The Xml Companion [Paperback]

Neil Bradley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

Clarity, comprehensive coverage and precision are just a few of the reasons why anyone who needs to get up to speed with XML will appreciate The XML Companion. Neil Bradley's book will become every web developer's essential guide to one of the most exciting developments to hit the web.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Both a great way of learning about XML and related technologies, and an excellent reference book you'll want to keep handy on your shelf." -- Development Exchange

From the Inside Flap

Preface

The Extensible Markup Language is a powerful publishing and document interchange

format. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, it was released, to widespread

acclaim, in 1998. XML has a superficial resemblance to HTML, the established

language of the Web, but information held in this format is self-describing

- it can be extracted, manipulated and formatted to the requirements of any

target audience or publishing medium.

XML should be of interest to HTML designers who need more flexibility to manage

and customize their documents, to SGML users seeking advanced yet modestly priced

applications, and to software developers requiring a flexible storage or interchange

format that has powerful supporting tools.

The XML Companion serves the programmer, analyst or consultant

involved in the management, processing, transfer or publication of XML documents.

Detailed study of XML is supported by the inclusion of cross-referenced 'road

maps' of the building blocks that comprise the standard, and an extensive glossary.

Related standards for cataloguing, linking and styling XML files are also covered

in detail.

This edition
The first edition of this book was completed within weeks of the release of

the XML standard. Since that time, no significant pressure to modify or enhance

the core standard has emerged. Justification for a new edition of this book

therefore rests upon the high degree of activity surrounding XML. Complementary

standards for processing, presenting and merging XML data have since been released,

and this edition provides detailed coverage of DOM 1.0, SAX 1.0, CSS 2 and Namespaces

1.0. Other standards have progressed, but are still being refined, so this edition

simply describes later, more stable drafts of XSL (now divided into XSL and

XSLT) and XLL (now divided into XLink and XPointer). Other proposed standards

have only very recently emerged. The next version of HTML (XHTML) will be an

application of XML (instead of SGML), and the XML Catalog proposal defines a

standard scheme for managing the mapping of entity identifiers to local system

files. A new scheme for navigating around XML documents, called XPath, will

be utilised by the linking and styling standards.

This opportunity has been taken to rectify a number of minor syntactic and

grammatical mistakes, as well as a few factual errors, and thanks are due to

readers of the first edition for highlighting many of these issues.

Very little material from the first edition has been omitted, so the new book

is a little larger than before. Despite this, it is hoped that the book can

still serve as a 'companion' for those who are constantly on the move.

Acknowledgements
A repeated thanks to all those mentioned in the first edition of this book,

as their contributions remain relevant. In addition, a number of readers of

the first edition have contributed suggestions and observations that have helped

improve the quality of this work, and their efforts are appreciated. Finally,

thanks once again to Adobe for FrameMaker+SGML (which was used both in the preparation

and publication of this book).

Feedback
Comments and suggestions for a possible future edition are welcome. They should

be sent to the author, who can be found at [e-mail].

Updates, additions and corrections can be obtained from the author's Web page,

located at 'bradley.co.uk',

which also contains links to various XML and SGML related sites.

Neil Bradley
August1999 0201674866P04062001 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (C) (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201342855
• ISBN-13: 978-0201342857
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,777,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Handy reference book, March 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Xml Companion (Paperback)

All reference books should be this short. The XML Companion is generally clear and concise and does a nice job of relating XML to its cousins SGML and HTML. The examples are easy to follow, although the diagrams are often messy--too many arrows pointing this way and that, obscuring parts of the drawing. The charts, tables, and glossary are extremely handy.

Unfortunately, two chapters (XLL and XSL) are based on specifications that haven't even become official W3C recommendations yet--why waste the paper and ink on something you know will be outdated by the time the book appears in print? Apparently some marketing bozo at Addison-Wesley decided this was the way to go.

Worse, despite its helpful content, every chapter of this book is riddled with typos and other lapses in copyediting and proofreading, which is an embarrassment to the author and a disgrace to the publisher. One expects better of Addison-Wesley--or at least I used to. The proofreader of this book should be whipped, and the project manager should be fired.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful and comprehensive, April 21, 2003

By 

David Elder "elddm" (Boston, Ma United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The XML Companion (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

Bradley's book is a pretty complete guide to XML and related technologies. The main chapters are almost tutorial in style, with plenty of code examples to follow. The end of the book contains a small reference section. The topics covered are XML, XSL, XSLT, DOM, SAX, XPath, Schemas, XLink, XHTML, and CSS. Discussions are for the most part clear and accurate. I have two main complaints about Bradley. First, the prose, while accurate, is often overly verbose. It could be written more concisely and compactly. Second, each chapter is broken into sections, but the sections are not numbered, so it is difficult to locate material in the text. The main advantage is the comprehensive general coverage of XML-related technologies. Buying this one book will arm you with the knowledge to develop XML applications and content, and it will save you money. If you have very specific needs, you may need to supplement Bradley with another more focused text that delves deeper into a particular technology. Also, if you want to see longer applications presented as case studies, you might want a different text. I recommend this book for beginning and intermediate XML users who want broad, general coverage in a single book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, clear and to the point for XML professionals, January 16, 2002

By 

Isystek, Inc. "reviewer" (MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The XML Companion (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

This book is clearly not for a beginner, nor should it be. Many reviews give it less than five stars due to the fact that it's a bad tutorial. Well it wasn't designed as one, as you should see in the title XML **Companion**. It's designed as a thorough reference of XML and related technologies. Neil is really up to date with his stuff. I couldn't find another book, (and I've skimmed through all of them), that covers everything. Coverage of technical issues like white space normalization, Relax, Trex, Relax NG, etc... It's wondeful.
Please don't buy this book as a tutorial, but rather as a desktop reference. It's a must on all XML programmer's bookshelves.