Wilfred Thinking Aloud

Emacs NXML-Mode Conference 2005

I just returned from the XML 2005 conference in Atlanta, and I had a great time. Not in the least because everybody seemed to be using Emacs as the ultimate XML authoring tool. So I hereby file my suggestion to change the name of the conference to the "Emacs NXML-Mode Conference 2006".

We could also rename the conference to the "PurchaseOrder Conference 2006". I don't think I have seen any presentation not refering to a PurchaseOrder example. Which makes you wonder.... we don't have a dedicated PurschaseOrder spec yet! (WS-PurchaseOrder, XPurchaseOrder, XPO, they all qualify as acceptable XML related spec names. Here's your chance. File your proposals today!

XML 2005 Day 1

Tutorial day! I attended two tutorials: one about DocBook, and another one about XForms. Norm did the presentation on DocBook; one of the things he explained is why moving to RelaxNG for DocBook v5.* is an improvement. And it really is: as an example, he showed how to remove an element from a content model based on the DTD, followed by an example of the same change in RelaxNG. The DTD version required several pages of customizations. In RelaxNG it only required a couple (4?) lines.

The other tutorial was also interesting. I had not looked at XForms for quite a while, but it's really great to see where XForms is going. It was really amazing to see the presenter pick up an XML document, drop it in an open XForm-based document, and notice the UI wrapping around this piece of XML data.

The real question remains how these things will develop over time. Both XForms and JSF provide a rich declarative validation framework, but it seems awkward that you would have to configure these validation rules for both the XForms based UIs and JSF based UIs; it would be great if these commonalities could somehow be factored into a separate layer upon which both XForms and JSF could rely, but there is no such thing yet.

Packing my tags

We're a little more than a week away from the XML 2005 conference. This afternoon, I got some time to crawl through the different topics, and it's looking good! After reading a conference schedule, I kind of feel like the robot that you might remember from one of the 80's movies (forgot it's name), that is running around in a library, all excited, shouting "INPUT INPUT" while it's reading a couple of books per minute.

This will be [1] my first visit to an XML only conference, and [2] my first visit to Atlanta. I consider myself to be quite familiar in the mixed Java and XML scene, but this community could be a little different. In any case, I'll make sure to pack a lot of shirts with tags, just to make sure that I blend in. And since this is my first visit to Atlanta: if there is anbody out there who can make some recommendations on places to visit and where to have dinner, then just let me know.

Secretum

Just finished reading "Secretum", the lastest book of Monaldi and Sorti. It's fascinating. It was a while ago since I had read their first book, "Imprimatur" (Amazon), so it took me some time to recall the characters that reappear in this book. The most fascinating thing about the book is that - once you've finished reading the story - it ends with a huge list of references, proving that a lot of the events that have been woven into the story are actually based on historical evidence. (And believe me, that really comes as a surprise.)

I don't think the book has been translated in English yet. It made its first appearance in Holland, since the previous book caused so much disruption in Italy and the Vatican that the authors got problems with their publishers.