Just XML

ISBN: 0-13-94347-8

Author: John E. Simpson

John E. Simpson is not well known in the XML World. He has a strong background in computing and many years of real-world experience . He is the co-author of HTML for Fun and Profit. He is a Webmaster with no prior understanding SGML. As such, Simpson brings a of fresh point of view to this writing.

Pages: 380

Intended Audience: Most XML books are written from either the SGML or the HTML perspective. Simpson, however, takes the novel approach of writing this text assuming that the reader knows little or nothing about either SGML or HTML. His goal is to explain XML and some of the related standards to the newcomer. He aims to provide simple explanations for XML and for the reader to come away for just the facts.

This is not a book for SGML people. I think they would be bored (or horrified) with the simple explanations of SGML. Some examples contain technical errors for those who are really into SGML. But this book is not for them. It is for the novice to whom the subtle errors will not matter. The book is written to make what might be considered by some to be highly technical and dull, into a "fun" exercise. In that sense, Just XML may be in the same category as XML for Dummies, and in no ways competes with the more technical and serious texts such as XML, a Primer by Simon St. Laurent or Designing XML Documents by David Megginson.

Summary:

I will begin by saying that I thought Just XML was fun reading. The tone is light and non-threatening to someone just starting to learn about XML. The author uses a tag set of his own invention (FlixML; a tagging scheme for the review of B movies) to illustrate his points, in often comical ways. The book introduces just what it takes to gain a general conceptual understanding. Clearly one must follow this text with more technical titles, but it is a good way to get started. And for programmers and experienced software developers, this and the XML specification itself may be all that is required.

Part I is "XML Basics." It contains "all you need to know about XML to mark your documents up for meaningful display on the Web." In this part, Simpson says that XML gives "meaning" to Web pages. I like that. It says very simply what XML is and what XML can do. This part talks about what XML is and what it is not. It also discusses topics like validation and multimedia.

Part 2 focuses on "XML Linking." This part goes into great detail about XLink and XPointers. It talks about how we can get from "here to there." This is critical to Web designers, hence so much coverage in this text. Linking, in fact, gets far more "bandwidth" than does XML itself. For the audience this is good.

Part 3 focuses on "XML: Doing it with Style." Again for Web designers style is critical. The text gives readers good explanations about why we should not be specifying style right in the HTML or XML tags. It introduces the idea of stylesheets, reviews and explains Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in a very simple way. Simpson also tackles the complex topic of eXtensible Style Language (XSL). He explains XSL in simple terms, compares it with CSS and the reader comes away with a beginner's understanding of style and XML.

Part 4 focuses on the DTD, and is cleverly called "Rolling Your Own XML." Here Simpson introduces the basics of XML DTDs. Here Simpson helps us understand the components of a DTD and even read one. I do not think this chapter is sufficient to enable one to write their own complex DTD. However, Simpson introduces a variety of parsing tools and suggests that one way to generate a DTD is by creating a well formed instance, parsing it, and then using a DTD generator which reads the instance and creates the DTD. This is an interesting approach for simple applications, but leaves one to wonder what purpose such a DTD will serve. I recommend that if you are serious about "rolling your own" you buy a more technical text that really gives you a good foundation of the beast known as a DTD.

Part 5 of the book provides some insights into the future. It includes predictions about both the direction of the standards as well as tools.

Overall, I found the book an enjoyable introduction to XML. Based on my experience with XML beginners, I can't agree with the author that this simple text gives us enough to develop XML applications, but perhaps for experienced programmers and software developers it may serve that purpose. If you are starting out and want to understand the basic concepts behind XML, this is a good introductory text.