New DocBook 5.0 test release (beta 8)

Norm Walsh has just posted a new test release of DocBook 5 (beta 8). DocBook 5 is very close to Release Candidate status. Tweaks in this release include: stronger data typing of attributes, and changing inlineequation to allow inlinemediaobject.

You can download the test release here: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0b8/

Categories: DocBook

Calling all OASIS members! DocBook needs your vote!

DocBook 4.5 has been a committee-approved specification since April 2006. We're trying to get it approved as an OASIS-approved specification. DocBook 4.5 as OASIS Standard went out to vote on Sept 1. So far 10% of members (33) have voted all in favor. (see http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/voting/ballot.php?id=1109). We need as many member reps as possible to vote! If you are a DocBook user, and your company has not yet voted, please contact your representative and urge them to vote now!

Categories: DocBook

White and Nerdy

The new song from Weird Al, "White and Nerdy", just cracks me up! I'm afraid it does fit me pretty well, though I've changed a few of the lyrics below (marked in bold) to more closely align with me:

They see me mowin'... my front lawn
I know they're all thinkin' I'm so white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Can't ya see I'm white & nerdy?
Look at me, I'm white & nerdy
I wanna roll with... the gangstas
But so far they all think I'm too white and nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
I'm just too white & nerdy
Really, really white & nerdy

Outstanding grad there at CSU
Got skills, I'm a champion at CCG, too
MC Escher, that's my favorite MC
Keep your 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea
My rims never spin - to the contrary
You'll find that they're quite stationary
All of my action figures are cherry
Got DocBook and DITA in my library
My blog page is all totally pimped out
Got people beggin' for my blogroll spaces
Yo, I know pi to a dozen places
Ain't got no grills, but I used to wear braces
I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise
I'm a whiz at Bejeweled, I could play for days
Once you see my sweet moves, you're gonna stay amazed
My fingers movin' so fast, I'll set the place ablaze
There's no killer app I haven't run
At structured markup, well, I'm a Top Gun
Do vector calculus just for fun
I ain't got a gat but I got a soldering gun
"Airwolf" is my favorite theme song
I could sure kick your butt in a game of Atari Pong
I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on
I'm fluent in XSL as well as Klingon
Here's the part I sing on...

They see me building... my Legos
I know in my heart they think I'm white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Can't ya see I'm white & nerdy?
Look at me, I'm white & nerdy
I'd like to build with... the gangstas
Although it's apparent I'm too white and nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
I'm just too white & nerdy
How'd I get so white & nerdy?

I've been browsin', inspectin'
X-Men comics, you know I collect 'em
If it's Sci-Fi, you know I must get 'em
My ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored
Shoppin' online for deals on some writable media
I edit Wikipedia
I memorized "Holy Grail" really well
I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL
I got a business doin' web sites
When my friends need some code, who do they call?
I do HTML for 'em all
Even made a home page for my mom
Yo, I got myself a Boba jetpack
They were havin' a sale down at the TRU shack
Spend my nights with my family
More bricks, we're Legomaniacs
I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream
I was in Knowledge Bowl and Choir and even the chess team
Only question I ever thought was hard
Was, do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?
Spend money on LOTR, and Trek and Star Wars
Got NASA on my underwear

They see me strollin'... they laughin'
And rollin' their eyes 'cause I'm so white & nerdy
Just because I'm white & nerdy
Just because I'm white & nerdy
All because I'm white & nerdy
Holy cow, I'm white & nerdy
I wanna bowl with... the gangstas
But oh well, it's obvious I'm white and nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
Think I'm just too white & nerdy
I'm just too white & nerdy
Look at me, I'm white & nerdy

Categories: General

A new autograph!

Connor was hoping to get Vinny Castilla or Todd Helton's autograph, but was also happy to have Dinger sign his glove.

Categories: General

A Rockies kind of day

Categories: General

That's great, but who are the Chefs?

WooHoo! The Broncos squeaked out the home opener against the Chiefs in OverTime by a field-goal-only game 9-6. My youngest son, Collin, and I were there to cheer them on!

Categories: General

Scotland slideshow

For those interested, I've posted a slideshow with some pics of my recent trip to Scotland at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shudson310/tags/scotland/show/

If you are looking for an OUTSTANDING travel agency, I would highly recommend The Travel Loft (http://travelloft.biz/). Tell them I sent you!

Categories: General

DocBook stylesheets 1.71.0 released!

Michael Smith has released the latest DocBook XSL stylesheets (version 1.71.0). This is the experimental release, to be followed shortly with v.1.71.1 if no problems are found.

This release incorporates a number of bug fixes, and also 2 new features:

• source-code highlighting in output of programlisting instances (controlled through the highlight.source parameter). See http://xmlguru.cz/2006/07/docbook-syntax-highlighting
• Changes to autoindexing. With this release, none of the code for the 'kimber' or 'kosek' methods is included in the default stylesheets. In order to use one of those methods, your customization layer must import one of the optional stylesheet modules:
  • html/autoidx-kosek.xsl
  • html/autoidx-kimber.xsl
  • fo/autoidx-kosek.xsl
  • fo/autoidx-kimber.xsl

You can download the latest stylesheets here.

Categories: DocBook

Outstanding Boston DITA User Group!

As you can tell from my moblog pics from today, there was quite a crowd at the Boston DITA User Group meeting tonight! I had the pleasure of attending with David Schell and Michael Priestly from IBM, and Dave was the guest speaker.

I also had the pleasure of meeting both Nancy Harrison (with whom I've known on the DocBook TC for a number of years, but not met in person) and John Hunt (from the DITA Learning SC). I also saw Chris Wong, who is also on the DITA TC, but regretably was not able to meet.

Also in my "interesting new acquaintances" for the evening was Bob Doyle, creater of the Merlinand editor of the CMS Review, among many other notable publications and achievements! Bob also worked as the Coordinator of the NASA Ground-based Observing Program for the SkyLab missions! Bob is a very cool guy in my book!

If you are involved in DITA in the Boston-area, but not involved in the User Group yet, you really missed out tonight! Get more info here: http://dita.xml.org/freelinking/Boston%2520DITA%2520User%2520Group and get involved!

Categories: DITA

Bob Doyle at the Boston DITA User Group meeting

John Hunt at the Boston DITA User Group meeting

Dave Schell and Michael Priestley at the Boston DITA User Group meeting

Calling all Learning and Instructional Design experts!

The DITA Learning Content subcommittee wants you!

We are looking for experts in the eLearning and instructional design world to participate as guests, observers or members of the subcommittee to help create a learning specialization of DITA.

From our charter, here are our anticipated goals and work products:

Goals

1. Develop a general top-level design for structured, intent-based authoring of learning content with good learning architecture, following DITA principles and best practices. Such a design would build on past work on topic-based content, reusable learning objects, and the learning content types needed to support them. Some specifics of a DITA design for learning content include:
   1. learning types, including assessments and exercises
   2. a map domain for structuring and managing the learning types as reusable learning objects
   3. linking, relationships, and simple sequencing
   4. interactions
   5. style policies for learning content
   6. dynamic sequencing.
2. Establish guidelines that promote best practices for applying standard DITA approaches to learning content, which include:
   1. separation of presentation and content (as much as possible)
   2. separation of content and context
   3. single sourcing, repurposing, and reuse.
3. Develop support for processing DITA for general delivery as learning and training, including print and presentation delivery to support instructor-led training (ILT), web delivery for distance learning, and computer-based training delivery in general.
4. Develop targeted support for processing DITA learning content for delivery with standards-based learning, specifically targeting SCORM and QTI. Specifically, extend DITA processing to support basic SCORM sequencing, interactions, and required SCORM LMS runtime behaviors. Leverage QTI behaviors to drive the interactions. Address the issue of "levels" from a simple implementation to full SCORM and beyond.
5. Build on existing DITA infrastructure (editors, CMS, transforms) as much as possible so learning content developers do not have to start from scratch.

Work products - First phase of this activity

• Task 1: 1 month on review of structured designs for learning and how to apply DITA principles and best practices.
• Task 2: 1 month on developing a top-level plan for map a DITA specialization for learning content, including identifying the learning types, map domains, content domains, and processing support needed to support the design.
• Task 3: X months on developing DITA schemas and processing, and piloting and validating the top-level designs against sample content.
• Task 4: 1 month on reviewing the pilot, writing and reviewing a progress report. Close this phase of the activity with a progress report to the TC, with recommended next steps.

If you are interested, please contact john_hunt@us.ibm.com or myself, or visit http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=dita-learningspec

Categories: DITA, learning, instructionaldesign

Scotland Bound!

My wife and I are headed for Scotland tomorrow for two weeks!

Thanks a lot STUPID FREAKING TERRORISTS! I get to carry on my wallet. No iPod, no books, nuthin. And we had planned to travel the entire trip via carry ons so they wouldn't lose our luggage. Now they might lose my iPod, camera, video camera, travel vouchers and maps in my checked bag, and I'll look EVEN MORE like a clueless American!

We bought an iPod Video as an early 10th Anniversary gift this year in anticipation of the long flight over, and as a storage medium for our digital photos (when my SD cards got full). Now, we'll only get to use it for the photos, assuming they don't lose it all...

If I ever find Bin Laden or any of his evil followers, they're going to get a Sgian Dubh where it counts... Oh, wait, I can't carry that on a flight either!

At this point, Scotland the Brave is going to mean "braving the security lines and restrictions". It's worth it though: I hope they catch every one of those wicked blokes quickly -- and I STILL get to go to Scotland!

Categories: General

Tracking your inventory with Delicious Library

I found out about Delicious Library from Rich Burridge.

I don't even have an iSight camera, but was still able to manually enter the ISBN or UPC code. The app automatically switched context of which code you need to enter, depending on whether you were adding a book, CD, Movie (DVD or VHS), or video game!

There is a separate app that will export your iTunes to Delicious Library, called DeliciTunes.

This would be a great way to track your inventory for insurance reporting purposes. I could even see applying this to other kinds of items, such as Star Wars figures, that might still be MIB (Mint In Box) that you could scan the barcode and track! It would be nice if this app was configurable to add other types of collections, defaulting to UPC code, so you could track collections like this.

UPDATE: There's a cool easter egg! When you add a Star Wars title to your collection, after the app reads the title to you, a few seconds later, a deep whisper says "I am your father!". Nice touch! It would be cool if it also said "He's dead, Jim" or even better, "She 'canna take much more, Captain!" when you add Star Trek titles. :-)

UPDATE: Woohoo! I hooked up my Sony Handycam DCR-HC30 via firewire, and now I can use the barcode scanner! SWEET app!

Categories: General

Woodstox 3.0 released!

Tatu Saloranta has released the 3.0 version of the Woodstox XML parser. Woodstox is a StAX-compliant, open-source, Java-based XML parser. It's fast, too!

My favorite new feature is the rewritten validation sub-system, along with a new validator implementation for Relax NG.

I also like the different operating modes:

Additional operating modes: parsing mode (tree [default], forest, fragment); ability to handle undeclared entities gracefully (in non-entity-expanding mode).

More information on Woodstox can be found at:
http://www.cowtowncoder.com/blog/archives/2006/08/entry_16.html. The parser can be downloaded from: http://woodstox.codehaus.org/.

Great work, Tatu!

Categories: XML

Publick House

Since 1771! Had a great dinner here tonight. I love the history in here, and plenty of great food. I highly recommend the seasonal blueberry cream pie!

Categories: General, moblog, travel

Hudson, Mass.

Categories: General, moblog, travel

DocBook V5.0 beta 7 now available

Norm Walsh has released the latest beta of the DocBook v5.0 schemas. More information is available at: http://norman.walsh.name/2006/07/28/docbook50b7.

This version includes the recently approved "audience" effectivity attribute, so you have a little more flexibility in profiling your documents. Before, you had to squeeze this kind of profiling into userlevel, vendor,condition or role. This attribute provides another level of distinction, so you can create an output comprised of both userlevel AND audience, etc.

Thanks, Norm!

Categories: DocBook