One of the nice things about locking myself away in my little DevNest in the sticks of Northern Utah is that I am able to get a lot of work done without any interuption. Well, I guess that "without interuption" bit all depends on whether you consider it an interuption when your server located in your downtown Salt Lake City apartment goes down and you don't know why and the only way to get it back online is to rush yourself away from your nice-and-cozy DevNest, test the Utah State Highway Patrol's willingness to let you fly by them at mach speeds so that you can bring your currently crippled server back online... If you don't consider that an interuption then I highly recommend this "interuption free" approach to getting all you can and more out of the 24 hour period you have each day to write code.
With my server back online (my apologies to any of you who paid a visit to xsltblog.com, alphacomega.com, understandingxslt.com, understandingxml.com, or weblog.saxondotnet.org only to find them inaccessible!) and nestled back in my cozy DevNest I can now spend the time to get the "Week in Summary" post published. As such here goes...
It seems that sometime between last night and this morning 46 new invitations have been added to my Gmail invite tally... Does this suggest Google will be going public with Gmail in the near future. I would take it as at least a pretty good sign for sure.
For those of you looking for a client-side hack for "disable-output-escaping"-like functionality here's a little javascript hack I wrote to take an XML string and unescape the <, >, and & escaped XML encodings.
Mike Champion recently pointed out a nice link to a BYU project that nicely pulls together XML and Lisp. In fact I have a project much like this called LispML that I am working on so its nice to see that others see the value in this as well.
Dimitre Novatchev recently responded to a post to XSL-List with some nice coverage of the extensibility of XSLT.
Congratulations to XSLT:Blog Legends of the XSLT Community member and Microsoft XML MVP Oleg Tkachenko for his recent version 1.5 release of nxslt, a command-line utility for implementing System.Xml.Xsl-based transformations.
If you needed any other reasons to schedule a flight to Amsterdam during the last week of May heres three more...
* Paula Le Dieu, Co-Director, Creative Archive, BBC
* Jean Paoli, Senior Director of XML Architecture, Microsoft
* Mike Shaver, Mozilla Foundation and Oracle
Simon St. Laurent recently announced a call for participation for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention that will be held in Portland, OR between August 1st and 5th, 2005. If I can get my eggs into the proper baskets in time I plan to submit a proposal for Saxon.NET and another unannounced open-source project of mine but either way I will most definitely be in attendance so if you will be too lets plan lunch! :)
As pointed out in this announcement by Adam Souzis:
Rx4RDF is application stack for building RDF-based applications and web sites implemented in Python. Rhizome is a Wiki-like content management and delivery system built on Rx4RDF that brings the Wiki metaphor to building dynamic web sites.
Sounds pretty sweet! Now I just need to follow-up with my agenda to learn Python! :)
There has already been quite a bit of coverage on this, especially on xml-dev as the "[xml-dev] xml 2.0 - so it's on the way after all?" reaches strains to reach the "permathread" status. In making an attempt to keep myself out of the waters of controversy that this topic can easily become flooded by I'll leave you to generate your own opinion from the above linked thread. Good luck! :D
If talk of XML 2.0 didn't hord all of your attention this week it would probably be because you were too focused on what Bill Gates had to say about Microsoft, Office, XML, and Interoperability. Elliotte Rusty Harold earned a much deserved spot this week (two actually) in the XSLT:Blog Quote of the Day section with some comments he had on the matter and this article showcases some nice coverage from a Linux perspective as well. Generally speaking I have more of a "Pro-Microsoft" stance on matters such as this mainly because I was, albeit for a short period, working for the Micorosoft Site Builder Network when the initiative came down to build and evangelize the Channel Definition Format which was the very first XML implementation to hit the mainstream. Microsoft has been there from the beginning and it can easily be argued that without Microsoft XML would be just another good idea that never really went anywhere. To take aim at Microsoft and suggest that they are not commited to XML and as such interoperability to me seems totally and completely... well, I'll hold back from any further comment because I don't want it to appear that I am calling anybody names or suggesting their opinions are not worth more than mine. Still, I will go as far as suggesting that if you feel that Microsoft isn't committed to XML and given that XML and interoperability, generally speaking, go hand-in-hand I will simply ask you this...
"Where in the fuck have you been the last 10 years?"
Do I need to point out that the .NET platform has been built around XML from the very, very beginning and that its only been recent years that Java has natively supported XML through extension projects such as JAXP? I was on the Passport team back in '99 when .NET and Hailstorm were reaching implementation status and I can assure you that XML has been at the development foundation from the very beginning -- which reminds me, when is Microsoft going to bring back the Hailstorm project? If Amazon can release A9 and Simple Message Queue and Google can release Gmail which so blatantly reads your emails and posts related links and ads to the right, and neither of them receive much more than a "hmmmm... not sure if we can trust these guys" [NOTE: I recognize there has been some serious warnings from some of the experts but it hasn't been enough to keep these products from receiving a halfway decent "blessing" from the press which in many ways is what killed the Hailstorm project] from the privacy advocates then why can't Microsoft provide storage-and-retrieval services for contacts and calendars? Don't get me wrong... I have nothing against Amazon and A9/SMQ nor Google and Gmail... but I also think that if Amazon and Google can release products that stomp on our privacy's foot and give it a wedgie to boot so then should Microsoft be able to release such products without receiving a "Storm of Hail" Fire from the same folks who have let Amazon and Google slide right in to our privacy graces. Come on folks, its time to stop holding one companies ability to cross the privacy line for ransom while letting other industry behemouth's slide right on through the back door without so much a flinch. Or if this is just not possible then have some balls and call the stops on these other two privacy-line crossing giants. Either way, show some consistency or show yourself the back door 'cuz I'm not listening to ya anymore.
Ok, now that I have made enemies with half of XML-land I should probably move on... Actually, I think thats probably enough for this post. I do want to cover the release of support for XForms from the Mozilla organization but Kurt Cagle has plans to do an in depth piece on this release and as such I will let his expertise garner the attention and respect it so rightly deserves. Once he has finished and posted his coverage I will point to it and let this be sufficient in regards to the coverage here on XSLT:Blog.
Until then... enjoy!
[NOTE: If you are wondering why I would post a comment from Elliotte Rusty Harold in regards to Microsoft and interoperability as a Quote of the Day only to then state that I feel differently on the matter the reason is simple. While I definitely have my opinions it would be unfair for me to not allow the opinions of others to gain "air-time". Its a good quote and its from Elliotte Rusty Harold and you are NEVER going to find me suggesting that my opinion is worth more than Mr. Harolds. He obviously and most definitely deserves precedence in your mind over whatever opinion I might have. But at the same time I'm not going to *not* say what my feelings are on a subject simply because someone else might disagree. Even when that person is someone like ERH. If there is one thing I have learned in life its that with proper information its a lot easier to both see and understand someone elses viewpoint and in many cases discovering such information can help reshape our own opinions on the matter. From my comments I may come to discover things that I had never known and obtaining this information, at least in my mind/opinion, is never a bad thing and always a good thing. As long as the sources of information are credible and based on fact rather than opinion I embrace learning more about any given subject matter. Sometimes the best way to discover new information is to contend against a subject matter you feel differently about based on your current understanding. Some of the best lessons I have learned and information I have gained has come from the mistakes I have made in comments. Then again, how can you help reshape another persons opinion if your'e not willing to speak out your own opinion based on the understanding that you have come to develop on any particular subject matter. As such my philosophy has always been and always will be (unless of course I receive better data to help reshape my opinion :D) to speak my mind and then learn from information I receive in response to this mind-speaking. You can call it a "twisted" way of learning but in response I will simply call it real. Borrowing from the title of Jeff Key's blog "It works on my machine." :D]
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