XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition

1185 Pages·2004·20.046 MB·English

by  Elliotte Rusty Harold

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XML 1.1 Bible
3rd Edition
Elliotte Rusty Harold
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XML 1.1 Bible
3rd Edition
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XML 1.1 Bible
3rd Edition
Elliotte Rusty Harold
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XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com
Copyright 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 0-7645-4986-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Author
Elliotte Rusty Harold is an internationally respected writer, programmer, and
educator, both on the Internet and off. He got his start writing FAQ lists for the
Macintosh newsgroups on Usenet and has since branched out into books, Web
sites, and newsletters. He’s an adjunct professor of computer science at
Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York. His Cafe con Leche Web site at
http://www.cafeconleche.org/has become one of the most popular indepen-
dent XML sites on the Internet.
Elliotte is originally from New Orleans, to which he returns periodically in search of
a decent bowl of gumbo. However, he currently resides in the Prospect Heights
neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife Beth, and his cats Charm (named after the
quark) and Marjorie (named after his mother-in-law). When not writing books, he
enjoys working on genealogy, mathematics, free software, and quantum mechanics.
His previous books include The Java Developer’s Resource,Java Network
Programming,Java Secrets,JavaBeans,Java I/O, XML: Extensible Markup Language,
XML in a Nutshell, Processing XML with Java, and Effective XML.
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Credits
Acquisitions Editor Executive Editorial Director
Jim Minatel Mary Bednarek
Development Editor Project Coordinator
Marcia Ellett Erin Smith
Technical Editor Graphics and Production Specialists
David Schultz Joyce Haughey
Jennifer Heleine
Production Editor KristinMcMullan
Angela Smith Heather Ryan
Mary Gillot Virgin
Copy Editor
Joanne Slike Quality Control Technicians
Laura Albert
Editorial Manager Susan Moritz
Mary Beth Wakefield Carl William Pierce
Vice President & Executive Group Permissions Editor
Publisher Laura Moss
Richard Swadley
Media Development Specialist
Vice President and Executive Greg Stafford
Publisher
Robert Ipsen Proofreading and Indexing
TECHBOOKS Production Services
Vice President and Publisher
Joseph B. Wikert
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Preface
W
elcome to the third edition of the XML 1.1 Bible. When the first edition was
published about five years ago, XML was a promising technology with a
small but growing niche. In the last half decade, it has absolutely exploded. XML no
longer needs to be justified as a good idea. In fact, the question developers are ask-
ing has changed from “Why XML?” to “Why not XML?” XML has become the data
format of choice for fields as diverse as stock trading and graphic design. More new
programs today are using XML than aren’t. A solid understanding of just what XML
is and how to use it has become a sine qua nonfor the computer literate.
The XML 1.1 Bible,3rd Edition is your introduction to the exciting and fast-growing
world of XML. With this book, you’ll learn how to write documents in XML and how
to use style sheets to convert those documents into HTML so that legacy browsers
can read them. You’ll also learn how to use document type definitions (DTDs) and
schemas to describe and validate documents. You’ll encounter a variety of XML
applications in many domains, ranging from finance to vector graphics to geneal-
ogy. And you’ll learn how to take advantage of XML for your own unique projects,
programs, and web pages.
What’s New in the Third Edition
The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote in a letter, “I
have only made this longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I
know how he felt. The first edition of the XML Biblewas written under great time
pressure, was finished well after deadline, and totaled more than 1000 pages, the
largest book I had written up to that point. My favorite reader comment about that
edition was, “It would seem to me that if you asked the author to write 10,000 words
about the colour blue, he would be able to do it without breaking into a sweat.”
While I probably could write 10,000 words about blue, for the third edition, I did try
to restrain myself and take the time to write more concisely. I rewrote the book
from the ground up; and while I retained the basic flavor and outline that proved so
popular with the first edition, I tightened up the writing and cut many examples
down to size. With the benefit of five years of hindsight, I have also been able to
expand coverage of promising new technologies (schemas, XInclude, XHTML, SVG,
XML Base, and RDDL) while eliminating coverage of applications that proved to be
less useful than they initially appeared (WML, VML, CDF, HTML+TIME, RDF, and so
on). The result is a more concise, approachable volume that covers more of what
you need to know and less of what you don’t. If you liked the first or second edition,
you’re going to like the third edition even more. I’m confident you’ll find this an
even more useful tutorial and reference.
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