Friday, February 24, 2006

Problem converting RNC/RNG annotations to XSD annotations with Trang

first, let me say "thank you!" to James Clark for all of your work on RelaxNG, Trang and Jing! I do all of my DocBook customization layers in RNC and convert to the appropriate supported schema language for my client's editors. It has made my life much easier!

I am trying to convert an RNC schema to XSD with annotations that look like:

##Foo: This element is the top level container for the entire
document. Attributes for this element
## provide information about the status of the document.
Foo =
 element Foo {blah
}

When I run Trang to convert the RNC (I've also tried RNC to RNG to XSD) to XSD, none of the annotations come across. When converting the RNC to RNG, the annotations come across, but are lost with the step to XSD.

 <define name="Foo">
   <a:documentation>Foo: This element is the top level
container for the entire document. Attributes for this element provide
information about the status of the document.</a:documentation>
   <element name="Foo">

I am confident I am using the appropriate markup, since the annotations carry over to RNG appropriately.

Does anyone have any fixes or suggestions for getting the appropriate XSD annotations? Such as:

  <xs:annotation>
     <xs:documentation>Foo: This element is the top level
container for the entire document. Attributes for this element provide
information about the status of the document.</xs:documentation>
   </xs:annotation>

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Thursday, February 23, 2006

I've been released!

Okay, maybe not me. Khosuke Kawaguchi has released the latest version of Hudson, an automated build and test tool written in Java. Looks pretty interesting. I was hoping Khosuke-san had named it after me, but apparently he thinks of the tool as his butler...

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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Dr. Kay and the Saxon Diaries

Big day for XML experts and their new blogs! It looks like Dr. Kay (author of the XSLT Programmer's Reference and creator of THE best XSL parser in the world) is now blogging: Saxon diaries.

If you don't use it already, you need to switch to Saxon (http://www.saxonica.com/). It is simply the most compliant, high performance parser available for processing XML with XSLT. He has also added support for XSLT 2.0 and XQuery.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Dr. Kay!

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Dr. Macro will see you now...

Eliot Kimber has finally started blogging:Dr. Macro's XML Rants. Welcome to the blogosphere, Eliot!

Eliot was the first person I'd ever seen in a Utilikilt, let alone speak at an XML conference (eXtreme Markup) in one! I've since purchased and worn a Utilikilt as well.

As an observer on the OASIS DITA TC, I've taken great interest in Eliot's insights/rants on the mail list. As his blog typically addresses that "all tools suck, but some suck less", I hope that his efforts will make sure that DITA will suck less as well.

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Monday, February 13, 2006

Moved In!

Moved in to the new Flatirons Solutions office today! The move went very smoothly, thanks to Alex, our IT guy, and all of the planning and coordination by Judy and others. I really like my new office/cube. It's got a great view, and near a fairly quiet group of folks.

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Friday, February 10, 2006

RDF/Topic Map Interoperability survey

The Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group has published:
"A Survey of RDF/Topic Maps Interoperability Proposals"

Editors include giants from the Topic Map world, such as Steve Pepper and Lars Marius Garshol.

I still think Topic Maps have tremendous potential, and I wish there was more adoption of them. I tried to set up a Topic Map for the Sun System Handbook, while I was at Sun, but couldn't get approval to publish and set it up as a navigation mechanism for the Handbook.

It's definitely an interesting read, especially section 4.3 on Semantic mapping issues. Lars Marius Garshol has done tremendous work in this area, and the Ontopia Knowledge Suite has some incredible features for viewing/interacting with Topic Maps.

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Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy game!

The sequel to the incredible Lego Star Wars game is still in development, but they've finally released some details: http://pc.ign.com/articles/687/687344p1.html

My kids and I absolutely loved the first game, so we are eagerly anticipating the sequel release this fall!

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Thursday, February 09, 2006

Stuck in the 80s

Found a pretty interesting podcast called Stuck in the 80s a few weeks ago. It's not necessarily family friendly, but is fun to reminisce about different subjects in the 80s.

A few memories that stick out from the 80s for me:

  • Coming home from school in 3rd grade and seeing the news that President Reagan had been shot.
  • My Max Headroom skateboard
  • Rubik's Cubes, the pyramid, the snake, and Links puzzles
  • Madonna's "Material Girl"
  • Checkerboard Vans shoes
  • 7th grade study hall, finding out about the Challenger explosion
  • Topps Trading cards for The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong

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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

My new office and moblogging

Flatirons Solutions is growing! We are moving into our new offices this weekend. We were able to go check out the new facilities last night. Here's a sneak preview of my office.

This is also my first venture into moblogging, since I upgraded my phone to the Motorola V360 last weekend. Not a bad pic!

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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Ringtones are a RIPOFF

I've been a T-Mobile subscriber for several years now. This weekend, I upgraded our phones, and wanted to re-use the several ringtones and wallpaper I had downloaded during those years. The guy at the store said, "Just call Customer Service, I'm sure they can give you a credit or something". Unfortunately, I got the "or something" part, which was an apology. Turns out, you have to re-download the ringtones and they won't issue any credit. What a ripoff. I can't use something I already paid for!

If you own a cell, DO NOT buy ringtones! The companies are already making a killing for their services, and ringtones are their cash cow.

Instead, check with your phone manufacturer to see if they sell software to let you create your own ringtones and wallpaper. Since I got the V360, they have a package that does just that. This software also works for RAZRs and other models, too! Check it out at: http://www.bvrp.com/customers/motorola/upgrade/US/

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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

beta 3 is out!

Norm Walsh has just releasedDocBook V5.0b3

The schema is available at: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0b3/. Testing would be greatly appreciated.

Norm has also updated The Definitive Guide, as well! Thanks Norm!

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