{"id":2081,"date":"2003-10-06T17:04:01","date_gmt":"2003-10-06T17:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2003-10-06T17:04:01","modified_gmt":"2003-10-06T17:04:01","slug":"alphabet-soup-of-web-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/alphabet-soup-of-web-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet soup of web standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

It strikes me that similarities between xml and database structure are fairly common. This article at A List Apart<\/a> explains the similarities and differences.<\/p>\n

The process of converting an XML document into something viewable by a browser (or into anything else) is handled by a “transformation language” called XSLT. Here’s a diagram: PDF<\/a><\/p>\n

XML syntax – Check out the difference in the source code for these two visually-identical documents, one run through an XSLT transformation, and one just calling an “XSL stylesheet” (like CSS but actually writes virtual code to help the browser interpret):<\/p>\n

XSLT-processed<\/a><\/p>\n

XML source<\/a><\/p>\n

So a sample flow of an intranet item would be: Data from database –> Java servlet –> XML document –> XSLT transformation or XSL linked stylesheet –> browser displays HTML-like page –> CSS local visual\/aural* style .<\/p>\n

See this sample transformation of XML –> HTML:<\/p>\n

Sample Transformation<\/a><\/p>\n

What is fun about this structure is that after an initial entirely-machine-programmed process, the code starts looking very human-writable. Instead of coding a giant table-based layout: <table class=\"metrics\"><tr><td>blah<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/code> you could just write: <metrics table>blah<\/metrics table><\/code><\/p>\n

One thing that would make such a transition easier–XHTML is by definition a valid XML document; it’s a good way to get existing data into this sort of structure. Plus, I like coding XHTML much better than HTML. Here’s a good intro to the differences:<\/p>\n

NYPL Style Guide<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s all for now…<\/p>\n

* for more on “aural” stylesheets, check out the W3C’s aural stylesheet recommendation page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It strikes me that similarities between xml and database structure are fairly common. This article at A List Apart explains the similarities and differences. The process of converting an XML document into something viewable by a browser (or into anything else) is handled by a “transformation language” called XSLT. Here’s a diagram: PDF XML syntax…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5],"tags":[197,199,196,198,195],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-technology","tag-code","tag-css","tag-style","tag-xhtml","tag-xml"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-xz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}