MS Office Word 2007 Opened - Article Authoring Add-in

As we discussed some days before, MS has added add-in to convert word doc to XML format used by the National Library of Medicine.

This Beta 1 release of the Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 provides authors of scientific articles with the ability to read and write files from Word 2007 into the XML format used by the National Library of Medicine for archiving articles in the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, PubMed Central.

This Beta 1 release is targeted at the staff of scientific and technical journals, Information Repositories, and early adopters within the scholarly authoring community, as well as developers of publishing solutions and workflows.

Download

Writing XML - learn some good habits.

You love XML and the flexibility and interoperability that it offers, but you can do some things to make your interaction with XML and the tools that you use to work with it significantly easier. Picking up some basic good habits when you work with XML will ensure that you get the most efficient use out of your XML documentations and applications.

Here are the top 10 good XML habits to adopt:
1. Define your XML and encoding
2. Use a DTD or XSD
3. Remember to validate
4. Validation isn't always the answer
5. XML structure versus attributes
6. Use XPath to find information
7. You don't always need a parser to extract information
8. When to use SAX over DOM parsing
9. When to DOM over SAX parsing
10. Use a good XML editor

For more detail see here

Castor project - XML mapping to java class

Castor XML mapping is a way to simplify the binding of java classes to XML document. It allows to transform the data contained in a java object model into/from an XML document.The mapping information is specified by an XML document. This document is written from the point of view of the Java object and describes how the properties of the object have to be translated into XML.

The mapping file describes for each object how each of its fields have to be mapped into XML. A field is an abstraction for a property of an object. It can correspond directly to a public class variable or indirectly to a property via some accessor methods (setters and getters).

castor.org

Reviews: Modalbox - javascript modal dialog/popup library

ModalBox is a JavaScript technique for creating modern (Web 2.0-style) modal dialogs or even wizards (sequences of dialogs) without using conventional popups and page reloads. It’s inspired by Mac OS X modal dialogs. And yes, it may also be useful for showing larger versions of images.

ModalBox is built with pure JavaScript and is based on Sam Stephenson’s excellent Prototype JavaScript Framework, script.aculo.us and valid XHTML/CSS. ModalBox uses AJAX to load content.

more @ wildBit.com

Spring Framework upgrade set for November

Technologists building the Spring Framework for Java application development are mapping out improvements to the platform as well as determining which versions of Java will no longer be supported by upgrades to the framework. Version 2.5 of the open-source framework for is set for release on November 19. Key improvements include greater use of annotations and metadata. The metadata is information that supplements Java code by providing extra information that can tell the Spring container how to process a class or a method.

"Many of the new features in Spring 2.5 concern really making extensive use of the new language features in Java 5 and also Java 6," said Rod Johnson, founder of the framework and CEO of Interface21. Java 5 features, for example, more options to add metadata inside Java source code, he said. With version 2.5, greater use of annotations is offered for configurations. Also, developers with version 2.5 can define components using XML outside Java or define components using source-level metadata, Johnson said. By maintaining metadata outside of Java, developers can change the configuration of an application without recompiling Java code.

InfoWorld

Acunetix Launches Free Cross Site Scripting Security Scanner

Acunetix today launched a free edition of its popular web vulnerability scanner, which allows companies to check for cross site scripting vulnerabilities in their websites at no charge. The Free Edition of Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner (WVS) is available immediately at http://www.acunetix.com/cross-site-scripting/scanner.htm.

What is Cross Site Scripting?
Cross Site Scripting allows an attacker to embed malicious JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX, HTML, or Flash into a vulnerable dynamic page to fool the user, executing the script on his machine in order to gather data. The use of XSS might compromise private information, manipulate or steal cookies, create requests that can be mistaken for those of a
valid user, or execute malicious code on the end-user systems. The data is usually formatted as a hyperlink containing malicious content and which is distributed over any possible means on the internet. Cross site scripting vulnerabilities are extremely dangerous and the number of the attacks is on the rise. More information about Cross Site Scripting can be found at http://www.acunetix.com/websitesecurity/cr...e-scripting.htm

Acunetix

Swedes Invalidate OOXML Vote Over Fraud Allegations

The Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) has invalidated this week's ballot on the proposed Office Open XML (OOXML) standard, eliminating one vote in favour of the standard before the International Standards Organization (ISO). The body said that it had received information that one of its members had cast more than one vote, invalidating the entire election. As a result, the group won't be able to weigh in on the ISO procedure that seeks to establish OOXML as an open standard, as the deadline for votes to be registered passes on 2 September. The Swedish election sparked widespread controversy earlier this week when the SIS approved OOXML. The standard competes with the Open Document Format that is backed by IBM, Sun Microsystems as well as most open source advocates.

Doubts about the vote were raised after 20 companies suddenly joined one week before the SIS meeting and an email emerged in which Microsoft offered its partners "marketing contributions" if they would join the organisation and vote on the OOXML issue. However, although Microsoft's director of corporate standards Jason Matusow admitted that two messages were sent, he stressed that the company immediately flagged them as a violation of company policy. The company called the two recipients asking them to ignore the message, and informed the Swedish Standards Institute. Matusow also pointed out that IBM too had lobbied Swedish business partners to vote against the standard and he argued that companies joining SIS at the last minute was within the rules of the standards body, as both proponents and opponents, such as Google, had joined.

vnunet.com

News Messenger 3.5 - ATOM and RSS Reader

News Messenger allows you to read atom and rss feeds and can even parse html pages so you can read headlines from sites that don't support syndication. News Messenger requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later.

Features

* Supports Atom 1.0 and all the various RSS feed formats
* Automatic discovery of RSS feeds for a particular website using drag and drop.
* Support for proxy servers.
* Uses GZip encoding and HTTP conditional GET to reduce bandwidth utilized when downloading feeds.
* Ability to show news thumbnails.
* OPML support.

Home Page

Microsoft joins AJAX alliance

Microsoft Corporation has joined the OpenAjax Alliance, a group focused on accelerating the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML technologies. Microsoft said it agreed to join the alliance to work with other vendors to evolve AJAX, a method of rich Internet applications that ensure interoperability. The company said that its membership in the alliance is another indication that it wants to provide Web developers with technology that works across different browsers and platforms.

The alliance also announced that it has signed up 30 new members in recent weeks, bringing the total to 72 vendors. The group was formed last February to create a set of requirements for AJAX technologies, products and applications to ensure interoperability among tools built by different vendors. The group also wants to create requirements that can speed delivery times and cut the cost of Web 2.0 applications. In addition to working on the interoperability standards, the group has formed task forces to address AJAX security, IDE integration, server integration and client-side server communications, said David Boloker, chairman of the OpenAjax steering committee.

Source: ComputerWorld

W3C With New HTML Spec

The World Wide Web Consortium has announced plans to create a new HTML standard and to enhance the XHTML specification. The W3C is issuing a call for participation in the working group that will oversee the new standard, including Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft. In fact, Chris Wilson, platform architect of the Internet Explorer platform at Microsoft, is the co-chair of the new working group. The W3C is also inviting application developers and content designers to help design the next version of HTML by participating in the new W3C HTML Working Group.

W3C officials originally intended to turn HTML into an XML-based format (XHTML, Extensible HTML), because of the benefits of XML formats, but slow adoption by traditional browser vendors and content developers changed that. The HTML Working Group originally intended to resume development of HTML in a manner that unifies HTML 4 and XHTML 1 but now they will take up the effort to advance the technology instead. The Web developer and design communities have called for the W3C to renew its commitment to HTML by adding new features. W3C officials also noted that because XHTML has proved valuable in many markets and the need for it continues to grow, the group is working on XHTML 2.0, which will define an XML syntax for the new HTML in addition to the classic HTML syntax.

Source: eWeek

XML and XSLT - A small Overview

XML...

what is XML? xml is a markup laguage like html. we can say..,we can represent data
in whatever format we want with XML.
You can use youe own tags instead fixed ones like in html.

TAG: tag is like, <me name="pg">abcdefg</me>.

Here, <me> is called a tag (also an element) and 'name' is called an attribute of element.
And the value written inside.User can represent data with such elements.

for example:
<root>
<username>afsdf</username>
<pwd>asdasd</pwd>
</root>


Here root element is parent of all. there are two children nodes inside it.
Today, in programming, user can use xml files for configuration of programmes.
He can store data inside xml file which is used at runtime.
He can put some settings here which are to be changed for settings.
He can change then easily like an property file.

XSL...

what is XSL? XSL is the stylsheet language used to format xml data as per user's need. Means he can convert one xml file to another XML,HTML etc. He can access the value of any element or node inside xml file.

to get value from any node through xsl file:
<h4><xsl:value-of select="root/username"></xsl:value-of></h4>

to get value from any node's attribute through xsl file:
<h4><xsl:value-of select="me/@name"></xsl:value-of></h4>

so here he will get value of <username> tag in <h4> tag of html. Now he can store the output file as html or xml.

now i want to talk about some special features.

XPATH:here the value given inside "select" attribute of "<xsl:value-of>" is called a XPATH.

user can have variables,for-each loop, if and when conditions in XSLT language.
user can also make functions using "<xsl:template>" tag of XSLT and then call the template in any element of XSL stylesheet.

if statement:
<xsl:if test="me/@name = 'pg'"></xsl:if>
<xsl:value-of select="."></xsl:value-of>


simplified if statement if the node is inside me element:
<xsl:value-of select="me[@name='pg']"></xsl:value-of>

both the statement above will select value of if the attribute name is equal to 'pg'.
first one is simple if statement which can be used anywhere.
second one is simplified version but it can be only used if the node or attibute which is to be selected is child or attribute of the node in "test" condition of "<xsl:if>"

There is a long list of functions for string,number etc. we will see more about xslt in next tutorial.

just use input xml and xsl files in xmltransformer provided in you programming language package and you will get output of the transformation..NET and JAVA provides Transformer for XML.

And if you want to test your xsl before then you can use:

1.Altova XMLSpy Hpme Edition - which is free but may be not now.
2.Cooktop - which is freeware - goood.
3.Xselerator - which is paid but the best.

you can find more on XML and XSLT on
1.DevGuru
2.w3schools