pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
> John Schinnerer wrote:
>
> > Aloha,
> >
> > > *Microsoft is putting a key web technology at the heart of its most 
> > > popular programs.*
> > >
> > > By late 2006 all the files created by users of its Office suite of 
> > > software will be formatted with web-centred XML specifications.
> >
> > Ah yes, lagging behind the open source community (OpenOffice 
> > specifically) by a good handful of years, as usual...
> >
> > Anyone want to start a pool on whether they'll create proprietary 
> > "extensions" to the international XML 'standard', just to jerk 
> > everyone around as usual?
> >
> > Go ahead, call me cynical... ;-)
> I think you'e right on target about that. They'll think of some way to 
> "tweak" the standards enough to make things difficult.

I beleive this is the case. There been quite a bit on slashdot about
the xml for office being proprity. They don't actually change the XML 
standard, its just the particular dtd (which specifies the different 
tags used for a particular aplication) wihich is closed.

> Anyway, reading this article after the ones I posted earlier about the 
> steel industry adopting XML for secure data sharing among
> participating websites gave me a clearer view of what XML is all about.

> I will want to use XML coding to redo my own commercial website which I 
> will use to promote my market farm's produce  and gardening hand tools I 
> will make in my shop.
> It will contain lots of photos and product information plus many links 
> and references to other North Carolina businesses.  I plan to move to 
> Register.com for webhosting
> as they offer a great del and run unix.
>
> Can you recommend a good book on XML? I hand code using a good text 
> editor like Textpad, Uedit or Notetab. Maybe I will need an XML editor.
The book I used is XML in a Nutshell, from O'Riley, it covers most of 
the most common XML stuff, but is quite heavy going.

A lot depends on quite what you want to do with xml as it is a very vast 
subject. XHTML is a version of HTML which complies with XML standards, 
this may be wat you want to used.

Rich