xml 1.1 bible 3rd edition

www.it-ebooks.info XML 1.1 Bible 3rd Edition Elliotte Rusty Harold 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page ii www.it-ebooks.info XML 1.1 Bible 3rd Edition 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page i www.it-ebooks.info 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page ii www.it-ebooks.info XML 1.1 Bible 3rd Edition Elliotte Rusty Harold 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com Copyright  2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 0-7645-4986-3 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 3O/RT/QS/QU/IN No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. 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Library of Congress Control Number: 2004101453 Trademarks: Wiley and and the Wiley Publishing logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. 549863 FM.qxd 2/3/04 10:41 PM Page iv www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Elliotte Rusty Harold is an internationally respected writer, programmer, and educator, both on the Internet and off. He got his start writing FAQ lists for the Macintosh newsgroups on Usenet and has since branched out into books, Web sites, and newsletters. He’s an adjunct professor of computer science at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York. His Cafe con Leche Web site at http://www.cafeconleche.org/ has become one of the most popular indepen- dent XML sites on the Internet. Elliotte is originally from New Orleans, to which he returns periodically in search of a decent bowl of gumbo. However, he currently resides in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife Beth, and his cats Charm (named after the quark) and Marjorie (named after his mother-in-law). When not writing books, he enjoys working on genealogy, mathematics, free software, and quantum mechanics. His previous books include The Java Developer’s Resource, Java Network Programming, Java Secrets, JavaBeans, Java I/O, XML: Extensible Markup Language, XML in a Nutshell, Processing XML with Java, and Effective XML. 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page v www.it-ebooks.info Credits Acquisitions Editor Jim Minatel Development Editor Marcia Ellett Technical Editor David Schultz Production Editor Angela Smith Copy Editor Joanne Slike Editorial Manager Mary Beth Wakefield Vice President & Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley Vice President and Executive Publisher Robert Ipsen Vice President and Publisher Joseph B. Wikert Executive Editorial Director Mary Bednarek Project Coordinator Erin Smith Graphics and Production Specialists Joyce Haughey Jennifer Heleine Kristin McMullan Heather Ryan Mary Gillot Virgin Quality Control Technicians Laura Albert Susan Moritz Carl William Pierce Permissions Editor Laura Moss Media Development Specialist Greg Stafford Proofreading and Indexing TECHBOOKS Production Services 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page vi www.it-ebooks.info Preface W elcome to the third edition of the XML 1.1 Bible. When the first edition was published about five years ago, XML was a promising technology with a small but growing niche. In the last half decade, it has absolutely exploded. XML no longer needs to be justified as a good idea. In fact, the question developers are ask- ing has changed from “Why XML?” to “Why not XML?” XML has become the data format of choice for fields as diverse as stock trading and graphic design. More new programs today are using XML than aren’t. A solid understanding of just what XML is and how to use it has become a sine qua non for the computer literate. The XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition is your introduction to the exciting and fast-growing world of XML. With this book, you’ll learn how to write documents in XML and how to use style sheets to convert those documents into HTML so that legacy browsers can read them. You’ll also learn how to use document type definitions (DTDs) and schemas to describe and validate documents. You’ll encounter a variety of XML applications in many domains, ranging from finance to vector graphics to geneal- ogy. And you’ll learn how to take advantage of XML for your own unique projects, programs, and web pages. What’s New in the Third Edition The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote in a letter, “I have only made this longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” I know how he felt. The first edition of the XML Bible was written under great time pressure, was finished well after deadline, and totaled more than 1000 pages, the largest book I had written up to that point. My favorite reader comment about that edition was, “It would seem to me that if you asked the author to write 10,000 words about the colour blue, he would be able to do it without breaking into a sweat.” While I probably could write 10,000 words about blue, for the third edition, I did try to restrain myself and take the time to write more concisely. I rewrote the book from the ground up; and while I retained the basic flavor and outline that proved so popular with the first edition, I tightened up the writing and cut many examples down to size. With the benefit of five years of hindsight, I have also been able to expand coverage of promising new technologies (schemas, XInclude, XHTML, SVG, XML Base, and RDDL) while eliminating coverage of applications that proved to be less useful than they initially appeared (WML, VML, CDF, HTML+TIME, RDF, and so on). The result is a more concise, approachable volume that covers more of what you need to know and less of what you don’t. If you liked the first or second edition, you’re going to like the third edition even more. I’m confident you’ll find this an even more useful tutorial and reference. 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/28/04 9:43 AM Page vii www.it-ebooks.info [...]...viii Preface Who You Are Unlike most other XML books on the market, the XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition discusses XML from the perspective of a web page author, not from the perspective of a software developer I don’t spend a lot of time discussing BNF grammars or parsing element trees Instead, I show you how you can use XML and existing tools today to more efficiently produce attractive,... 44 45 46 46 49 52 54 Chapter 3: Your First XML Document 55 Hello XML Creating a simple XML document Saving the XML file Loading the XML file into a web browser Exploring the Simple XML Document Meaning in Markup Writing a Style Sheet for an XML Document Attaching a Style Sheet to an XML Document Summary ... XInclude enables you to build large XML documents out of multiple smaller XML documents XML Schemas provide a more complete validations language that includes data typing and range checking All of these can be added to your own XML- based markup languages to extend their power and utility Part V: XML Applications Part V (Chapters 21 to 25) demonstrates several practical uses of XML in different domains XHTML... Williamson served as technical editors on the first edition and corrected many of my errors Ken Cox performed the same service for the second edition, and B.K Delong for the Gold edition David Schultz stepped up to the plate for this edition I also greatly appreciate all the comments, questions, and corrections sent in by readers of the first and second editions and XML: Extensible Markup Language I hope that... Acknowledgments xv Part I: Introducing XML 1 Chapter 1: An Eagle’s Eye View of XML 3 What Is XML? 3 XML is a meta-markup language 3 XML describes structure and semantics, not formatting 5 Why Are Developers Excited About XML? 6 Domain-specific markup languages ... Software Description Scalable Vector Graphics MusicXML VoiceXML Open Financial Exchange Extensible Forms Description Language HR -XML XML for XML XSL XLinks Schemas Behind-the-Scene Uses of XML Microsoft Office 2003 Netscape’s What’s... book, you’ll be ready to use XML to create compelling web pages Part I: Introducing XML Part I (Chapters 1 through 6) begins with the history and theory behind XML and the goals XML is trying to achieve It shows you how the different pieces of the XML equation fit together to enable you to create and deliver documents to readers You’ll see several compelling examples of XML applications to give you... sent in by readers of the first and second editions and XML: Extensible Markup Language I hope that I’ve managed to address most of those comments in this book They’ve definitely helped make the XML 1.1 Bible, 3rd Edition a better book Particular thanks are due to Michael Dyck, Alan Esenther, and Donald Lancon, Jr for their especially detailed comments The agenting talents of David and Sherry Rogelberg... XSL is divided into two parts: a transformation language for converting XML trees to alternative trees, and a formatting language for specifying the appearance of the elements of an XML tree Part IV: Supplemental Technologies Part IV (Chapters 17 through 20) introduces some XML- based languages and syntaxes that layer on top of basic XML to provide additional functionality and features XLink provides multidirectional... SGML used XML is supposed to be simpler and more widespread than SGML It can’t be that if you have to learn SGML first ✦ Are a programmer, whether of Java, Perl, C, or some other language XML is a markup language, not a programming language You don’t need to be a programmer to write XML documents www.it-ebooks.info Preface What You’ll Learn This book has one primary goal: to teach you to write XML documents . www.it-ebooks.info XML 1. 1 Bible 3rd Edition Elliotte Rusty Harold 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04 9:43 AM Page iii www.it-ebooks.info 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04 9:43 AM Page ii www.it-ebooks.info XML 1. 1 Bible 3rd Edition 01. Edition 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04 9:43 AM Page i www.it-ebooks.info 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04 9:43 AM Page ii www.it-ebooks.info XML 1. 1 Bible 3rd Edition Elliotte Rusty Harold 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04. Services 01 549863 FM.qxd 1/ 28/04 9:43 AM Page vi www.it-ebooks.info Preface W elcome to the third edition of the XML 1. 1 Bible. When the first edition was published about five years ago, XML was