Biography
Blog
Wrapping with foreign elements in Word 2007 and OpenOffice Writer
August 22 2008
But the bottom line for foreign elements as wrappers in ODF and OOXML is that ODF allows them to be stripped out by the application while OOXML doesn't allow that; neither of course require that any particular application understands them. The bottom line for OpenOffice and Office seems to be… read moreWrapping with foreign elements in Word 2007 and OpenOffice Writer
August 19 2008
But the bottom line for foreign elements as wrappers in ODF and OOXML is that ODF allows them to be stripped out by the application while OOXML doesn't allow that; neither of course require that any particular application understands them. The bottom line for OpenOffice and Office seems to be… read moreLocalizing XSLT error messages for Schematron
August 14 2008
I was surprised to read a review of Schematron and other schema languages which cited the lack of localization as an important reason to not use it, so the next release of the skeleton has localized messages. Here is the approach I took to localize the XSLT. read moreISO 4217 currency names and code elements
August 14 2008
A new edition of the standard currency codes is out. Currency adoption shows the geo-economic affiliation of countries. Plus polymer banknote links. read moreAugust 12 2008
It seems that the answer is, yes, a URL can contain an XPath, providing it has been delimited in certain ways. Why would we want to do this? The trouble with using fragment identifiers or queries in URLs (? and #) is that the resources identified become, in effect, terminal… read moreImporting XML documents into Word 2007 and OpenOffice Writer through XSLTs
August 11 2008
Opening an XML file with an XSLT transformation is a simple, useful and valuable technique for integrating work processing systems into larger XML ecosystems read moreAugust 06 2008
I'm in hardware now! Well, firmware at least. I posted a little comment to the electro-music.com DIY synthesizer forum about using FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) as a synthesis method, and Scott Gravenhorst took the idea and implemented it as an 8-voice, dual oscillator polyphonic synthesizer-on-a-chip using an FPGA (Field Programmable… read moreThe challenge of validating XML-in-ZIP file in place: how to do it with Schematron
August 05 2008
Thoughts on Schematron headers for processing ODF and OOXML, with a C# URL Resolver that handles ZIP files like some Java resolvers. The new XML-in-ZIP documents present a new challenge: constraints that formerly would have been kept in a single document are now split into multiple documents. When the basic… read moreEfficient XML Interchange Evaluation: a little fragrant?
August 04 2008
When you read a column that says that XML+GZIP "prevents processing efficiency" you know someone has given the bull a laxative. read moreNew release of ISO Schematron validator code
July 30 2008
I have put a new version of the ISO Schematron validator up at Schematron.com. read moreNew draft of ISO character entities from W3C
July 27 2008
I am pleased to see that the W3C MathML WG has produced a new draft XML Entity definitions for Characters. These are the latest and greatest mappings from the characters to Unicode. read moreOpenness: the survivalist's ideal becomes the authoritarian's buzzword
July 25 2008
An essential issue for making sure the good survivalist benefits of FOSS are not swamped by the corporate agenda abetted by authoritarians, is that FOSS (and open standards intended to allow FOSS) has to be architected for hackability. People are used to thinking that a technical standard is bad when… read moreJuly 17 2008
Why are these people so scared of openness? This may seem a strange and provocative thing to say. Surely ODF is the open technology and OOXML is the proprietary technology? Surely we know this because "ISO" is the organization which is just the puppet of MicroSoft while OASIS is a… read moreAssertions in new XSD 1.1 draft
July 08 2008
The new XSD 1.1 draft has some revisions to the assertions system. The traditional argument against XSD 1.0 was that it had too little bang per buck: 1.1 has more bang, but more buck. read moreJuly 07 2008
I suggest..an ISO standard giving definitions for different kinds of openness. Openness is a motherhood term now, so of course there will be surprises and debate about what kind of motherhood we actually mean. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that RAND-z and RF is necessary but not… read more
