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Gary Edwards

HTML5, XHTML2, and the Future of the Web : Digital Web Magazine - 0 views

  • The fact that Internet Explorer doesn’t really support XHTML as XML in any way, and the problems XML can cause when not all tools in the authoring chain are XML tools, means that there has been little incentive for using XML on the web. This is compounded by search engines not indexing XHTML as XML documents; very few XHTML authoring tools for XML; very few CMS or blogging tools supporting XML correctly all the way from input through database to generation; and very few ad suppliers supporting XML. There is a little incentive if you want to allow MathML, SVG, and other XML applications to be interspersed inline in XHTML documents, but this use of XHTML as XML has found a very limited audience. XHTML2 is XML And therein lies the biggest problem. On top of all the concerns that web developers have about using XML for serving documents, XHTML2 adds another layer of complexity. It isn’t HTML 4.01 reformulated as XML; it’s a different but similar language, with added, removed, or modified semantics for many elements, and added or changed element vocabulary for many semantics. In many cases, the changes are steps in the right direction, but at the same time, XHTML2 was not built with web developers in mind. As an example, it doesn’t at all address the deficiencies of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 in the areas of interactivity, local storage, or script interactions.
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    great article walking through the history of HTML, XHTML, and browsers. Summary is that HTML5 is the future. Good thinking, great arguments.
Gary Edwards

Independent study advises IT planners to go OOXML: The Bill Gates MSOffice "formats and... - 0 views

  • 3.2.2.2. A pox on both your houses! gary.edwards - 01/22/08 Hi Robert, What you've posted are examples of MSOffice ”compatibility settings” used to establish backwards compatibility with older documents, and, for the conversion of alien file formats (such as various versions of WordPerfect .wpd). These compatibility settings are unspecified in that we know the syntax but have no idea of the semantics. And without the semantic description there is no way other developers can understand implementation. This of course guarantees an unacceptable breakdown of interoperability. But i would be hesitant to make my stand of rejecting OOXML based on this issue. It turns out that there are upwards of 150 unspecified compatibility settings used by OpenOffice/StarOffice. These settings are not specified in ODF, but will nevertheless show up in OpenOffice ODF documents – similarly defying interoperability efforts! Since the compatibility settings are not specified or even mentioned in the ODF 1.0 – ISO 26300 specification, we have to go to the OOo source code to discover where this stuff comes from. Check out lines 169-211. Here you will find interesting settings such as, “UseFormerLineSpacing, UseFormerObjectPositioning, and UseFormerTextWrapping”. So what's going on here?
  • From: Bill Gates Sent: Saturday, December 5 1998 To: Bob Muglia, Jon DeVann, Steven Sinofsky Subject : Office rendering "One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows. I would be glad to explain at a greater length. Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well." Tuesday, August 28, 2007
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    The IOWA Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit evidence is now publicly available. This ZDNet Talkback posts an extraordinary eMail from Bill Gates concerning the need to control MSOffice formats and protocols as Microsoft pushes onto the Web. The key point is that Chairman Bill understands that the real threat to Microsoft is that of Open Web formats and protocols outside of Microsoft's control. It's 1998, and the effort to "embrace and eXtend" W3C HTML, XHTML, SVG and CSS isn't working well. The good Chairman notifies the troops that MSOffice must come up with another plan. Interestingly, it's not until 2001, when OpenOffice releases an XML encoding of the OpenOffice/StarOffice imbr that Microsoft finally sees a solution! (imbr = in-memory-binary-representation) The MSOffice crew immediately sets to work creating a similar XML encoding of the MSOffice binary (imbr) dump. The first result is released in the MSOffice 2003 beta as "WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML". XML was designed as a structured language for creating specific structured languages. OpenOffice saw the potential of using XML to create an OpenOffice specific XML language. MSOffice seized the innovation and the rest is history. Problem solved! So what was the "problem" the good Chairman identified in this secret eMail? It's that the Web is the future, and Microsoft needed to find a way of leveraging their existing desktop document "editor" monopoly share into owning and controlling the Web formats produced by Microsoft applications. MSOffice OOXML is the result. ISO approval of MSOffice OOXML is beyond important to Microsoft. It establishes MSOffice "editors" as standards compliant. It also establishes the application, platform and vendor specific MSOffice OOXML as an international "open" standard. Many will ask why this isn't a case of Microsoft actually opening up the MSOffice formats in compliance with government antitrust demands. It is "compliance", but not in the sense of what
Gary Edwards

XML-Empowered Documents Extend SOA's Connection to People and Processes | BriefingsDire... - 0 views

  • We're going to talk about dynamic documents. That is to say, documents that have form and structure and that are things end-users are very familiar with and have been using for generations, but with a twist. That's the ability to bring content and data, on a dynamic lifecycle basis, in and out of these documents in a managed way. That’s one area.The second area is service-oriented architecture (SOA), the means to automate and reuse assets across multiple application sets and data sets in a large complex organization.We're seeing these two areas come together. Structured documents and the lifecycle around structured authoring tools come together to provide an end-point for the assets and resources managed through an SOA, but also providing a two-way street, where the information and data that comes in through end-users can be reused back in the SOA to combine with other assets for business process benefits.
  • Thus far we’ve been talking about the notion of unstructured content as a target source to SOA-based applications, but you can also think about this from the perspective of the end application itself -- the document as the endpoint, providing a framework for bringing together structured data, transactional data, relational data, as well as unstructured content, into a single document that comes to life.Let me back up and give you a little context on this. You mentioned the various documents that line workers, for example, need to utilize and consume as the basis for their jobs. Documents have unique value. Documents are portable. You can download a document locally, attach it to an email, associate it with a workflow, and share it into a team room. Documents are persistent. They exist over a period of time, and they provide very rich context. They're how you bring together disparate pieces of information into a cohesive context that people can understand.
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    There is a huge productivity jump to be had by sinking data management into the "system"!
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    Dana Gardner transcript of podcast interview with JustSystems and Phil Wainwright. Covers the convergence of the portable XML document model with SOA. It's about time someone out there got it. You know the portable XML document has arrived when analyst finally get it.
Gary Edwards

The Fall of Microsoft Office - 0 views

  • On the same day that the state of New York published a report supporting open formats for electronic documents, mighty Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) said that it would support the open-source ODF format in Office 2007. Redmond's own Open Office XML specification may be heading for the great Recycle Bin in the sky, never to come back.
  • The company's biggest revenue generator may be a shadow of its former self in a few years. I just hope that Microsoft has some alternative business prospects on tap
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    More confusion about the MS announcement of native support for ODF, with delayed support for whatever ISO finally determines to be ISO 29500; "OOXML". Damn but these guys are all twisted up about this. The truth is, ISO National Bodies traded their vote in favor of OOXML for MSOffice support for ODF and Microsoft's joining the OASIS ODF TC. It's not complicated. MS wants ISO approval of OOXML because it established MSOffice as a "standards" editor. The rest of this kurfufull is all about anti trust concerns and Microsoft's need to put htose concerns to bed before the world figures out that they are leveraging the MS desktop monopoly into an MS Web monopoly. ISO approval of OOXML is the final piece of very complex puzzle. The harmonization of OOXML-ODF is impossible. MS knows this. So why not join OASIS ODF TC if it means putting aside the anti trust claims from ISO NB's and getting that all important standardization of OOXML? Both ODF and OOXML are both XML encodings of entirely application specific binary formats. There is no possible to way to reconcile the file formats without also reconciling the applications! Incuding feature sets and layout engines!!!! Impossible!! The real game is the transition from client/server to the emerging client/Web-Stack/server model. MS is the "client" in client/server. No way were they about to give that up without a plan to control the transition of MSOffice documents to the emerging client/Web-Stack/server model. They sought to fully control the formats, protocols and API's of this new model. ISO handed it to them. The thing to watch is the MSOffice SDK where one can find a very cool OOXML <> XAML converter. XAML is totally proprietary, but "web ready". Meaning, MSOffice is a "web ready" application. It's just that the web readiness is 100% MS .NET-Silverlight. The great transition to client/Web-Stack/server is now on. Thanks to ISO. All this ODF stuff is just background noise designed to quiet the anti t
Gary Edwards

Is HTML in a Race to the Bottom? A Large-Scale Survey of Open Web Formats - 0 views

  • The "race to the bottom" is a familiar phenomenon that occurs when multiple standards compete for acceptance. In this environment, the most lenient standard usually attracts the greatest support (acceptance, usage, and so on), leading to a competition among standards to be less stringent. This also tends to drive competing standards toward the minimum possible level of quality. One key prerequisite for a race to the bottom is an unregulated market because regulators mandate a minimum acceptable quality for standards and sanction those who don't comply.1,2 In examining current HTML standards, we've come to suspect that a race to the bottom could, in fact, be occurring because so many competing versions of HTML exist. At this time, some nine different versions of HTML (including its successor, XHTML) are supported as W3C standards, with the most up-to-date being XHTML 1.1. Although some versions are very old and lack some of the newer versions' capabilities, others are reasonably contemporaneous. In particular, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 both have "transitional" and "strict" versions. Clearly, the W3C's intent is to provide a pathway to move from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.1, and the transitional versions are steps on that path. It also aims to develop XHTML standards that support device independence (everything from desktops to cell phones), accessibility, and internationalization. As part of this effort, HTML 4.01's presentational elements (used to adjust the appearance of a page for older browsers that don't support style sheets) are eliminated in XHTML 1.1. Our concern is that Web site designers might decline to follow the newer versions' more stringent formatting requirements and will instead keep using transitional versions. To determine if this is likely, we surveyed the top 100,000 most popular Web sites to discover what versions of HTML are in widespread use.
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    What makes the Internet so extraordinary is the interoperability of web ready data, content, media and the incredible sprawl of web applications servicing the volumes of information. The network of networks has become the information system connecting and converging all information systems. The Web is the universal platform of access, exchange and now, collaborative computing. This survey exammines the key issue of future interoperability; Web Document Formats.
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    Excellent link from marbux.
Gary Edwards

Extensible Application Markup Language (Xaml) | Microsoft Developer - 0 views

  • The Microsoft Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) technical documentation set provides preliminary technical specifications for this language based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) that enables developers to specify a hierarchy of objects.
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    Download of XAML documents
Philipp Arytsok

SAP Network Blogs - 0 views

  • A story about Twitter, XML and WD4A
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    Epilog Like many of us, I'm a kind of addicted to Twitter. But a few weeks ago, the admins of my client cuts the connection to Twitter and all of the known anonymanizers like "agentanon". My hands began to tremble, my work became poorer and poorer (just a joke!). Two lucky circumstances: * first free weekend since many month * my SAP PRD server is already up and connected to the internet, because I have a presentation on Monday Why don't turn a problem into a challenge and develop my own "ABAP twitter client" ?
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    Nice to find my blog here ;)
Paul Merrell

Power to the Patients - 0 views

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    It might take Google and Microsoft-technology giants, but health-records neophytes-to give networked and interoperable electronic health records just the kick start they need to escape the siloed and proprietary model now prevalent. The new technologies, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, are classified as personal health records (PHRs), which are a subset of industry-recognized electronic health records (EHRs).
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    What is the likelihood that the Microsoft and Google solutions will be interoperable? Will either company be able to resist the temptation to introduce incompatibilities? Methinks it far more likely based on the history in the software industry that the interoperability will be intra-company solution rather than between each company's solution. This is a potential issue for the same reason that the solutions are being developed; people in the U.S. have many health care providers. Records can't be consolidated and made portable absent interoperability. I haven't researched the issue, but I note it.
Gary Edwards

Open source SOA infrastructure project CXF elevated to full Apache status | Dana Gardne... - 0 views

  • CXF is really designed for high performance, kind of like a request-response style of interaction for one way, asynchronous messaging, and things like that. But it’s really designed for taking data in from a variety of transports and message formats, such as SOAP or just raw XML. If you bring in the Apache Yoko project, we have CORBA objects coming in off the wire. It basically processes them through the system as quickly as possible with very little memory and processing overhead. We can get it to the final destination of where that data is supposed to be, whether it’s off to another service or a user-developed code, whether it’s in JavaScript or JAX-WS/JAXB code. That’s the goal of what the CXF runtime is — just get that data into the form that the service needs, no matter where it came from and what format it came from in, and do that as quickly as possible.
  • the fascinating intersection of SOA and WOA — with on-premises services and cloud-based resources (including data) supporting ecologies of extended enterprises business processes
  • Creating federated relationships between private and public clouds and their services and resources requires more than just industry standards. It requires visibility and access, the type that comes from open source communities and open use licenses.
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    The Apache CFX "Interoperability Framework" for SOA Project is ready. We really could have used CFX in the 2003 Comcast project where a Tomcat/MYSQL Web-Stack connected to many disparate blackboxes. The blackboxes were standalone "Inventory and Billing" transaction processing data centers aquired by Comcast during a five year burst of acquisitions. Of course, none of these blackboxes could talk to any other! Enter SOA with XMLHTTPRequest streams. 2002-2003. We needed CFX to scale!
Gary Edwards

Microsoft adds XAML to 'Open Specification' list - SD Times On The Web - 0 views

  • Microsoft is showing off one more facet of its once-hidden intellectual property. On Tuesday, it placed the preliminary technical specifications for XAML—the Extensible Application Markup Language—under its Open Specification Promise, or OSP.The technical documentation will enable third parties to implement XAML formats in their client, server and tool products. It includes both the 2006 implementation of Microsoft’s XAML object mapping specification and the vocabulary specification for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). A spokesperson said that the final XAML documentation would be published by June 30.XAML is a declarative XML-based language used to define data binding, events and UI elements in WPF and Silverlight applications, and to define workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation.
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    Here we go. The release of XAML documentation is scheduled to coincide with the release of the MSOffice-OOXML SDK.
Gary Edwards

ECIS Accuses Microsoft of Plotting HTML Hijack | BetaNews Jan 2007 - 0 views

  • An industry coalition that has represented competitors of Microsoft in European markets before the European Commission stepped up its public relations offensive this morning, this time accusing Microsoft of scheming to upset HTML's place in the fabric of the Internet with XAML, an XML-based layout lexicon for network applications.
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    Look at the date on this! A full year has passed and we now can clearly see the importance to Microsoft of ISO approval for MSOffice-OOXML. The MSOffice SDK provides an easy to implement OOXML <> XAML conversion component, pavign the way for billions of complex, business process rich MSOffice documents to be used by IE-8 and the emerging MS Web-Stack. XAML is proprietary and exclusive to the Microsoft Web.
Gary Edwards

What's up at the OpenDocument Foundation? Linux.com - Wikipedia Link - 0 views

  • Re: Finally, the beef... Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 76.14.48.79] on November 12, 2007 11:32 PM XHTML + CSS is the base. Add XForms, SVG and SMiL where needed. Study the work being done on microformats. Like most modern portable XML file formats, the basic packages are those of content and presentation. In CDF speak, this is XHTML content and CSS as the portable presentation package. ODF and MS-OOXML both struggle with the legacy tradition of the presentation package being application specific. Meaning, the portability is limited to other applications that are either of the same version, or, share the same layout and rendering model so that the exchange of the presentation package is lossless.
    • Paul Merrell
       
      See also "Putting Andy Updegrove to Bed (without his supper)," http://www.universal-interop-council.org/node/4 for a thorough rebuttal of claims that the W3C Compound Document Formats and framework are not suitable for use in the office productivity software sector.
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    The Wikipedia "OpenDocument Foundation" page is continually re edited, changing the factual truth to portray the Foundation in the worst light possible. Every time we try to repair the page to reflect the truth, the liars jump right back in. Is there a Wikipedia resolution for liies? Our facts can be verified by the five year history of the OASIS membership and ODF TC records that are public information. This anonymous post to Joe Barr's Linux.com article is perhaps the best explanation on the Web of why the Foundation choose CDF, and could not use ODF.Good explanation of MSOffice-OOXML and the MS Web-Stack :: MS Cloud.No mention of the December 2007 MSOffice SDK beta that provided us with that first all important glimpse of the MSOffice-OOXML <> XAML converter component. I take it the article comment was written before that most important discovery. XAML "fixed/flow" is an alternative to W3C/ISO XHTML-CSS and ISO PDF.
Gary Edwards

Component Content Management in Practice - Meeting the Demands of the Most Complex Cont... - 0 views

  • Executive Summary As the market for content management technology continues to grow, so too do the ways in which organizations seek to use content management. What began as a market focused on web content management has grown to include document management, digital asset management, and records management. What has emerged along with this growth is a desire by vendors to provide a broad, enterprise-class platform of content management technology that can handle all kinds of content.
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    Gilbane white paper on Content Management Systems. Covers evolution of CMS from paper to digital to web.
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    Notice that most of the concepts discussed in the Gilbane white paper are implemented in the open source Daisy wiki/content management system, which is a new wave document assembly/management system specifically designed for producing large technical documents. http://cocoondev.org/daisy/features.html
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