An Example of a "Learning Process" Journal (using the 2 colored box format)

• Teach Yourself XML in 21 days (2003) by Steven Holzner: Day 7

6:30 am

Yikes! It has been almost a week since I made an entry in this section. Yet not a day has gone by without some thought about XML.

Much of it has been unstructured. I did a search on the web for stylesheet editors, found a few, made a note of what appeared to be the most suitable for my needs and then had a brief chat with Ron to see what he was using or recommended. It turned out that he was using essentially the same software as what I had identified. I downloaded Stylevision yesterday, but haven't had a chance to try it out until now.

The key point is that I have now shifted my emphasis from schemas and XML data files to stylesheets. They are the XML files that specify how the data is to appear on the device (usually a screen, but possibly a pda device).

I am now torn between returning to the Holzner text (which I am trying to follow), trying an online tutorial for Stylevision, or simply jumping into Stylevision and see what happens.

I have just had a short glance at the Day 7 chapter. Basically it describes a number of key terms for various components of a schema file. However by using software such as XMLspy, one simply notes the various options and selects what is most appropriate. Thus one quickly captures the essence of what is required, and does it, without focusing on the meta-language.

I suspect the same is true for style sheets.

I can see a fair degree of merit in continuing to follow the Holzner text. It does provide the overall conceptual framework for the skill that I soon hope to develop with Stylevision.

One concern that I have is whether I will be able to continue to use Dreamweaver, which I like, or whether I will be making a complete shift to XMLspy. I suspect the latter, if only because the approach is so different. With Dreamweaver I immediately begin a page by creating a table to control the formatting and then begin to add the content. With XML, I begin by creating a schema file, then I create a data file, and finally I create a stylesheet file.

In order to create an online course, I will create (I think) one schema file, and one stylesheet file (I think) and then a large number of data files (one for each page).

• Teach Yourself XML in 21 days (2003) by Steven Holzner: Day 8
  
• "Many browsers, such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, let you use CSS to format the data in XML documents for display. ... It's getting more and more common to see CSS-formatted XML on the Web. [p. 249]
• "CSS was first introduced in December 1996. It is now widely in use for HTML browsers." [p. 251]
• "Formatting using CSS revolves around using stylesheets. Style sheets are collections of style rules, each of which shows how to format an XML element." [p. 252]
• "A rule is made up of a selector, which is the element(s) you want to format, and the rule specification, which shows what formatting you want to apply." [p. 252]
• "... the rule specification is enclosed in curly braces, { and }." [p. 252]
• "The W3C CSS validator, at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator " [p. 253]
• "The W3C TIDY program can convert styles in HTML documents to CSS for you. TIDY is available at http://tidy.sourceforge.net " [p. 252]
• "There are three ways to connect a CSS style sheet with HTML: You can use
  • an internal style sheet,
  • an external style sheet, or
  • the HTML style attribute. [p. 254]
• "At this point, there's really only one way of connecting a stylesheet to an XML document: by using the <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction." [p. 254]
• "Note that different browsers can give different results for the same CSS formatting." [p. 255]
• "You don't need to specify an element name or names in order to create a selector; you can instead use a style class as a selector. You create a class by preceding its name with a dot (.) and using that as a selector." [p. 257]
• Note: the class attribute is not part of XML, it is only a feature provided by Micrsoft in its Explorer browser.
• Much of the rest of this chapter is at a level of detail that I view as 'non-critical' since I will be using some form of software (e.g. Stylevision) to actually create the tags.

7:00 am I will begin with a read of the Day 8 chapter on CSS

I note that due to the diversions I have had with software (XMLSPY and Stylevision) I am now on Day 15 since I began. I am falling behind th Holzner timeline. No big deal, but interesting.

I have just explicitly noticed that all of these notes and journal pages are being created in Dreamweaver, ignoring all of the XML approaches. I wonder if it will be soon that I can continue to create these using XMLSPY with as little attention to the software as I now have with the Dreamweaver approach?

7:45 am I have completed making notes for Day 8. The next chapter is on XSLT. This appears to be a close match to Stylevision since it is native XML. I think it makes sense to read this chapter as well, before looking at Stylevision.

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