RE: http://www.electoral-vote.com/index.htm

[Nick Thompson]

This particularly for Karl, Owen, and Steve:  I finally found the website (above) where I had seen an xml button.  Could one of you remind me what xml is?  Please dont yell at me.  I got the L part; it's the XM I cant remember.

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
[hidden email]
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[Owen Densmore]

eXtended Markup Language.

Basically, after inventing HTML, we found we'd done a bad job of it and  
attempted to fix it with XML which is more regular and precise about  
both its format and how to attach meaning to the parts enclosed within  
the format via a DTD .. Document Type Definition.

So when you click on XML, you get a pure XML version of the data  
lurking behind the HTML "presentation" of that data.

Owen

On Oct 29, 2004, at 5:21 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

>
>
>
>
> This particularly for Karl, Owen, and Steve:  I finally found the  
> website (above) where I had seen an xml button.  Could one of you  
> remind me what xml is?  Please dont yell at me.  I got the L part;  
> it's the XM I cant remember.
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]===================================================
> =========
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org

[Joshua Thorp]

The Orange XML buttons signify an RSS feed.  RSS stands for something  
like Real Simple Syndication (this is off the top of my head and I  
think there is some disagreement anyway about what RSS really stands  
for).  Basically an RSS feed can be used to follow a site with changing  
information.  Software like news aggregators will download the file  
linked to by the XML button and track when new information or articles  
are available.  This is often used in News sites,  blogs,  and other  
places where new information is being fed (think news wire or software  
development change list).

XML is a very large umbrella language (more data format than  
programming language) for the presentation and storage of data.  RSS  
and XHTML are two examples of XML applications.  XHTML is the HTML  
language reworked to be a subset of XML.  XML can easily be transformed  
into new presentations and new XML formats.  This is intended for such  
things as storing content in databases and providing content for web  
pages and cell phones...

As for news aggregators,  I have just started using NewsFire on my Mac  
to follow my blog/news habit and like it very much.  Basically it saves  
one from constantly re-loading web pages checking for new articles (as  
on Slashdot).  I see a lot of promise for RSS in the future (and these  
orange buttons are starting to show up every where...).  It fills a  
similar role to mail lists but is a pull technology as opposed to a  
push technology.  That is RSS requires that software repeatedly check  
for updates as opposed to mail which is pushed to you (though I guess  
technically one pulls the mail from a mail server...)  A feed is easily  
added to or removed from a news aggregator so you can watch the content  
on a site for  a while but don't have to deal with the more formal  
requirements of a mail list.  However it really is more akin to  
newspaper syndication where you are a consumer as opposed to good mail  
lists where you are a producer/consumer.  Yet when used in conjunction  
with a Wiki or community blog I suppose you could have the RSS feed  
inform you when someone in the community has added/changed the content  
of the website...

Hope that helps,
--Joshua


On Oct 29, 2004, at 7:35 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> eXtended Markup Language.
>
> Basically, after inventing HTML, we found we'd done a bad job of it  
> and attempted to fix it with XML which is more regular and precise  
> about both its format and how to attach meaning to the parts enclosed  
> within the format via a DTD .. Document Type Definition.
>
> So when you click on XML, you get a pure XML version of the data  
> lurking behind the HTML "presentation" of that data.
>
> Owen
>
> On Oct 29, 2004, at 5:21 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> This particularly for Karl, Owen, and Steve:  I finally found the  
>> website (above) where I had seen an xml button.  Could one of you  
>> remind me what xml is?  Please dont yell at me.  I got the L part;  
>> it's the XM I cant remember.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
>> Clark University
>> [hidden email]
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
>> [hidden email]==================================================
>> ==========
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
>> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
>> http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9AM @ Jane's Cafe
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org

[Parks, Raymond]

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> This particularly for Karl, Owen, and Steve:  I finally found the
> website (above) where I had seen an xml button.  Could one of you
> remind me what xml is?  Please dont yell at me.  I got the L part;
> it's the XM I cant remember.

   As Owen replied - XML stands for eXtended Markup Language.

   I quite enjoy both Owen and Joshua's comments about XML being a
correction of HTML and XHTML being the subsumation of HTML into XML.

   In actuality, HTML and, to some extent, XML, are complementary
extractions from SGML (Standardized General Markup Language).
   Back in the late '60s and early '70s, various folks (William
Tunnicliffe of the Graphics Communications Association, and Stanley
Rice) came up with the concept of changing specific coding in printing
to descriptive tags.  Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher, and Raymond Lorie
(all at IBM) developed the Generalized Markup Language (GML - their
initials) based on the GenCode concept started by Norman Scharpf of the GCA.

   GML added to the generic coding ideas with formally-defined document
types with an explicit nested element structure (sounds like XML,
doesn't it?).  SGML started as an ANSI standard effort (with Goldfarb)
and led to an ISO standard in 1986, which was published with an SGML
tool developed by Anders Berglund at CERN (see a pattern, here?).

   Tim Berners-Lee saw SGML at CERN and decided to use elements of it in
HTML with the addition of the hypertext concept.

   So, the basic concept is SGML.  HTML was derived from the
presentation part of SGML (how to show the content) with the addition of
hypertext.  XML harks back to the content part of SGML.  Now we've come
full circle and we are integrating the content with the presentation.

   Everything old is new again.

--
Ray Parks                   [hidden email]
IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department            Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288