33454Absolute Beginner XML Tutorial and Resourceshttp://mousewhisperer.co.uk/xml_page.htmlXML (eXtensible Markup Language) is not a programming language. Like HTML (and sharing a common parentage - but that's another story), XML is a means of 'marking up' the content of a document using elements (sometimes referred to as tags) to mark the beginning and end of sections of information.XML > Tips and Tutorials > Introduction to XMLOct 17, 2006The Mouse Whisperer
XML started strong and has grown quite rapidly. It has proven itself a very valuable technology, but it can be an intimidating one, when one considers all the moving parts that fall under the term "XML". In this series of articles, I provide a summary of what I see as the most important XML technologies, and discuss how they each fit into the greater scope of things in the XML world. I also recommend tutorials and other useful resources for evaluating and learning to use each technology.
In my Thinking XML column, I frequently focus on how various industries are working toward semantic transparency, which is the shared meaning of at least the framework of what is communicated in an XML document. Either the industries do so by creating complete document formats along with the semantics of all the elements, attributes, and content, or they define terms and concepts discretely and individually, independently of the documents in which they would appear. I call these approaches top-down and bottom-up, respectively, and very active communities provide useful material on each.
If you have some familiarity with HTML, you have some concept of what markup language is. If you write a plain text file, it is composed of simple ASCII characters and nothing more. When a program (such as notepad) is used to display the file, all characters in the text file will be displayed using the same font size, type, and boldness. There are no special display characteristics to this type of file.
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