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The second annual XML Conference was held by the Graphic Communications Association (GCA) at the Westin Hotel in Seattle, Washington, USA between 25-26 March 1998. This year, the conference had Microsoft and DataChannel as principal sponsors as well as a number of co-sponsors (Adobe, ArborText, InfoWorld, Inso, Poet, SoftQuad, Sun, Texcel, W3C, and webMethods). The keynote address was made by Adam Bosworth, General Manager at Microsoft. There were also keynotes by Dan Connolly, Domain Leader, Architecture of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); Dave Pool, CEO of DataChannel; and Michael Vizard, Executive Editor/VP News of InfoWorld. There were four concurrent tracks: Business (2 day), Print Media (Wednesday) /Content Management (Thursday), E-Commerce (2 day), and Technical (2 day) as well a Vendor Demonstration Theatre. Additionally, the conference was preceded by a day of tutorials and followed by an XML Developers' Day, chaired by Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems (Chairman of the W3C XML Working Group).
The XML Conference demonstrated a considerable growth in the interest in XML over its first year. Last year, there were approx 100 attendees at the first XML Conference. There was a single track and the software gallery had eight exhibitors. In one short year, there was a conference with four tracks, 25 exhibitors, and attendence had grown by nearly 700%.
The second session of the conference was an update on the W3C XML Working Group's activities. The session was chaired by Jon Bosak. Members of the panel were:
The session started with an introduction by Jon Bosak. Jon noted that Microsoft and NetScape now agree that web content will be managed using standards based on XML. Jon had two predictions:
Jon provided an overview of the XML family and their original goal to subset existing international standards, making them more usable on the web. Originally, there were three:
XML: a subset of SGML (status - V1.0 released as a W3C Recommendation on 10 February 1998)
XLL: a set of standard hypertext mechanisms based on HyTime and TEI (status - work continuing)
XSL: a standard stylesheet language for structured information formed by subsetting DSSSL, designing an alternative syntax, and incorporating key CSS concepts (Working Group started in January 1998).
The XML Working Group has taken on a new work item for Namespaces. The first working draft was released on Friday, 27 March 1998 and is currently scheduled for release in April 1998. Namespaces are used to:
Whilst the work on the entire XML family started in one Working Group, it is now being split out into sibling groups. Jon put forward a proposed set of next steps for the XML Working Group (only) to include:
It should be noted that the above is a wish list that the XML Working Group may ask the W3C for permission to do. It is not an approved list.
Eve Maler and Steve DeRose, co-editors of XLL explained that XLL will be changing its name to XLink. XLink is a W3C effort that is currently part of the XML Working Group, however, it is assumed that it will be split off to a separate Working Group. XLink is based on concepts from many sophisticated hypermedia systems and languages. Two primary goals are:
The fact that the whole thing is referred to as XLink and that one part of the standard will be called XLink is a confusion they admit to, but do not seem overly worried about. Once the Working Group is formed, they can determine their milestones, but interested parties can expect more regular working drafts to start being published soon.
Paul Grosso stated that the latest recognized submission was acknowledged on 10 September 1997. The XSL Working Group was chartered in mid-January and had its first face-to-face meeting at the end of January. The second one was held during the weekend of 28 March 1998. A further schedule will be published later. The original submission can be found through http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xsl-970910.
Paul noted that the same XSL stylesheet can specify formatting for online, paper, and/or audio presentation. A possible side-effect may be a way to specify transformations from XML to HTML for a transitional approach to presenting XML. XSL uses a declarative syntax with the ability to escape to a scripting environment to provide extensibility. The Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL - ISO 10179) contibutes the basic formatting model (the idea of flow objects and a flow object tree) and a basic set of characteristics for those flow objects. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) contributes its formatting properties, greater support for online presentation and interaction, and support for audio media. For more announcments on XSL, watch http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/.
My favorite quote of the session came from Chris Lilley (in a discussion on namespaces and CSS): "If you know what the tags mean, there is nothing stopping you from doing something sensible with them."
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
