XML Documentation

This list is not exhaustive, but aims to gives a combination of the best and the most useful starting points from which to explore further.

• Tutorials
• Standards
• News
• Miscellaneous

Tutorials

• ZVON (http://www.zvon.org/) covers almost all aspects of XML with summaries, examples, and links to specifications. See, especially the lists of referrals for an indication of what the busiest XML sites are, and the range of sites linking to ZVON over the last two weeks
• What Do XML Documents Look Like? (http://www.xml.com/pub/98/10/guide2.html) A good introduction to XML and DTDs
• XML FAQ (http://www.ucc.ie/xml/) With links to versions in Chinese, Czech, French, Japanese, Korean & Spanish, this poses and answers a wide range of questions from simple ("What is XML for?" to quite abstruse ("Is there a conformance test suite for XML processors?")
• Learn XML in 11.5 minutes (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/5957/10minxml.html) if you only need to understand "well-formed"; "valid"; and basic DTD (links to annotated XML spec)
• XML Namespaces FAQ (http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/NamespacesFAQ.htm) 15 Sections showing just how simple namespaces are ...
• Schemas (http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/chapters/ch24.html) a chapter from the XML Bible
• XML Schema (http://www.xfront.com/xml-schema.html) Downloadable Windows MS Powerpoint presentations plus XSV, JRE1.1, exercises and examples
• XML Schemas: Best Practices (http://www.xfront.com/BestPractices.html) A set of guidelines collectively developed through a mailing list
• Microsoft provides good documentation for the latest versions of XML Schema and XSLT in the Help document for their XML Technology 4.0 preview. Unfortunately, you need to download a lot of other stuff to get at it...
• XSLT and Xpath (http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/chapters/ch17.html) a chapter from the XML Bible
• Quick ref (http://www.mulberrytech.com/quickref/index.html) Quick reference cards for XML, XSLT and XPath
• Xlink (http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/chapters/ch19.html) a chapter from the XML Bible
• Xpointer (http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/chapters/ch20.html) a chapter from the XML Bible
• XSLT (http://saxon.sourceforge.net/) documentation for SAXON is very good
• XSLT (http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/) Collection of detailed questions and answers on XSLT. Available in HTML, but you can also challenge your browser with the exact equivalent in pure XML with associated XSLT stylesheet
• SVG (http://www.adobe.com/SVG/tutorial/intro.html) Shows off much of SVG's capability. The links (http://www.adobe.com/svg/community/external.html) show off even more.
• FO (http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/chapters/ch18.html) a chapter from the XML Bible
• RDF (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html) introduces metadata

Standards

• W3C (http://www.w3.org/) The starting point for the key specifications. Check here for new proposals; progression of standards from proposal to Working Draft, to Proposed Recommendation, to Candidate Recommendation to Recommendation
• XML (http://www.w3.org/XML/)
• The Annotated XML Specification (http://www.xml.com/axml/axml.html)
• Canonical XML (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n)
• XML Infoset (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset)
• XML Schema (http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema/) Part 0: Primer is the most readable of the 3 parts of this specification
• XML Namespaces (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/)
• XSL (http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/)
• XSLT (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt11/)
• XPath (http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath)
• XLink (http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking)
• XPointer (http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking)
• XInclude (http://www.w3.org/TR/Xinclude)
• SVG (http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG)
• RDF (http://www.w3.org/RDF)

News Sites and Groups

• Cafe Con Leche (http://www.cafeconleche.org/) A good source of news and directory of links and tutorials
• XMLephant (http://www.xmlephant.com/) Quite elevant, as (G) Marx might have said
• XML Cover Pages (http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/) Comprehensive, detailed news digests forming a historic archive of XML developments. Had the first reported sighting of CaveScript outside a small group (an inclination or a compass?) of cave surveyors on 9th December, 2000.
• XML-DEV (http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev) The group largely responsible for developing XML
• news:comp.text.xml The main XML news group
• news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets The main XSLT news group
• XSL-List archive (http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/) Mulberry Technologies' list
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers The main SVG news group (at least for Adobe), (free) registration required
• http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/ News, specifications, people, tips on SVG ...

Miscellaneous

• XML Patterns (http://www.xmlpatterns.com/index.shtml) applies the idea of design patterns (popular in Object Oriented circles) to XML, giving useful ideas on some approaches to designing XML structures, their strengths and weaknesses
• Comparative analysis of Six XML Schema Languages (http://www.acm.org/sigmod/record/issues/lee.pdf.gz) showing why XML Schema and Schematron seem good choices for defining and validating XML languages
• A comparison of the main schema contenders at the end of 2001 - XML Schema, RelaxNG, Schematron, and Examplotron (http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2001/12/12/schemacompare.html) with good reference list
• Dublin Core Metadata FAQ (http://purl.org/DC/education/index.htm) One way of recording data about data which could give us some ideas. (Not from the source of Guinness, unfortunately, but a place in Ohio)
• Dublin Core Assistant (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcassist/) is a concise introduction
• Geographical Markup Language (http://www.opengis.net/gml/01-029/GML2.html)
• Land Survey XML (http://www.landxml.com/)
• OS MasterMap(http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/os_mastermap/home/home.htm) defines everything on UK maps in GML

Martin Laverty, 30th Jun 2002