Talk:XML/Archive 1

message: I am rather suspicious of the claim that "XSL itself is intended for creating PDF files", but I haven't changed it because I don't know much about either XSL or PDF (I came here looking for some information) ... Just wanted to draw this to the attention of someone who might know enough to make any necessary changes. If I'm wrong, sorry! Tremolo 01:17, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It is wrong. It should say XSL can be used to genrate any type of file, e.g. PDF files. Mr. Jones 08:01, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is XSL only for making PDFs? 

message: It has occured to me that one way of thinking about XML is as a specification for the encoding of information. And, as is pointed out above, is not really a language in itself in the sense that it doesn't have its own vocabulary. The RDF (Resource Description Framework) states something to the effect of letting XML handle the issues with globalization (Unicode) and data formatting through the XML element/attribute/text value syntax and through other low-level transport considerations.
In most representations of multiple levels of XML applications that I see, it starts looking a lot like the OSI Model for networks. In the same way that applications run on top of TCP or UDP which run on top of IP (I think I got the order right), the DocBook "application" or RDF or any of the zoo of XML-based languages build on top of XML or could be done in SGML, or dozens other forms of data representation.
StWeasel
: XML is really a language in itself, with its own vocabulary (made up out of < and > and other such characters and groups of characters), its own grammar, et cetera. But it is a language whose sole purpose is to describe another language, which seems to confuse people (just like with HTML); the metalanguage gets mistaken for the languages it describes.
: What is stated above is that XML in itself is not a mark-up language, and that is true.--branko
----
While it might be arguable that it has a vocabulary, I can definitely agree on the  characterization of XML as a metalanguage. It seems that the distinction I draw is that XML is essentially a mere specification of a syntax (how symbols can be put together to form the primitives of a language), but depends on other specifications as extensions (XHTML, MathML, RDF and the like) to provide a semantics (what can actually be expressed and how this expression is interpreted for meaning). It seems to me very much like saying that ASCII is a language, but from certain viewpoints I can see how this would be a valid statement. -- StWeasel
----
A question for the mathematicians out there: Is XML a formal language? (Or maybe a formal meta-language?)
When I'm reading the page, I don't see enough emphasis on XML's strictness. The words are there, certainly, but I'd like to—for example—to move the concepts of well-formed and valid up to be more prominent. But I'm wondering, can I call XML "formal"? And when the word "formal" appears in the introduction, should it be linked to formal grammar?
DanielVonEhren 16:13, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What kind of language is XML? 

message: Deleted following:
:* The document must identify itself as an XML document with a preliminary declaration to this effect. This declaration is known as a <B>prolog</B>. It will contain information about the XML version and possibly also information about encoding and whether the XML file is standalone or not.
Read the [spec http://w3.org/TR/XML], and see how above is false.
----------
I removed this sentence from the article:
Also, again unlike HTML, XML tags explain what the data means rather than how simply to display it.
I don't see how something like this can be said about a purely syntactic specification, also eg. XHTML is a concrete
example that this is misleading at best.
Maybe something similar but NPOV could be put in as a statement about recommendations and best practices. -- Mp 09:31, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed text 

message: The article shouldn't go into the details of the syntax of XML,
especially when not all of it is covered. A definition of
well-formedness is given that refers to elements, but "element" is never
defined. I think a short example of an XML document is sufficient;
anybody wanting more can read the spec. -- 64.81.99.73 20:20, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should the syntax be described in detail? Should it be complete? 

message: "Compatibility with web and internet protocols" - What does this mean, as an advantage? The internet protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP/MIME, etc...) appear 'compatible' with anything that's a sequence of bytes and has a MIME type. Is the author referring to the fact that XML looks like HTML? 
--Alaric 14:07, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does "Compatibility with web and internet protocols" mean? 

message: I have a theory that XML was originally designed within the W3C as a replacement to HTML - the logic next step from a CSS-based world, changing  to just <foo>, and a more powerful CSS - and that the conversion from this to 'data interchange' has caused some confusion.
--Alaric 14:07, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It certainly was intended to be used this way, but this kind of support has not been implemented in IE very well (and development of IE seems to have stopped in 2001). Also the specifications in this direction have not been developed very far. Mr. Jones 08:38, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: It might be more accurate to say that the press picked up on the idea that XML was a successor to HTML.  It would be interesting to trace where that idea came from: obviously, "the next HTML" made better press than "SGML on the Web" (SGM-what???), so the idea spread fast in XML's first year or two.  Whatever W3C working group members and staffers did or did not actually say, much of the early W3C XML specification work was related to generic (i.e. non-XHTML) XML in the browser -- think of XLink, XSL(T/-FO), XPointer, XML Stylesheet linking, and even DOM.  Data-oriented XML specifications, like SOAP or XQuery, mostly came later.  David Megginson 00:03, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was XML intended as a successor to HTML? 

message: The XML Recommendation uses the capitalization Extensible Markup Language, not eXtensible Markup Language, despite the "XML" abbreviation.  Think of "X" as standing for "Ex".  Dpm64 02:45, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization 

message: Does not DOM allow random-access? I'm not sure about others (XQuery, XPath, XUpdate), but some of them may provide either the former or latter parts of the statement as well. porges 02:07, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
: Yes, but not on disk.  If you're using DOM, you cannot update a document unless you load it into memory, modify it, and write it out again.  All of it, that is.  There is no way to add or remote stuff in XML documents on disk (at least not that works for arbitrary XML files).  Anon 15:50, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, then I think the statement should be qualified to refer to a serialized document. — mjb 17:48, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I second mjb; there should be more talk of serialization and deserialization.--Randomtask 15:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "No facilities exist for randomly accessing or updating only portions of a document." 

message: * I suggest that we eliminate all software links (open or closed source).  XML is so widely implemented that it does not make sense to single out individual software packages here, and linking to software is an obvious opportunity for contributors to abuse the article for personal gain.  David 00:00, 2005 May 29 (UTC)
** Given the lack of objections, I've gone ahead and drastically simplified the External Links section.  There are, literally, thousands of specifications, tutorials, and software packages related to XML, so any list is arbitrary (should the ASCII list include every programming language and OS that supports ASCII?).  Simplifying the list also diminishes the temptation to abuse this page for self-promotion of products, projects, specs, etc.  David 21:10, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)
Now that there is an XML editor article, we could merge the XML editor links into that article. That would just leave the parser links here. Anyone (aside from the companies at the other end of those links) opposed? — mjb 08:47, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove software links? 

message: The basic parsing requirements do not support a very wide array of data types, so parsing sometimes involves additional work in order to extract the desired data from a document. For example, there is no provision in XML for mandating that "3.14159" is a floating-point number rather than a seven-character string.
XML schema (and the set of basic types that are supplied) support floating point numbers, in addition to decimals (BCD) and double-precision floating point. Type checking is achieved via validation against the schema upon which the document is based. Keith Jun 10 2005.
:XML Schema support and PSVI modeling are most certainly NOT part of the basic parsing requirements of XML. (Also, sign your name with three or four tildes, like this: ~~~~. They will be converted to your Wikipedia username and a datestamp automatically.) — mjb 21:08, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't think this is a correct statement 

message: It would be helpful if the definition of XML did not contain the words in the abbreviation; i.e the term 'markup language' is found as the definition of markup language  twice.  The equivalent is this definition of an Apple: An apple is an apple, which is a type of apple. Dec 9, 2005 crm —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.16.253.163 (talk • contribs) .
::This article defines XML as a markup language, which is conveniently linked such that you can read what a markup language is, if you don't already know. └ UkPaolo/talk┐ 16:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: XML Definition

message: Numeric character references look like entities, but instead of a name, they contain the "#" character followed by a number between the ampersand and the semicolon. The number (in decimal or hexadecimal) represents a Unicode code point [...]
But how does it distinguish between dec and hex numbers? In the example, & has a decimal number (as one can find out by looking at an ASCII chart), but what would a hexadecimal number look like? - wr 12-dec-2005
:Add an x prefix to show a number is hex:  & (decimal for &) is the same as & (hex for &).  Should this be explained somewhere in the article? --Nigelj 19:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dec/hex numerical character references

message: Somebody proposed to merge this stub into the article on XML.  I'm not really at all familiar with the subject so could somebody more knowledgable take a look at it? Fightindaman 16:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[XPML]] 

message: The anonymous quote seems irrelevant and doesn't add anything to the article. Remove? 82.42.172.48 22:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. It seemed to attract several others in short order, all disparaging, anonymous, and unverifiable (except one which had a site listed). Come on, what's the case for having a section for quotes about XML in the article? "It has to do with XML" isn't good enough. Even if the quotes were clever and came from Tim Bray's mouth, it doesn't seem at all relevant unless it helps the reader better understand XML. I've gone ahead and removed them.—mjb 01:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

text: True, but reminding the reader of things is not what an encyclopedia article is for. Quotes fall under trivia ("someone once said…and it had something to do with <topic>") which just doesn't seem like a good use of the space, to me. I know you're eager to contribute, but you would probably do better to find some articles/blog posts critical of XML and make reference to them from the article somehow.—mjb 17:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Or find a way to work it into the Weaknesses section? I think I got your point. Thanks 193.137.7.4 18:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Anonymous Quote

message: The entry for dynamic typing says "A typical implementation of dynamic typing will keep all program values 'tagged' with a type, and check the type tag before using any value in an operation." This is often refered to as "self-typing": "its type is explicitly stored in its representation" (see eg, www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Teaching/Lectures/Sem/2001/Literatur/VosSpec.doc). Isn't this precisely one of the primary ways XML is used--to store a type "tag" for a data element in line with the element itself?
Isn't self-typing what is really meant by "self-describing"? Yet in a search for both "self-typing" and "self-describing" I could find only one article making this connection: If we consider the self-descriptive nature of XML documents, these paradoxes are less surprising than it may seem: XML documents use tags to delimit some content, and these tags can be considered as type information about the content they delimit. Therefore, XML documents--even those that do not contain a DTD--are in some sense "self-typed" constructions and this makes the definition of a type system for XML transformers difficult. [emphasis added] (see www-smis.inria.fr/%7Ebouganim/CASC/Publications/LRI-LIENS_ASIAN_2003_Information%2520flow%2520security%2520for%2520XML%2520transformations.pdf).
I think it would be worthwhile trying to highlight the relationship between XML (and descriptive markup languages generally) and the use of self-typing "type tags" for dynamic typing. This will shed greater light on XML in particular and markup languages in general. For example, thinking of XML as a way of representing self-typing data helps explain why dynamic languages are so popular in dealing with XML and why statically typed languages often suffer from "impedence mismatches" with XML.
I realize that what I am saying is implicit in much of what is written about XML, I am merely suggesting that this entry make it explict. --Nick 19:47, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isn't  XML really a language for defining self-typing "type tags" for dynamic typing? 

message: :Languages based on XML...are defined in a formal way, allowing programs to modify and validate documents in these languages without prior knowledge of their form.
Isn't the form exactly what is known by the program, which can parse that which is defined in a formal way? Is this supposed to mean that the program can do it without knowing the actual content, only knowing the form? Or that it knows the XML form but not the sublanguage form? This needs to be more accurate and clearer. (Note also that "know" is not the correct term. Programs do not "know". Intelligences know, deterministic procedures do not.) - Centrx 06:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccurate description in intro? 

message: Stylus Studio is up to some new tricks, trying to get around the ban on XML editor links in this article (see above). They've created their own interface to the xml-dev list, replete with advertisements for their product, and changed the link for a more benign archive of the list. I've reverted this edit and encourage others to watch out for more edits like these. Verify any hostname changes in URLs.—mjb 04:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Watch for spam tricks in external links

message: I can't find any article discussing databases with XML as native data representation or as a model for their data access. The database related articles seem to focus on relational and object-oriented models and there is no notion of XML whatsoever. The only place that even distantly resembles it is the file processing part of this article. There already are notions of _some_ products using XML as their data representation model. However, it was removed as "inappropriate" when database product was mentioned in recent edit. Well, where it belongs then? The completely new article will be a very difficult task and I see no reason for "all or nothing" POV. Why not mention it somewhere in the main article with the hope that some day somebody will take it from here and further elaborate on this topic? 217.26.163.26 06:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  XML Databases 

message: I've been so bold to move this page from XML to Extensible Markup Language. Most other software tech pages use the long name for the page title and not the TLA. --Ligulem 15:01, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page moved 

message: I am the author of an XML tutorial called Caffè XML and I would like to add the link of the tutorial on the XML page of Wikipedia under the section Xml#External_links. However, I red on the Wikipedia official policy that self-published sources are largely not accepted with the exception of well-known professional researches in the relevant field. Hence, an idea is to let other editors familiar with the subject decide if it merits inclusion. This is why I wrote this post. You can find more about me (in particular, my teaching and research activity concerning XML) at my personal web page. M.franceschet 15:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New XML Tutorial 

message: 81.69.42.175 09:30, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  XML Strengths 

message: Maybe it would be good to create a picture similar to the figure "HTML_element_structure.png‎" from the article "HTML element" and include it near the top of this article. Such a figure would be really instructive. Ajgorhoe 23:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nice picture 

message: Why in this world we need this? Do we ever read HTML file using text readers, like notepad?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by V4vijayakumar (talk • contribs) 
:All the time. — Jaxad0127 05:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Me too. Reading and writing, (X)HTML, XML, XSLT, SVG, all using Notepad. (I'm not saying I'm any good at it!) Charivari 07:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You forgot CSS, JavaScript, etc. I prefer Notepad2 (syntax hi-lighting and regex fid/replace). But its still source editing. WYSIWYG editors tend to give bloated code (especially word processors like MS Word). — Jaxad0127 17:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Its simultaneously human and machine-readable format 

message: I think using (X)HTML elements in the XML examples is a bad idea, as this will be confusing to people unfamiliar with XML.This is especially true when the examples makes explicit references to what is and is not valid in XHTML.
The example with the script element is imo irrelevant to this article, and should be removed. Jerazol 20:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  (X)HTML Examples 

message: It's unclear from the text what is wrong with the "Document element" example given as an example of malformed XML. In fact, the root element in the example is identical to the root element in the example of good XML provided earlier in the article. Baudot 18:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article says, a document "must have exactly one top-level root element".  The malformed example has two "thing" elements at top level (i.e. with no overall parent encasing them both).  That's not allowed.  --Nigelj 19:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Done.  Thanks for the feedback, baudot.  Good luck with your studies. --Nigelj 20:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Document element 

message: Extensible Markup Language → XML — I have requested that this page be moved/renamed to XML. The abbreviation is far more commonly used than the spelled-out name. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms). As with HTML and IBM, we should use the most commonly-used form as the page name, with the longer form as a redirect. If there's a consensus to rename or if nobody objects, an administrator will move the page in about 5 days. Kla'quot 03:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Change to XML per nom and what people would look for. Make this article into a re-direct. Hmains 19:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move