Introduction to XML - How to Download Example Code.
This section contains the online version of Wattle Software's XML Guide - a guide to the W3C XML 1.0 specification. XMLwriter is an award-winning validating XML editor for Windows that supports XML, XSL, DTD, XSD Schema, CSS, XHTML, HTML and text files. XMLwriter has an intuitive, customizable user interface with advanced editing functions such as bookmarks, auto-indent and find and replace.
The document type (DOCTYPE) declaration consists of an internal, or references an external Document Type Definition (DTD). It can also have a combination of both internal and external DTDs. The DTD defines the constraints on the structure of an XML document.
What is XML? XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language; XML is a markup language much like HTML. XML was designed to describe data. XML tags are not predefined in XML. You must define your own tags. XML is self describing. XML uses a DTD (Document Type Definition) to formally describe the data.
I'd write an XML Schema (XSD) file to define the structure of the XML document. xs:annotation and xs:documentation tags can be included to describe the elements. The XSD file can be transformed into documentation using XSLT stylesheets such as xs3p or tools such as XML Schema Documenter. For an introduction to XML Schema see the XML Schools tutorial.
Writing a Simple XML File. Let's start out by writing up a simple version of the kind of XML data you could use for a slide presentation. In this exercise, you'll use your text editor to create the data in order to become comfortable with the basic format of an XML file.
To share XML data with others, you need to agree on a standard set of tag names and element attributes so that everyone in your group uses and applies tags the same way. One method for handling the sharing of XML data is to use a document type definition (DTD) file. A DTD file provides a set of elements and attributes for members of the group.
XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of information items. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in other specifications that need to refer to the information in a well-formed XML document. An XML document has an information set if it is well-formed and satisfies.