DTD s have been used to define a Biosequence Markup Language, as well as ones for chemistry, mathematics and astronomy. The main difficulty of XML may be that of reaching agreement on a domain-specific DTDs. We originally intended to produce HTML documents and make them searchable via a web search engine. In February, we shifted our interest to Oracle 8i which is supposed to have built-in XML support, but we have since learned that its Internet File System is in a beta version due for Sept. release. This is an initial mock-up of a search screen.
Popular limits appear with more options available at a second level.
This mock-up of a brief display of diverse library information retrieved in an actual search reveals how flexibly XML and XSL combine to handle both content and layout presentation. Blue represents clickable items. In addition to the typical bibliographic elements, we believe that users will prefer up front access to web resources, summary serial holdings, and serials checkin data. The display of checkin data is supported by a server link to our ILS, which does not currently display checkin data in its web catalog. A big dose of user testing is needed improve these initial designs.