Fwd: XML.org Daily Newslink. Friday, 21 October 2005

Sat Oct 22 06:30:29 UTC 2005

Some might like to see more about the XML patents. I would like to point 
people to the DITA for Docbook topic as it is more interesting. I will 
continue is seperate thread.

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: XML.org Daily Newslink. Friday, 21 October 2005
Date: Saturday 22 October 2005 06:46
From: Robin Cover <robin at oasis-open.org>
To: "XML.org Daily News List" <xml-dailynews at lists.xml.org>

XML.org Daily Newslink. Friday, 21 October 2005
Provided by OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
Edited by Robin Cover

====================================================

This issue of XML.org Daily Newslink is sponsored
by Innodata Isogen  http://www.innodata-isogen.com

====================================================

HEADLINES:

* New Browser Gives Taste of Web 2.0
* OpenOffice.org 2.0 Has Edge over Its StarOffice 8 Cousin
* Small Company Makes Big Claims on XML Patents
* DITA for DocBook

COVER PAGES:

* Free OpenOffice.org 2.0 Office Suite Supports OASIS OpenDocument Format

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New Browser Gives Taste of Web 2.0
Renai LeMay, CNET News.com

A small team of developers in California on Friday launched a cutting-
edge Firefox-based Web browser dubbed Flock, which integrates next-
generation Web technologies such as RSS content feeds, blogs and
bookmark and photo sharing. The Flock team has taken note of the
Internet community's rapidly growing obsession with both blogs and the
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) standard that makes it possible to
speedily know when a blog has been updated. Flock includes a built-in
RSS reader, which allows a user to read all of their favorite blogs in
one place, without the need to separately navigate to each one. Various
Web sites and software programs already provide this functionality, but
Flock is one of the first to integrate it into a Web browser. Flock
integrates with a number of popular blogging services, including
Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger, according to Decrem's own blog. All
of the features both reflect popular usage within early adopter
elements of the Web and are squarely aimed at providing collaborative
Web browsing features.

http://news.com.com/2100-1046_3-5905922.html

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OpenOffice.org 2.0 Has Edge over Its StarOffice 8 Cousin
Jason Brooks, eWEEK

When eWEEK Labs recently reviewed StarOffice 8, we were impressed by
its broad platform support and low cost -- two measures by which the
Sun Microsystems Inc. office productivity suite edges out Microsoft
Corp.'s market-leading Office 2003 but falls short compared with its
open-source sibling, OpenOffice.org 2.0. OpenOffice.org is freely
available and redistributable, and supports seven platforms: Windows,
Linux x86 and PowerPC, Solaris x86 and SPARC, Mac OS X and FreeBSD.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8 share the same code base and are
nearly identical. The primary differences are in packaging and certain
non-free software components that come bundled with Sun's suite.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8 use the same native file format,
OpenDocument, and the same macro language. Organizations that mix the
two suites, therefore, can expect complete compatibility.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1875491,00.asp
See also OpenOffice.org 2.0: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-21-a.html

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Small Company Makes Big Claims on XML Patents
Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com

A small software developer plans to seek royalties from companies that
use XML, the latest example of patent claims embroiling the tech
industry. Charlotte, N.C-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213
and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of "data in neutral forms."
These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon
by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert.
Scientigo intends to "monetize" this intellectual property, Scientigo
CEO Doyal Bryant said this week. Rather than seek royalties itself,
Scientigo has forged a tentative agreement with an intellectual-property
licensing firm that will handle contracts with third parties, Bryant
said. A final agreement could be announced early next week, he said.
Bryant said that Scientigo over the past several months has had
discussions with 47 companies regarding the patents, including large
software providers Microsoft and Oracle. Based on these talks, Bryant
said he is confident that the company's patents will command royalties
from software companies and other large organizations, such as
Amazon.com, which use XML.

http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5905949.html
See also Patents and Open Standards: http://xml.coverpages.org/patents.html

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DITA for DocBook: Implementing the Darwin Information Typing
Architecture for DocBook
Norm Walsh, Blog

DocBook and DITA are competitors, at least to the extent that both are
aimed at the technical documentation market. I think DITA can point to
four technical differences that are arguably features in its favor: (1)
A topic-oriented authoring paradigm. (2) A cross-referencing scheme
that's more practical than XML's flat ID space. (3) SGML's conref,
reinvented; (4) An extensibility model based on specialization...
DocBook's legacy is certainly big, linear documents: it even has the
word 'book' in it's name. But there's nothing that prevents you from
writing modern, topic-oriented, highly modular documentation in DocBook.
Nothing except, perhaps, the emotional weight of the tag names... With
a couple of hours of hacking [using RELAX NG], I've implemented on top
of DocBook the four key features of DITA that I could identify... In
doing so, I've attempted to remain true to the spirit of DocBook, so
my content models aren't exactly the same as the DITA models, but I
think the analogies are sound. That means the choice of which vocabulary
to use, DocBook or DITA, comes down simply to the actual terms in the
vocabulary, the elements and attributes provided, their semantics, and
their relationships to each other.

http://norman.walsh.name/2005/10/21/dita
See also the DocBook web site: http://www.docbook.org/

======================================================================

Selected From The Cover Pages, by Robin Cover
======================================================================

Free OpenOffice.org 2.0 Office Suite Supports OASIS OpenDocument Format

OpenOffice.org Version 2.0 has been released as a multiplatform and
multilingual office suite which provides support for OASIS OpenDocument
format, standardized in April 2005. The OpenOffice.org Project is an
open source community dedicated to building a leading international
office suite which is entirely free, will run on all major platforms,
and provides access to all functionality and data through open-component
based APIs and an XML-based file format.

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-21-a.html

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-- 
Sean Wheller
Technical Author
sean at inwords.co.za
084-854-9408
http://www.inwords.co.za
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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http://wenzani.blogspot.com/