Tour de XML

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1 Introduction

The purpose of this page is to index a variety of XML things for short demos. I use this page to motivate students for learning XML in classes I teach, e.g. COAP 2180 and STIC II. I usually just show a picture or two and then do a live demo.

2 Text-centric formats (often hand-coded)

2.1 Semantically structured documents

  • DocBook, the most popular structured document format for writing books and manuals
  • DITA, a new modular extensible document architecture, popular with IBM.

2.2 Web contents

  • XHTML, was a popular web page format (maybe to be replaced by XHTML5 in some uncertain future). Mostly a dead project, but most browsers do support XHTML.

3 Data-centric formats (sometimes hand-coded)

3.1 Multimedia synchronization

3.2 News syndication

3.3 Vector graphics

  • SVG (*.svg), popular web format, part of HTML5. Visit openclipart.org. SVG works in all browsers except IE 7/8.
  • X3D, unpopular 3D web format, new version of oldest Internet format (VRML). Visit X3Dom (webGL in-browser), or Interactive Demos from BS Contact (needs plugin to be installed)
  • Collada (*.dae), a 3D exchange format. Also used in Google Earth (via the Keyhole Markup language) and therefore fairly popular.

4 Data-centric formats

4.1 Business

4.2 Authoring formats

Typically, authoring formats define the structure of a zip file, where a single XML file organizes the rest. Most contents are also encoded in XML.
Rename that type of file to *.zip to open and have fun with ...

4.3 Playlists

5 XML for development

5.1 GUI generators


5.2 Programming languages and accessories made in XML

6 More

  • Browse the XML category.