Fall 2006

Hugh A. Cayless

hcayless@email.unc.edu

AIM: philomousos

Course Goals:

By the end of the class you should:

• know of what XML is and what it is not.
• be able to put "XML" on your résumé and not be lying.
• be able to use tools to create and manipulate XML.

Assignments and grading:

• assignments (25%)
• project (30%)
• final exam (25%)
• class participation (20%)

All written assignments will be turned in electronically in XML format. We will talk about how to do this in class.

The class participation grade includes (obviously) showing up, talking (on topic) in class, participating in online discussions and bringing useful information to the attention of the class.

"XML" is a pretty vast topic, because XML is ubiquitous. There are plenty of XML applications in areas where I don't have much experience. So I'm more than happy to take suggestions and make adjustments to this syllabus, and even learn new stuff myself!

There is no book for this class. There are a number of good books out there, but all the information you're likely to need is available free on the internet. Still, if you really want to buy a book, here are a couple of good and fairly recent ones:

• Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means, XML in a Nutshell, Third Edition 2004
• Elliotte Rusty Harold, XML 1.1 Bible 2004

Topics and Readings

1. August 23: What is Markup? / XML boot camp
2. August 30: XML boot camp: tools / Some history: digital documents and SGML
   
   Reading: A Gentle Introduction to XML http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/SG.html
   
   David M. Levy, "A Bit of Digital History" from Scrolling Forward 2001 articles/Levy.pdf
3. September 6 XML on the Internet: (X)HTML / Syndication with RSS and Atom
   
   Reading: XHTML™ 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition) http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1
   
   RSS (file format) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
   
   Atom (standard) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29
4. September 13 Consuming RSS / XSLT / Validation
   
   Reading: Miloslav Nic, XSLT Tutorial http://www.zvon.org/xxl/XSLTutorial/Output/contents.html Read at least through the section on variables.
   
   Get familiar with the W3C Recommendations for XSLT 1.0, XPath 1.0, and CSS 2.1. By "get familiar" I mean look them over enough to know their structure and understand how to use them as references when you need them. Dave Pawson's XSLT FAQ is a lifesaver.
   
   
5. September 20 More Styling / DTDs / XML for publishing
   
   Reading: Steven J. DeRose, David G. Durand, Elli Mylonas, Allen H. Renear, "What is Text, Really?" Journal of Computing in Higher Education vol. 1 no. 2 pp. 3-26. Winter 1990 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=264842.264843
   
   Mark Pilgrim, Why Specs Matter http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/08/16/specs
6. September 27 TEI
   
   Reading: C M Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard, TEI P5 Guidelines http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/index.html
7. October 4 More XSLT / More TEI
   
   Reading: Tim Bray, Don't Invent XML Languages http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/08/No-New-XML-Languages
   
   Tim Bray, On XML Language Design http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/09/On-XML-Language-Design
8. October 11 XSL FO / DocBook / Publishing Tools
   
   Reading: Nikolai Grigoriev, XSL Formatting Objects Tutorial http://www.renderx.com/tutorial.html
   
   Eric S. Raymond, DocBook Demystification HOWTO http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DocBook-Demystification-HOWTO/index.html
9. October 18 No class -- Fall Break
10. October 25 No class
11. November 1 XML and the Semantic Web / RDF
    
    Reading: Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, Tim Berners-Lee, The Semantic Web Revisited http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12614/01/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pdf
    
    RDF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework
    
    
12. November 8 Semantic Web Continued / Web Services
    
    Reading: Frank Manola Eric Miller RDF Primer http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-primer/ ,
    
    Dan Connolly Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) http://www.w3.org/TR/grddl/ ,
    
    also, browse the Flickr Services API page.
13. November 15 XML and Digital Libraries
    
    Reading: James Clark John Cowan MURATA Makoto RELAX NG Compact Syntax Tutorial http://relaxng.org/compact-tutorial-20030326.html ,
    
    XML Schema Tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/schema/default.asp ,
    
    METS: An Overview & Tutorial http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/METSOverview.html
14. November 22 No class -- Thanksgiving
15. November 29 XML Schemas and other things
    
    Projects due. No reading assignment
16. December 6 Wrapup
    
    Reading: Jon Bosak, The Birth of XML http://java.sun.com/xml/birth_of_xml.html ,
    
    Bob DuCharme, Documents vs. Data, Schemas vs. Schemas http://www.snee.com/xml/xml2004paper.html ,
    
    Rick Jelliffe, Family Tree of Schema Languages (v6) http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/11/family_tree_of_schema_language_1.html (right click and view image to see the whole thing), Pete Lacey, They can't hear you http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/29/they-cant-hear-you/