At 10:57 -0800 2003-10-29, Eric Fong wrote:
>Currently, it has been ordered that we use XML to design a
>completely new look, which I don't know anything about. (This
>directive came from above, without any consultation with me. So I'm
>trying to figure out how to use it.)
For anyone who faces a situation similar to Eric's -- where
conversion of a website to XML might be mandated -- you might suggest
to your supervisor/manager or other initiator that you might begin by
creating all of your new documents in XHTML 1.0, the "next
generation" of HTML. You can also optionally convert some or all of
your existing documents from HTML to XHTML, as well.
XHTML 1.0 documents are essentially just HTML 4.01 documents which
follow a slightly stricter set of rules. Many of the tools you use
today to create new HTML documents can also be used to create new
XHTML documents. And HTMLTidy, a tool available for many platforms,
can assist in converting your existing HTML documents into XHTML.
This is a transitional step which can help prepare a website so
that it can be used with the large and growing number of XML-related
tools. In addition, XHTML documents have the advantage of being
immediately familiar to website administrators and content providers
who are currently using HTML, as described in:
"The X-factor: Writing your web pages in XHTML"
http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Winter2001/info.xhtml.html
To go one step further, you might start generating or adding
'class="..."' attributes to various elements in your XHTML documents.
By doing so, you can 'round-trip' simple documents in either
direction between arbitrary XML document types and XHTML documents
using XSLT stylesheets:
Didier Martin
"A Class Act"
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2000/02/02/style/
Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group
P.S. Eric's situation may be a bit more complicated than I've
described above: from my reading of a late August posting he sent to
this list, it's possible he may have been given a set of XML pages
prepared by someone else and directed to 'make a website out of these
...' Ouch! :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:
Webnet information is available at <URL:http://webnet.berkeley.edu/>.
Received on Wed Oct 29 13:28:27 2003
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Wed Oct 29 2003 - 13:28:27 PST