On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 17:34 -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote: > Aaron Konstam wrote: > > I read about xml it the idea sounds great but I fail when I try to > > convert xml to other formats. > > What exactly is needed in the xml and dtd files to allow one to run: > > xmlto pdf file.xml > > or xmlto html file.xml > > You seem to misunderstand the technology. XML is just a way to store and transfer data. It is used for a lot of things from storing program > configuration to transfering database query results to creating office documents. There is no "standard" way of converting XML into PDF or HTML. > There are probably renderers out there that will do syntax highlighting on XML files, but I guess that is not what you want. There is also a > technology called XSLT, that is specifically created to translate an XML document into something else. If your goal is to publish documents in > different formats using XML you should look at docbook http://www.docbook.org/ docbook is a formal XML/SGML document format complete with conversion > scripts, stylesheets etc. that allows to write an article or a book or some other form of document in XML and automatically convert it into HTML or > postscript or something else. To get a more complete understanding of what XML is and what it is used for, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML > Well I have looked at four books on XML in every one the statement is found that the purpose of XML is allow data used by various applications to be stored in a standard format. Now I will admit I began to believe that style sheets were necessary to convert XML into pdf files or html files the existence of xmlto on the Linux machines lulled me into the illusion that these stylesheets existed in conjunction with that command otherwise what would xmlto be good for? As it is even after reading about xml in 4 books I find the conclusion that xml is essentially useless. But I know that is not true, so I remain confused. -- Aaron Konstam <akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
