Hello folks,

A couple of weeks back I asked for comments on a draft introductory
leaflet on XML, to be published by the Heritage Data Management unit
here at EH. I posted a copy of the draft at:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/FISH/XML_for_the_historic_environment.rt
f

I promised to summarise responses for information of the list.

First of all though my thanks to all who took the time to respond.

Generally you liked the style and thought it aimed appropriately as an
introduction. Apart from grammar and spelling corrections there were
requests for:-

- More on how DTDs and schema are created: I'll add in some detail on
how the standards from the World Wide Web Consortium set out the rules
for doing this.

- 'Markup' to be used in preference to mark-up, mark up etc. No problem
(though my spell-checker doesn't like it!)
- More examples in the body of the text: No problem.

- 'Nesting' of tags to be defined in the same place as it is used in the
text.

- The indentation in the XML example was incorrect: everything within
the <Monuments> tags should be indented an extra tab to the right for
consistency.

- The HTML example for comparison with XML raised a few responses.
Either folk wanted more detail on HTML (which I don't think belongs
here) or they suggested avoiding it altogether. On reflection that is
what I'll do, as this frees up a bit of space for other topics.

- Stylesheet languages (XSL). These allow a single XML file to act as
the source for a variety of different presentations of the data (e.g.
including or excluding particular bits, presenting it in a different
order, or different fonts, styles etc) This is particularly relevant to
my intended audience, so I'll put in more about that.

- references to further information. I'm a bit wary of recommending an
authoritative source, as the books and websites change so frequently. I
do like that at
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp however which provides a basic
step by step tutorial. Its heavily supported by advertising, but at
least that means its free to view.

Thanks again to all who commented. Look out for the final version at
conferences (and via the EH web site) in the next couple of months!

Edmund Lee
English Heritage