I am interested in teaching myself XML and was wondering what books and/or websites people would recommend? Particularly anything which has examples or hands-on learning; I do better with reading, seeing and doing than hearing or only reading. Thanks!
Advice for teaching myself XML?
(14 posts) (11 voices)-
I cringe a bit when I see it now, but you might want to try this (slightly older) XML tutorial video that we did as part of the TAPoR training resources.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Could you tell us a little more about the context(s) you want to use XML in? Because my immediate advice is always "do a project!"
If you're interested in encoding books and manuscripts, grab something off Project Gutenberg and turn it into TEI. (You may well find that regular expressions are your friends, if you haven't already discovered this.)
If metadata is your thing, I'd look at some library-catalog records for your favorite books, and make them over in MODS (use the DLF Aquifer Guidelines as additional documentation).
If you're about consuming rather than producing XML, hm... maybe play around with an OAI-PMH harvester?
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Douglas Knox
MemberWhether or not you are interested in TEI specifically, the Gentle Introduction to XML at the beginning of the TEI guidelines is well worth reading and bookmarking, particularly when you want to become familiar with some of the more advanced syntax details without going to the formal spec.
If you are interested in TEI, you might also look at TEI By Example, which has some hands-on tutorials and exercises.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Part of the difficulty in responding is that "learning XML" can mean a lot of different things. Dorothea's advice about context(s) and projects is super helpful here. But, since you're asking about learning it, chances are it might be hard to respond to that question, huh? :)
To me, the first issue is that "XML" is sort of a meta-language. Very loosely said, it's a set of rules and principles that are used to create particular vocabularies (schema) for particular needs/types of projects. You'll see that in the acronym-soup coming up!
But there are, again very generally, two types of schema: document-centric and data-centric.
Document-centric schema are things like XHTML or TEI. If your project/interests are along those lines, I'd second Doug's links, and also suggest looking at the DocBook intro. DocBook is also for documents, but more tailored to documentation. I think a lot of the DocBook examples made more intuitive sense to me when I was learning.
Data-centric schema are more like MODS or OAI-PMH, or even RSS or the KML for GoogleEarth, and also cover more technical data-exchange over the web. The examples of using XML for Dublin Core might be a starting point for that angle, and I'm guessing you might have some metadata around that you could practice with! :)
Last, and maybe most important, I'd suggest you get the trial version of oXygen XML editor to start playing with and writing XML. The UI will be a bit much at first, but if you close all but the main panel and fire up a new XML document, it will offer lots of helpful tips for the hands-on approach.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Replying to @Dorothea Salo's post:
I'm not even at Square 1 - I'm at Square Zero. I know that xml is being used by some of the local historical documentary projects and thought "Hey, I should figure out how this stuff works." Which, I think, means document markup and a touch of metadata.
Thank you for suggesting projects - most of what I do know I learned by muddling through projects on my own, so why break the trend!
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
hopegreenberg
MemberI always bemoan the lack of really quick getting started information that takes you from zero to something accomplished, so how could I possibly resist? What is the shortest possible time in which you can describe and demo the creation of a TEI document and its transformation to a web page? Here's one attempt, with a link to a screencast, minor flubs and all:
http://www.uvm.edu/~hag/screencasts/tei-quick-greenberg.htmlPosted 6 years ago Permalink -
I wrote "A Pleasant Little Chat about XML" which may help you to narrow your focus re: what you might/might not want to learn.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Well, in that case, my first move would be to go to the folks in the historical documentary projects and ask them "Which flavor of XML are you using?"
Chances are pretty good it's TEI or TEI Lite, but it may be a metadata-centric project, in which case it could be any number of things. Still, once you have an answer, it'll be easier to find an appropriate project to turn you loose on.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
steven.hayes
MemberI was in the same situation as you are now about seven years ago and I found "Learning XML" by Michael Fitzgerald clear and very easy to follow. The book is published by O'Reilly and is now in its second edition. Personally I find having a book by the desk very helpfull and you can even take it outside and read it over lunch in the sun.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Jason Boyd
MemberIf you are interested in TEI XML I have found using oXygen XML Editor (a modest expense) along with the TEI P5 Guidelines very helpful for unconventional (historical document) projects. You can markup something in oXygen with TEI and get an error flag, which is a helpful indicator that you need to return to the guidelines to figure out what's wrong -- a helpful learning experience. It's learning by doing.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
william.j.turkel@gmail.com
MemberThe tutorials at W3C Schools are good for an introduction to all kinds of web topics, including XML.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
anglebracket@gmail.com
MemberAlthough the question is a few years old, the answers still hold, but the best way is to learn by doing it. Pick a text, pick an editor, and try to mark it up. There are lots of gotchas in XML, but a decent editor will shield you from the worst of them. Unfortunately there are very few free XML editors (Emacs is one, but not recommended for beginners). If trial and error, or a book, is too much, there's always something like the Intro sessions at the XML Summer School and similar events -- http://xml.silmaril.ie/moreinfo.html#events (I edit this, so let me know any errors).
Posted 2 years ago Permalink
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