The arrival of support for XML—the Extensible Markup Language—in browsers and authoring tools has followed a long period of intense hype. Major databases, authoring tools (including Microsoft's Office 2000), and browsers are committed to XML support. Many content creators and programmers for the Web and other media are left wondering, "What can XML and its associated standards really do for me?" Getting the most from XML requires being able to tag and transform XML documents so they can be processed by web browsers, databases, mobile phones, printers, XML processors, voice response systems, and LDAP directories, just to name a few targets.

In Learning XML, the authors explain XML and its capabilities succinctly and professionally, with references to real-life projects and other cogent examples. Learning XML shows the purpose of XML markup itself, the CSS and XSL styling languages, and the XLink and XPointer specifications for creating rich link structures.

The basic advantages of XML over HTML are that XML lets a web designer define tags that are meaningful for the particular documents or database output to be used, and that it enforces an unambiguous structure that supports error-checking. XML supports enhanced styling and linking standards (allowing, for instance, simultaneous linking to the same document in multiple languages) and a range of new applications.

For writers producing XML documents, this book demystifies files and the process of creating them with the appropriate structure and format. Designers will learn what parts of XML are most helpful to their team and will get started on creating Document Type Descriptions. For programmers, the book makes syntax and structures clear. It also discusses the stylesheets needed for viewing documents in the next generation of browsers, databases, and other devices.

About the Authors:Erik Ray is a software wrangler for the computer book publisher O'Reilly and Associates, helping to move production to an XML-based workflow. He lives with his wife Jeannine and 5 birds in Saugus, Massachusetts. When not writing, he can be found practicing kendo, watching Japanese animation, playing go, or stalking antiquarian book fairs to indulge his fetish for 19th-century children's books and machine bolt catalogs.

Chris Maden left Brown University in 1994 and stumbled into a career in structured markup via a technical support position at Electronic Book Technologies in Providence, RI, creators of one of the first electronic book browsers, DynaText. There, he got involved in standards work, including participating in the first work on XML. From EBT, he staggered north to the Tools Group at O'Reilly, where he helped develop a new generation of SGML and XML publishing tools, and where he also joined the XSL Working Group at the W3C. In 1999, he left to join Yomu, an e-books startup in San Francisco, where he currently lives with his wife Ellie Fountain Maden.