Customer Reviews

Xml for Dummies Quick Reference

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is worth buying for the step-by-step instructions on how to write any type of DTD alone. The descriptions and examples of attributes, elements, entities, and character entities are useful as well. I was surprised to see a fair amount of space devoted to XML developments, such as with Java, Perl, style sheets, and more--but it's there. I recommend this quick reference as a starter or a companion to some of the larger XML books on the market.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a good technical reference for XML, although anyone who is still learning XML will probably find this book useful as well. I was pleasantly surprised to find everything I needed for my project within this small book: the syntax of composing a DTD, declarations for all the elements and entities I was looking for, and tons of examples. The other books I looked at provide a lot of historical information, which I don't find useful and don't have time to read. If you remove all that and just keep the stuff you can use, you get this book.

I would not recommend this book for anyone who is starting to learn XML. This book is very difficult to read unless you are already familiar with XML terminology. If you are already familiar with XML terminology, then you don't need to read this book.

I disagree: this book is very useful. Of course, I have several, more comprehensive XML references, but this is a lightweight companion to the heavier books, and I use it all the time to look things up quickly. Unless you've completely memorized XML (have you?), it can be very convenient. It's like an abridged dictionary.

This book is an excellent source of information packed into a small, convenient package. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a solid reference to XML without having to slog through pages of background information and long-winded explanations.

This book is little more than an extended table of contents for the full version of the book. If you don't have the full version, this book is of little use. If you do have the full version, you already have the table of contents. The examples are weak, and the bulk of the actual useful information is just an interpretation of the XML specification from the W3C. The other major shortcoming is that it contains a number of simple errors such as consistantly mixing up the unicode character's and their hexadecimal values.

This is entitled "Quick Reference" for a reason - it's just a reference. Don't try to use this to learn XML from scratch. It's not bad as a reference, but not superb either. I wouldn't highly recommend it, but if you need something that's inexpensive, small, and covers the basics, this would work for you.

I like the price, but this book is really only good for looking up things that you already understand. I certainly was not able to understand what an XML entity is from this book.