Customer Reviews

Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical

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Because the topic is changing so quickly, it is difficult to publish a current book on XML. Even with this disadvantage, the book gives the reader the information needed to understand how XML works, what its potential is, and generally how to implement it. I have two negative comments:
1. The book is a too cursory with emerging technologies which will be the mainstay of the technology: DOM, XSL, XSLT, SAX. These parts are critical for implementors and should have been discussed more thoroughly.
2. For a book on markup, they should have gotten the table of contents marked up correctly.

On the whole, an excellent book. Very readable.

The book does not focus on the "Scientific and technical" side (only 1/3 of the chapters). Maybe that is why the subtitle has disappeared from the cover. Chapters 1-9 and 21-24 are generalities about XML and XML-aware applications. These would have been much clearer if the authors omitted to present all these useless options such as PUBLIC identifiers. Chapters 10, 11 and annex A paraphrase the MathML specifications. The MathML specs, freely downloadable online, are unusually clear themselves so the book does not bring much. I would have liked a word about the XSIL format, an index for the CD, and a correct table of content. I understand that if the authors had taken the time to write a well focused and pedagogical text, it would have been obsolete before publishing. Yet I am still looking for a book on XML for scientists.