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  The Pineapplesoft Link newsletter covered a wide range of technical topics, see the archived issues.
The newsletter was first emailed in 1998. In 2001 Benoît discontinued it in favour of professional writing for magazines.
La page «August 1999» a été archivée en 2003 en respectant le document original de août 1999.
 
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Welcome to the 20th issue of Pineapplesoft Link.

As always, you are welcome to send me your comments, questions or suggestions on the newsletter to [address removed, the newsletter is no longer published thank you for your support].

XML Tools

When I published the first newsletter, I never realized I would reach 20 issues. This has been an incredibly successful year and a half. Thank you for your support.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Sean McLoughlin. Sean has been proofreading the newsletter since the first issue. Thanks to his efforts, you don't have to see all my errors. Any errors left in the newsletter are my fault: I keep changing the text after Sean has fixed it!

I learned from reader Bernie Van Spronsen that Canada also has its National Day in July. Apologies to Canadian readers who probably felt left out in the last issue.

This is an XML issue. XML is still a very popular topic amongst Pineapplesoft Link readers. In this issue, I explain how I use XML to produce the newsletter. Hopefully it will give you ideas on how you can use XML in your environment.

Going XML

Two months ago SoftQuad released XMetaL, a very interesting XML software. As I will explain, XMetaL is a user-friendly XML editor (maybe the first user-friendly XML editor).

I have been following XML announcements very closely. After the release of XMetaL, I decided to build an inexpensive document management solution based on XML for the Pineapplesoft web site. So far, I have been maintaining the web site with HoTMetaL, also from SoftQuad.

The Situation

I decided to gradually migrate the web site from HoTMetaL to an XML-based solution. I was particularly interested in experimenting with XMetaL in a realistic project.

I also wanted to simplify the site maintenance. With the existing HTML-centric approach, it is difficult to change the look-and-feel of the site. Basically, if I decided to change the style, I had to manually edit every page. A daunting task when there are close to 100 pages.

I knew that using XML and style sheets would dramatically simplify maintenance, however I refused to switch until I had an easy-to-use editor. I do a lot of writing and I wanted a tool I would feel comfortable with, not one of these editors you have to fight against.

I decided that the newsletter was the ideal starting point because it has a large document base that grows at the rate of one article per month. Furthermore the newsletter is delivered in two media: email and the web (at http://www.psol.be/old/1/newsletter).

The tools I used in this projects are XMetaL from SoftQuad http://www.softquad.com, LotusXSL from Lotus http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com and Near & Far Designer from Microstar http://www.microstar.com.

XMetaL

XMetaL is an XML editor. It's a commercial product and, at roughly $670, it is the most expensive of the three tools. However it is well worth it.

There are many XML editors on the market, including many free editors but, in my opinion, few editors have been designed with authors in mind. Indeed most XML editors such as XML Pro or XML Spy are simple tree editors that push too much XML on the author. They remind me of first generation HTML editors that were nothing more than glorified programmer's editors.

XMetaL, on the other hand, uses a word processor metaphor. Although it is a structured editor that enforces a DTD (Document Type Definition), it behaves very much like a word processor. Meaning, you quickly forget this is XML and you can concentrate on your writing: it just work.

SoftQuad has lots of experience writing SGML editors and it shows in XMetaL. It competes with SGML editors such as Adept or Framemaker + SGML. However I found XMetaL follows the XML philosophy that "simple is beautiful." I found it generally easier to use and configure than other SGML editors.

Near & Far Designer

Near & Far is a graphical DTD editor. It was originally a pricey SGML product but Microstar recently released an XML version for $199.

Designing DTDs manually is waste of time. Design is a creative activity so you need tools to support you: having to manually cut and paste changes in a text editor is a sure way to kill the fun.

The most natural approach to design DTDs is to draw trees on paper. Near & Far works exactly the same: it just draws a tree. However it's easy to make changes with Near & Far than with a piece of paper. Also the tree always remains clean and readable.

Furthermore, once the drawing is complete, just save it and you have a DTD! No waste of time working with the cumbersome DTD syntax.

I like Near & Far because it is really easy to use. It does not take more than an hour or two to get used to it. My only complain is that the documentation is really poor.

LotusXSL

Of course, I realize that I couldn't publish XML documents: there are not enough XML browsers out there. Therefore I decided to convert the documents to text (for the email) and to HTML (for web publishing).

XSLT offers a standard mechanism for doing just that. I choose LotusXSL as the XSL processor. I wrote three XSL style sheets: one converts the XML newsletter to text, another one converts the XML newsletter to HTML and the last one creates an index page that links to all the articles for the web site.

LotusXSL is available free of charge. It implements the previous draft of XSLT which is all I needed for my project.

The main advantage of using style sheets is that I can change the look and feel of the web site by changing only one file (the style sheet) and recompiling the whole site. This takes less than one hour as opposed to several days with the old method.

Conclusion

It took me less than one day to install my publishing solution. I now have the basis for a highly-manageable publishing system based on XML.

Of course, the bulk of the work remains to be done: I need to convert the HTML documents in XML. That's a lot of work but I know it is the last time I will have to manually convert these documents!

About Pineapplesoft Link

Pineapplesoft Link is a free email magazine. Each month, it discusses technologies, trends and facts of interest to web developers.

The information and design of this issue of Pineapplesoft Link are owned by Benoit Marchal and Pineapplesoft. Permission to copy or forward it is hereby granted provided it is prefaced with the words: "As appeared in Pineapplesoft Link - http://www.pineapplesoft.com."

Editor: Benoit Marchal
Publisher: Pineapplesoft www.psol.be

Acknowledgments: thanks to Sean McLoughlin MBA for helping me with this issue.

Back issues are available at http://www.psol.be/old/1/newsletter/.

Although the editor and the publisher have used reasonable endeavors to ensure accuracy of the contents, they assume no responsibility for any error or omission that may appear in the document.

Mise à jour : août 1999.
© 1999, Benoît Marchal. All rights reserved.
Design, programmation XSL & photo : PineappleSoft OnLine.