This site hosts information on the books and other projects I'm working on. Most of it focuses on XML, but my work in general networking and Web development is also featured here. This remains a personal site, reflecting my work as an author and XML developer, rather than my current work for O'Reilly & Associates.
January 13, 2007 - I've posted photos of Hamburg, Schleswig, Lübeck, and Miniatur Wunderland from our recent trip to Germany.
May 1, 2006 - I've been writing another blog, Light and Silence, reflecting on Quakerism.
August 7, 2005 - I've posted some pictures of the Extreme Markup Languages Conference.
February 2, 2005 - I've posted an in-progress manuscript of a book on the .NET Compact Framework that I'm writing. It's available under a Creative Commons License. (Sorry - that didn't get far.)
January 1, 2005 - I've been writing reviews of books I've read for the past few months, and I'll be posting more semi-regularly. (Well, that didn't last.)
December 1, 2004 - I've posted an article called Making the Democratic Party a Party of Reform, about an approach I think could do a lot to strengthen the party and the country in the years ahead.
August 19, 2004 - I've posted some pictures of the Extreme Markup Languages Conference and the Hotel Europa, as well as my slides on entity processing.
August 7, 2004 - I've posted some pictures of the Red Bull Flugtag, in Portland, OR. (You can read more about the event here.)
June 6, 2004 - O'Reilly has published my latest book, Office 2003 XML: Integrating Office with the Rest of the World, written with Evan Lenz and Mary McRae. It explores the new XML features in Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, and InfoPath.
March 28, 2004 - I've posted some pictures of the Marathon Maple Festival, in Marathon, NY.
January 15, 2004 - I've posted an updated version of Creating Schemas While Preserving Your Sanity, which covers starting from sample documents, Examplotron, and the RDF option as well. I presented this at Cornell University's Olin Library.
November 6, 2003 - I've started a blog called Living in Dryden, about Dryden, NY, the town where I live.
October 20, 2003 - You can read a presentation I gave to the Albany, NY XML Developers Network, Creating Schemas While Preserving Your Sanity Looking Beyond W3C XML Schema, which explores why to abandon W3C XML Schema in favor of RELAX NG and Schematron.
September 2, 2003 - I've posted a SMIL version of my Playmobil animation, What can you do with half a parser?, and the Extreme conference is hosting the rather more formal paper.
August 13, 2003 - I've posted a rant (yes, asbestos is recommended) on Why I Don't Like RDF.
June 30, 2003 - I've added my own Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF) file to this site, as well as a set of XSLT stylesheets for working on FOAF in a friendlier (to me, not to most FOAF folk) HTML/XMLish set of idioms.
May 7, 2003 - I've posted my XML Europe slides on What can you do with half a parser?, an explanation of the Gorille Ripper class.
April 22, 2003 - I've posted my slides on Microsoft Office and XML.
March 18, 2003 - I've announced the release of Ripper, a half-parser for XML that is designed to give developers full access to the contents of XML documents, not just to the Infoset. It's part of the Gorille project.
February 13, 2003 - I've lightened this site again, and posted some satirical news stories under a Creative Commons license.
January 15, 2003 - This site has gone black (and blue) to reflect my profound disgust with the Supreme Court's decision in Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Even some of us who make our livings in "intellectual property" don't find its arbitrary extension a reasonable or constitutional idea. People who prefer sanity to overarching greed apparently have to look to other arenas.
January 14, 2003 - I've posted an initial version of Very Extensible Linking Language Unafraid of Markup (VELLUM), a brainstorm on a potential vocabulary for linkbases.
January 12, 2003 - I've updated The Outsider's Guide to the W3C, reflecting the last three years of changes. Comments and suggestions are still welcome. It's now published under a Creative Commons license.
October 16, 2002 - I've updated Gorille for XML 1.1 and made the rule file structure more sensible.
September 23, 2002 - I've posted Making Web Services Part of the Web, suggesting ways to make the phrase "Web Services" meaningful.
August 20, 2002 - I've posted the Tiny API for Markup (TAM), an API for XML processing on J2ME devices, along with a parser.
August 13, 2002 - I've posted Monastic XML, a site on minimalist XML practices.
August 7, 2002 - I've posted my slides on Using Markup Without Embedding Markup, from the Extreme Markup Languages conference.
May 31, 2002 - I've made an initial (incomplete) release of Ool, a Java toolkit for creating out-of-line markup from embedded markup, with a bonus filter for wrapping mixed content text in elements.
April 28, 2002 - If you're looking for additional glimpses inside my head, you might want to explore my O'Reilly Network Weblogs or my Advogato diary.
April 16, 2002 - I've posted the slides for XML Web Services Models, presented at Colgate University, a brief overview of the many aspects of Web Services.
April 2, 2002 - I've posted the slides for XML sur les navigateurs (in English except for the title), describing the state of XML in Web browsing contexts.
March 12, 2002 - The slides for Re-valuing the Lexical in XML, describing my work with Regular Fragmentations and MOE, are now available, as are sample rule and result files for Regular Fragmentations.
February 5, 2002 - I've released the first alpha of Ents, a Java library for working with XML character references and entities.
February 1, 2002 - I've released the first alpha of XML2blog, a Java library for converting XML to Blogger templates.
January 10, 2002 - I've moved Gorille and Regular Fragmentations to SourceForge. Gorille is now at Version 0.3 and includes support for surrogate pairs and namespaces. Regular Fragmentations will be getting a heavy MOE-based refactoring in the next month or so.
December 22, 2001 - I've released the first alpha of Gorille, a Java library for checking XML 1.0 and 1.1 Unicode characters.
December 14, 2001 - I've released the first alpha of Markup Object Events (MOE) on SourceForge.
November 19, 2001 - Jeff Turner has released an updated version of my old DOCTYPEChanger with many more features.
September 16, 2001 - One word I've heard very little this past week is "peace". It seems to have been blotted out by "revenge", "victory", and "war". Still, for some of us, peace seems like a much more important goal than victory.
August 27, 2001 - I've posted a very preliminary version of Markup Object Events (MOE), an outgrowth of my Regular Fragmentations work.
August 18, 2001 - I've posted my presentation Regular Fragmentations: Treating Complex Textual Content as Markup, from the Extreme Markup Languages conference.
July 30, 2001 - I've released a new pair of Java SAX Filters for forcibly namespace-qualifying XML elements and attributes.
July 25, 2001 - I've posted my latest presentation from the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, Open Source, Open Data: What XML has to offer Open Source.
June 28, 2001 - O'Reilly & Associates has released Programming Web Services with XML-RPC, which I wrote with Edd Dumbill and Joe Johnston. There's also an interview of the three of us.
June 24, 2001 - I've released a new Java SAX Filter called Regular Fragmentations, which uses regular expressions to fragment content into XML elements.
May 16, 2001 - The third edition of XML: A Primer is available from M&T Books.
May 10, 2001 - My tutorial for the Washington DC ACM, Creating Interoperable XML Applications: Not as easy as it seems, is available.
April 16, 2001 - I've posted my latest presentations from XMLDevCon 2001, including Introduction to RELAX and a revised Cross-Browser XML.
February 28, 2001 - XML.com has published my article XML Ain't What It Used to Be.
February 6, 2001 - I've posted my presentations from the Geek Cruises XML Excursion, including XML Linking Language: Creating Powerful and Flexible Hypertext Structures (updated), XPointer: Referencing points and ranges inside of Documents, Transformations: Making File Conversions Fun and a way of Life, and XML's Impact on Web Development: Remodeling Traditional Web Applications for XML.
January, 2001 - I'm now an Associate Editor at O'Reilly and Associates, focusing on XML.
November 17, 2000 - A new version of DOCTYPEChanger, is available, incorporating Nigel Whitaker's FilterStream enhancement of the original FilterReader-based approach.
November 16, 2000 - Two new presentations from XMLDevCon 2000, Namespaces in XML: Best Practices, Risky Business and Cross-Browser XML, are now available.
September 1, 2000 - I've started the xml-xhtml-tips mailing list, a 'tip of the day' service for Web developers working with XHTML and XML.
August 27, 2000 - XHTML: Moving Toward XML has shipped. It provides an introduction to what's new (and coming) in XHTML, and is intended for Web developers who already understand HTML.
August 3, 2000 - I've posted a preliminary version of DOCTYPEChanger, a Java FilterReader that lets you change DOCTYPE declarations to anything you want before documents go into an XML parser.
July 28, 2000 - I've posted a very preliminary version of O2KCleaner, a Java FilterReader that cleans up the syntax of Microsoft Office 2000 HTML output so it can be processed with an XML parser.
July 2, 2000 - I've updated my XML Schemas presentation for XMLDevCon 2000, and also have new set of slides to go with my older essay XML, Integration, and the Smaller Developer.
June 26, 2000 - I've posted the presentation XML's Interoperability Problems: Not as easy as it seems, which I gave last night at the New York Object Developer's Group.
June 20, 2000 - XML.com has published "XML: A Disruptive Technology", an essay I wrote describing the impact XML is having on Web and Internet technologies.
May 4, 2000 - XML.com has published a series I did covering XML+CSS usage in the new Netscape/Mozilla, Opera, and Internet Explorer browsers, including a summary table.
May 3, 2000 - I've started a mailing list at eGroups for XHTML discussion.
March 27, 2000 - WebWord has posted an interview with me about XML and the Web.
March 26, 2000 - I've posted the XML Schemas and the revised XLink presentations I gave at Software Development last week.
March 7, 2000 - I've posted an XML Scripting Tutorial I gave last week at XTech '2000. Slides on Common XML, which I presented as part of an SML discussion, are also available
February 18, 2000 - My latest article, A Child's Garden of XML, is up at A List Apart. Comments and suggestions are very welcome.
January 18, 2000 - A new version of the XML Media Types Internet-Draft, which I am co-authoring with Murata Makoto, is now available.
January 7, 2000 - XML Elements of Style, my latest book, is now available.
November 12, 1999 - I've posted slides on XLink which I presented yesterday at Software Development '99.
October 1, 1999 - The Outsider's Guide to the W3C, a FAQ list for non-W3C members, has achieved enough stability that I'm calling it version 1.0 and not just a draft. Comments and suggestions are still welcome.
September 30, 1999 - xmlhack.com, a news site for XML developers where I'm a guest editor, went live today.
September 18, 1999 - I've updated my description of the XML Processing Description Language (XPDL).
September 3, 1999 - I've posted a rough draft of Moving from the 'Community of Experts' to the Community. Inspired largely by ideas I heard at XML Developer Days in Montreal, this essay tries to look at a very different model for XML processing and development than the one typically presented as 'the' model.
August 30, 1999 - I've begun work on an Outsider's Guide to the World Wide Web Consortium. Hopefully, it will give nonmembers a place to start as they try to figure out how this critical organization operates and in what ways they can participate. All comments, suggestions, and contributions are welcome.
August 21, 1999 - I've posted my XPDL presentation from the XML Developer's Conference. If you have an interest in problems of ensuring that XML documents produce the same results on different parsers or in creating document classes rather than assigning resources to documents on an ad hoc basis, you may find it useful.
August 2, 1999 - I'll be presenting on XPDL at the XML Developer's Conference in Montreal on August 20.
July 25, 1999 - Minor updates to chapters 19 and 20 of Building XML Applications are available.
July 13, 1999 - A first draft of "Trees, Graphs, and Sets", a very simple high-level look at the structures involved in creating hypertext links between XML documents, is now available.
July 1, 1999 - Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical, an exploration of XML usage in scientific, technical, and mathematical arenas, is now available.
June 1, 1999 - Building XML Applications, which focuses on how to build Java applications using XML and SAX, has finally shipped.
May 12, 1999 - A new draft of XML Processing Description Language is available. Comments are welcome, as I'm still definitely exploring options. I hope to develop this document further with as open a process as possible.
April 27, 1999 - A final draft of "XML, Integration, and the Smaller Developer" is now available.
April 22, 1999 - I've posted Java, XML, and a New World of Open Components (PowerPoint or generated HTML), a presentation I gave to the New York Object Developers' Group on April 19.
April 4, 1999 - A rough draft of XML Processing Description Language is available. Comments are welcome; I hope to develop this document further with as open a process as possible.
April 1, 1999 - A rough draft of "XML, Integration, and the Smaller Developer" is available. Comments are welcome. I hope to have it finished by 30 April 1999.
March 25, 1999 - I've released the first version of MDServlet, a Java servlet interface for JXML.com's MDSAX XML framework.
March 2, 1999 - After a miserable day battling Java 2 class paths and Windows NT, I've created a very simple class test program that tells you where Java is looking for class files.
February 26, 1999 - I've modified the style sheets for this site to make most text larger after receiving a number of complaints. Please let me know if this causes problems for anyone.
February 25, 1999 - A final version of "Toward a Layered Model for XML" is available. Comments are still welcome, of course.
February 25, 1999 - I'll be teaching an all-day tutorial on Building XML Applications at XTech '99 in San Jose on March 7, 1999.
January 19, 1999 - The W3C has accepted XSchema, now retitled Document Definition Markup Language (DDML), as a submission. The W3C Note is now available. DDML information will continue to be available at the PURLs http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ddml and http://purl.oclc.org/NET/xschema. Many thanks to Ron Bourret for his continued editorial work, and to Ingo Macherius and GMD for their work in shepherding the proposal through the W3C process.
January 12, 1999 - A rough draft of "Toward a Layered Model for XML", is available. Comments are welcome. I hope to have it finished by 28 February 1999, long after I finish a few more books.
December 16, 1998 - A significant revision of XLinkFilter is in progress, using the XArc specification as a foundation.
December 6, 1998 - The work on XLinkFilter continues; new code and examples are available, as well as additional XLink resources.
December 3, 1998 - Sharing Bandwidth is now available from a number of sources.
November 22, 1998 - The work on XLinkFilter continues, with contributions from two other developers. The code is much less crufty now, and the applet example now works using XLinkFilter and its supporting classes.
November 9, 1998 - I've begun work on an open-source Java XLink implementation that layers on top of SAX. A description of the overall structure and one small piece are currently available; others should follow this week and next. Other XLink sample applets are available on the Building XML Applications page.
November 9, 1998 - I've added ordering links to Amazon.co.uk on all of the books so that European readers can order from a more convenient supplier.
November 2, 1998 - The final version of XSchema is now available. Many thanks to Ron Bourret for his hard work in bringing this project to completion.
October 28, 1998 - More information about Building XML Applications is available, including links to the Beta Books site containing the raw manuscript for the book.
October 18, 1998 - The final review draft of XSchema is now available.
October 10, 1998 - I'm getting married to the very lovely Tracey Cranston, to whom most of my books have been dedicated. We'll be away on the honeymoon for a while; this site will receive no updates (and I won't be getting email) until about the 24th.
September 30, 1998 - The Chicago Tribune reprinted the article Why XML? in their Silicon Prairie section.
September 24, 1998 - The XSchema project now has a genuinely complete version of sections 1-5 posted. Sections 4 and 5 are still under review.
September 18, 1998 - I'm beginning to convert all of the HTML on this site to well-formed, and eventually valid XML. This opening screen (including the frameset, the navigation at the left, and this page) is already well-formed. More pages will follow as I find time. If you'd like to check my pages, or your own, try out the RUWF well-formedness checker.
September 14, 1998 - The XSchema project now has a second complete version of sections 1-3 posted for review.
September 1, 1998 - My latest essay, Cement Shoes for XML?, explores some reasons why dominant software companies may not be inclined to promote XML on the client.
August 21, 1998 - The XSchema project now has a complete version of sections 1-3 posted for review.
August 1998 - Sharing Bandwidth, my next book, is currently in author review and should be published in November.
Copyright 1998 Simon St.Laurent