSS Mobile Profile specification has been published by the W3C CSS Working Group part of the Style activity. The document supplies a "profile of the Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) specification appropriate for mobile devices such as wireless phones. Conformance to this profile means that a user agent supports, at minimum, the features defined in this specification per the CSS2 conformance. CSS2 specifies how developers can author style sheets for presenting documents across multiple devices and media types. While this is very important, it is also important that authors have an understanding of what features are supported on these different devices. Likewise, it is important that similar devices operate in a similar manner. Otherwise, authors will need to develop style sheets for each version of each device -- raising the cost of content development and decreasing interoperability. The CSS Mobile Profile specifies a conformance profile for mobile devices, identifying a minimum set of properties, values, selectors, and cascading rules. The resulting CSS Mobile Profile is very similar to CSS1." Section 3 provides a tabular summary of CSS Mobile Profile selector syntax. The CSS Mobile Profile uses the same syntax as specified in CSS2, with a subset of values; in general, the CSS Mobile Profile uses the same cascading rules as in CSS2. A CSS Mobile Profile conforming user agent must also be able to process media-dependent stylesheets as specified in CSS2." For related specifications, see "W3C Cascading Style Sheets."

[October 12, 2000]
IBM Licenses New XML Technologies.

From an IBM announcement: "IBM today made seven new alpha technologies, including six based on the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standard, available for licensing through alphaWorks, IBM's free, on-line resource for developers. Today's announcement brings the total number of alpha technologies available for licensing on the alphaWorks site to 13. The first six were launched together with the IBM licensing initiative in August. The move has been welcomed by developers who have requested that the free 90-day trial license model expand to commercial purchase rights. New technologies available for licensing include Xeena, a visual XML editor that can be used with XML document type descriptions (DTDs). The popular Xeena editor was downloaded tens of thousands of times with numerous requests for licenses through the alphaWorks home page. Other XML technologies now available as a part of alphaWorks' new licensing initiative include: (1) XML EditorMaker - A text-based XML document editor. This tool automatically creates visual, Java-based XML editors that developers can easily use to create and modify XML documents, increasing development and deployment speed of XML-based documents. (2) XML Productivity Kit, which allows for rapid integration of XML documents into a Java development environment. (3) XTransGen, which enables developers to easily define and store the mapping relationship between two XML document types (DTDs). Once this initial translation is completed, XML documents can be converted quickly. (4) XML Lightweight Extractor for defining sources of information for a particular XML document. This information can be stored and recalled dynamically to populate XML documents with the appropriate data. It works with any JDBC-compliant relational database. (5) XML Master, a tool for creating custom, Java-based logic for the manipulation of XML documents. Developers can build programming frameworks for a particular XML document type and then automatically generate Java code that can be imported into a Java development environment (e.g., VisualAge for Java). The seventh new technology is the Remote Method Invocation for Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.X (RMI for IE4), a package that provides support for the Microsoft JVM (Java Virtual Machine) not included in older versions of Explorer. . . developerWorks, IBM's free, on-line collection of content and resources, enables developers worldwide to build better software and to enhance their technical skills by offering a wealth of tools, tutorials, code, tips, news, white papers and how-to articles focused on open standards and cross platform development. Committed to providing the most informative, reliable and accurate technical information by tapping into IBM and industry leaders; developerWorks content is valuable to developers regardless of their application development tool of choice. A major component of developerWorks is alphaWorks, IBM's emerging technology broker. alphaWorks provides early adopters and innovators direct access to IBM's 'alpha' technologies through free download and commercial licenses. Both IBM sites respond to the needs of developers by providing relevant technical content and cutting-edge emerging technology."

[October 12, 2000]
IBM's Agent Building and Learning Environment (ABLE).

IBM's Agent Building and Learning Environment (ABLE) "is a toolkit from the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center for developing hybrid intelligent software agents and agent applications in Java. The update provides new neural and Bayesian learning algorithms, GUI enhancements, XML rule parsing, bug fixes, and documentation on adding custom beans. . . ABLE provides a set of reusable JavaBean components, called AbleBeans, along with several flexible interconnection methods for combining those components to create software agents. AbleBeans implement data access, filtering and transformation, learning, and reasoning capabilities. Function-specific AbleAgents are provided for classification, clustering, prediction, and genetic search. Application-specific agents can be constructed using one or more of these AbleBeans. AbleAgents are situated in their environment through the use of sensors and effectors, which provide a generic mechanism for linking them to Java applications. A GUI-based interactive development environment, the Able Agent Editor, is provided to assist in the construction of AbleAgents using AbleBean components. In the ABLE framework, an agent is an autonomous software component. It could be running on its own thread of control or could be called synchronously by another agent or process either through a direct method call or by sending an event. By combining one or more AbleBeans, agents can be extremely lightweight (e.g. a few lines of Java code) or can be relatively heavy weight, using multiple forms of inferencing (e.g. fuzzy rule systems, forward and backward chaining) and learning (e.g. neural classification, prediction, and clustering). . . ABLE is meant to make your life easier if (1) you are an application developer, by providing a set of intelligent beans, and a editor for combining them into agents. (2) you are doing research on intelligent agents, by providing a flexible Java framework for combining the ABLE beans with your algorithms or ideas about how agents should be constructed."

[October 12, 2000]
Proposed OASIS Technical Committee on Entity Resolution.

A recent announcement released by Karl Best (OASIS - Director, Technical Operations) describes a proposed 'Entity Resolution' technical committee, to be formed under the rules of the Technical Committee Process as announced in early October. The new committee would continue work begun under the SGML Open Technical Resolution on Entity Management (entity catalog formats, formal system identifiers, etc.), updating this work to cover XML. "A new OASIS technical committee is being formed. The Entity Resolution TC has been proposed by Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.; Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems; Paul Grosso, Arbortext, Inc.; and John Cowan, Reuters Health. The request for a new TC meets the requirements of the OASIS TC process. . . The objective of the Entity Resolution TC is to provide facilities to address issue A of the OASIS catalog specification (TR 9401). These facilities will take into account new XML features and delete those features of TR 9401 that are only applicable to SGML, as well as those features applicable only to issue B in TR 9401. Deliverables: The Entity Resolution TC will produce a Committee Specification that uses XML syntax and provides a DTD (potentially also an XML Schema) for that syntax. This specification will be ready by August 2001. The Entity Resolution TC intends to submit the Committee Specification as an OASIS Standard after sufficient implementation experience has been gathered." Note also that the formation of a technical committee for 'Customer Information Quality' was announced in February: "The objective of the Technical Committee (TC) on Customer Information Quality (CIQ) formed by OASIS is to deliver XML standards for customer profile/information management to the industry. The Customer Information Quality TC has been proposed by Ram Kumar, Cognito, Inc; Vincent Buller, AND Data Solutions; John Bennett, Parlo.com; and Graham Lobsey, Cognito, Inc." See also the list of active OASIS TCs. On entity resolution, see the topic "SGML/XML Entity Types, and Entity Management," and the following section "Catalogs, Formal Public Identifiers, Formal System Identifiers."

[October 12, 2000]
Revised IETF/W3C XML-Signature Syntax and Processing Specification.

The IETF/W3C XML Signature Working Group has issued an updated Last Call Working Draft for the XML-Signature Syntax and Processing specification. Reference: W3C Working Draft 12-October-2000, edited by Donald Eastlake, Joseph Reagle, and David Solo. The document "specifies XML digital signature processing rules and syntax. XML Signatures provide integrity, message authentication, and/or signer authentication services for data of any type, whether located within the XML that includes the signature or elsewhere. Enveloped or enveloping signatures are over data within the same XML document as the signature; detached signatures are over data external to the signature element. More specifically, this specification defines an XML signature element type and an XML signature application; conformance requirements for each are specified by way of schema definitions and prose respectively. This specification also includes other useful types that identify methods for referencing collections of resources, algorithms, and keying and management information. The XML Signature is a method of associating a key with referenced data (octets); it does not normatively specify how keys are associated with persons or institutions, nor the meaning of the data being referenced and signed. Consequently, while this specification is an important component of secure XML applications, it itself is not sufficient to address all application security/trust concerns, particularly with respect to using signed XML (or other data formats) as a basis of human-to-human communication and agreement. Such an application must specify additional key, algorithm, processing and rendering requirements." Document status: This WD represents an "update to the second last call version, with an abbreviated last call termination date of October 20, 2000 (5 weeks in total). This update includes minor editorial changes, reference to the latest Canonical XML, as well as an adoption of the latest XML Schema specification. Barring substantive comment, we will request Candidate Recommendation status as soon as possible following the Canonical XML request. However, we do wish to ensure that readers are aware of following three substantive changes in the second last call: (1) We've changed the Reference Processing Model (section 4.3.3.1). to permit the presentation and acceptance of XML node-sets between Transforms (and resulting from some URI References) when appropriate; we accomplish this by heavily relying upon the XPath specification but still do NOT require a conformant XPath implementation. (2) We've revised the treatment of pre-pended algorithm object identifier within the encoded RSA SignatureValue by the PKCS1 algorithm (section 6.4.2). (3) We've revised the X509Data element (section 4.4.4) to clarify the treatment of certificate 'bags' and CRLs within that structure." See references in "XML Digital Signature (Signed XML - IETF/W3C)."

[October 11, 2000]
XML Adoption in the UK's e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF).

One of the three key policy decisions in the UK 'e-GIF' program is identified as the "adoption of XML as the primary standard for data integration and presentation on all public sector systems...the adoption of XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) form the cornerstone of the government data interoperability and integration strategy." Some details of the "Data integration policies" are highlighted in the "Policies and technical standards" section of the e-GIF report: The "UK Government policy is to use: (1) XML and XML schemas for data integration; (2) UML, RDF and XML for data modelling and description language; (3) XSL, DOM and XML for data presentation." The model also identifies the use of GML (Geospatial Markup Language) as defined by Open Geographic Council. "XML products will be written so as to comply with the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Where necessary the government will base the work on the draft W3C standards but will avoid the use of any product specific XML extensions that are not being considered for open standardisation within the W3C. Centrally agreed XML schemas are approved through the UK GovTalk processes..." According to an announcement of the plan by Cabinet Office Minister Ian McCartney, "e-GIF is a key plank in the Government's drive to get all its services online by 2005 and cut bureaucracy within the public sector. Speaking at London's QE2 Centre, Mr McCartney launched the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) - a piece of policy which will help IT systems across the whole public sector to communicate smoothly with each other. There are two main benefits the policy will bring: (1) Creating 24-hour one-stop Government: e-GIF is key to creating one-stop Government where services are available 24-hours a day from a single electronic point of access. For example, the UK online portal - built around e-GIF standards - will offer services around life episodes, giving the user information they need about a particular experience such as having a baby or learning to drive. (2) Banishing bureaucracy in Government: Step-up the red-tape revolution within Government, moving the public sector away from traditional paper-based ways of working by electronically joining up information across a range of Government departments and organisations. Again this is built around e-GIF standards... The main thrust of the framework is to adopt the Internet and World Wide Web standards for all government systems. There is a strategic decision to adopt XML and XSL as the core standard for data integration and presentation. This includes the definition and central provision of XML schemas for use throughout the public sector. The e-GIF also adopts standards that are well supported in the market place. It is a pragmatic strategy that aims to reduce cost and risk for government systems whilst aligning them to the global Internet revolution. Specifying policies and standards in themselves is not enough. Successful implementation will mean the provision of support, best practice guidance, toolkits and centrally agreed data schemas. To provide this, the government has launched the UK GovTalk initiative. This is a Cabinet Office led, joint government and industry forum for generating and agreeing XML data schemas for use throughout the public sector... The primary role of the UK GovTalk Group is to promote the production and management of the XML schemas necessary to support data interoperability requirements of the e-government strategy. XML schemas will be developed by specialist groups, established to support specific projects, or by open submission to the UK GovTalk web site either in response to a Request for Proposals or as an unsolicited proposal. In each case, the UK GovTalk Group will manage the acceptance, publication, and any subsequent change requests for the schema. XML schemas that have been accepted by the group will be published on www.govtalk.gov.uk and will be open for public comment and requests for change. The Portal Data Schemas Project has been established by the UK GovTalk Group to manage the generation and timely delivery of the agreed XML data schemas required for government services delivered through the Portal. The XML data schemas required for the portal services will be the first outputs of the Portal Data Schemas Project and will be agreed through the GovTalk processes as a prioritised delivery. The scope of the e-GIF includes intradepartmental systems and the interactions between: UK Government department and other UK Government departments, UK Government and wider public sector, UK Government and foreign governments (UK/EC, UK/US etc), UK Government and businesses world wide, and UK Government and citizens. UK Government includes central government departments and their agencies, local government and the devolved administrations. The wider public sector includes non departmental public bodies (NDPBs) and the National Health Service. The e-GIF standards are mandated on all new systems. Legacy systems which need to link to the Government Secure Intranet (GSI), Government Portal (Gateway and UK Online), the Knowledge Network or other systems, which are part of electronic service delivery, will need to comply with these standards." For other references, see "e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF)."

[October 11, 2000]
Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) Features "The Semantic Web" Department.

Guus Schreiber (Department of Social Science Informatics, University of Amsterdam) posted an announcement inviting submissions for a new area of the electronic journal Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) entitled "The Semantic Web." The new semantic Web area "is concerned with modeling semantics of web information, and covers theory, methods, and applications. . . Tim Berners-Lee coined the vision of a 'semantic web' in which background knowledge is stored on the meaning or content of web resources through the use of machine-processable metadata. The semantic web should be able to support automated services based on these descriptions of semantics. The semantic or "knowledge" web is seen as a key factor in finding a way out of the growing problems of traversing the expanding web space, where currently most web resources can only be found through syntactic matches (e.g., keyword search). This ETAI area is targeted at all research efforts aimed at constructing, maintaining and using such a knowledge-intensive information and service web. Not surprisingly, our field is interdisciplinary in its very nature covering various aspects dealt with in various communities of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. It covers aspects from knowledge engineering, databases and information systems, knowledge representation, information retrieval, digital libraries, multi-agent systems, natural-language processing, and machine learning. We envisage paper submissions falling within at least one of the following categories: Metadata, knowledge markup, and formal annotations of web information; Information extraction, automatic and semi-automatic generation of meta data for web information; Knowledge representation for the web; Generic and heuristic reasoning methods for the web; Integration of databases in the knowledge web; Interoperability of web services at the semantic and pragmatic levels; Standard ontologies for content description of web information; Distributed ontologies, knowledge composition and transformation; Scalability of knowledge-intensive web services; Content-based information retrieval; Knowledge retrieval; Tool environments, development methodologies, case studies and applications for and of the knowledge web; Web-based knowledge management and electronic commerce. ETAI (Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence) makes submitted articles directly available on-line and promotes public discussions on the submissions. Each year, accepted articles are also collected in a printed volume, mainly for library use. Area editors include Dan Brickley (University of Bristol), Dieter Fensel (Free University of Amsterdam), Yolanda Gil (ISI), Jim Hendler (University of Maryland / DARPA), Ora Lassila (OKIA), Deborah McGuinness (Stanford University), Robert Meersman (Free University of Brussels), and Guus Schreiber (University of Amsterdam)." See: "XML and 'The Semantic Web'."

[October 11, 2000]
Extensible Programming Language (XPL).

Michael Lauzon posted an announcement for the development of Extensible Programming Language (XPL). "XPL is an open source initiative, and is also an application of XML, it is a new programming language that will be based on XML as an application of XML. XPL is conceived as a framework or meta-language for defining XML document types which operate as programming languages. [Rationale:] The practice of programming stands to benefit by exploiting the evident virtues of XML: its cross-platform availability, its open textual format, its extension over a very large class of data; structures, and the networking infrastructure available to it. The practice of XML document exchange stands to benefit by exploiting the public body of programming-language concepts and applications, by bringing programming architectures into XML itself; XML is a meta-data language: the goal of XPL is to be a meta-process language. . . To learn more about it please go to http://www.xplatypus.com/. The programming language will be partly derived from Miva & Cold Fusion. Interested parties may consult: (1) the eGroups mailing list, (2) the XPL draft specification, (3) the XPL FAQ document, (4) the [Jonathan Burns'] annotated version of Paul Prescod's document "Why the Web needs Groves" and (5) the list of script tags.