The Future of the Document Paper is OUT Trees are IN UVic Humanities Computing and Media Centre

The traditional document:  Authored once  Static  Single presentation medium  Cockups embarrassingly persistent  Terrible waste of resources

The modern document  Centrally stored  Easily updated  Includes meta-data  Dynamic display  Often collaborative  Machine readable  Example: a Curriculum VitaeCurriculum Vitae

The meta-data  Dublin Core elements include:  Title, Subject, Description  Creator(s), Contributor(s), Publisher(s)  Type, Format, Language, Source  Identifier(s) (e.g. ISBN, URI, etc.)  Rights

Content is marked up semantically, not visually. For example: Traditional HTML or word-processor version: "...the important thing..." Semantic version: "...the important thing..." Or: The US "election" => The US election

Content is structured in tree formattree format  Trees are easily parsed, read and rendered  Trees are easily searched and indexed  Trees are easily condensed, combined, restructured, or repurposed

How to do this: XML  XML is eXtensible Markup Language  It has tags like HTML  You can create your own tags  Example: an Old English textOld English text

How do I create an XML document?  Type it in a text editor  Use WordPerfect 9+  Use a dedicated tool such as XMetaL Bear in mind, though, that this is both intellectually and mechanically complex. It's hard (but it's worth it).

What can I do with my XML document?  Use stylesheets to display it  Use a script language to  transform it  harvest from it  search it  render it for your publisher  Store it in an online database

If you're starting a project... ...DON'T just make a word-processor document ...DO think about using XML ...DO come and talk to us Make your document as sophisticated and durable as the ideas inside it.

A final note on characters  We used to have 256 characters  We used to have to  handle special characters using special fonts  distribute our special fonts  embed our special fonts  rely on our special fonts

Now we have Unicode  65,000 characters  Every major language, all in one font  Never worry about fonts again  Unicode-capable:  Office 2000  Windows 2000  Mac OS X  Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 6  Managing the transition Managing the transition

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