On 06/08/2025 03:33, Anonymous wrote:
Can anyone tell an aspiring web author of a good book on XML that
will really explain it all and give examples? If so it would help me
a lot.
I'm probably the worst to reply, as I was on the XML SIG, and I already
knew SGML so there wasn't a teach-yourself book at the time. From what I
have seen, Erik T Ray's "Learning XML" and Elliotte Rusty Harold's "XML
in a Nutshell" (both O'Reilly) are solid. I use XML for large scale text documents, so I don't know the current web environment you'd be using.
For my sins, I edit the XML FAQ at
https://xml.silmaril.ie so if you
could say what bits you find missing, or which need better explanation,
please let me know. It's not intended as a tutorial, though, so there is
no step-by-step teach-yourself in there. There are lots of online
tutorials, like
https://www.w3schools.com/xml/ but I cannot say how
reliable they are.
There are lots of books on specific aspects of XML like those about
using XML in a .NET environment, or a Java environment, or a Javascript environment which are doubtless useful in those areas, but can't replace
a basic understanding of XML itself.
There are also lots of books on applications of XML, like DocBook for
computing documentation; TEI for Humanities documents; DITA for
industrial structured content; or SVG (graphics), but you probably need
to know XML before starting these.
And there are lots of books on XML tools — programs that read and write
XML or do other stuff with it. The most important is probably XSLT, the language which lets you write transformations between XML and other file formats; and its companions XQuery (query framework); XPath (language
for addressing into an XML document); and XForms (for forms). There are
also those about using XML from inside various programming languages,
and there are dozens of open-source utilities for doing various things
with XML documents and data.
Do let us know how you get on.
Peter
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