XML. What the heck is it, why is everyone talking about it and what could it possibly do for me? Well, I have a stack of ideas of things to do with it, only the most basic of knowledge about it - mostly theoretical - and absolutely no practical experience beyond writing an XML file and then staring at it wonder what all the fuss is about. So it's time to move beyond that level of ineptitude, so tonight I made a start. What's motivating this new push is work. We're still using FrameMaker, unstructured, and have so far done little to investigate structured Frame, even though I'm fairly sure we can simplify to doc types in one go if we just put some time into. So this is me putting time into it.
Enter, stage right, the XML1.1 Bible.
As I said, I have had a look at XML before so have some knowledge of coding, so I started off with a bit of a refresher course at basic structure and formatting with CSS. As I can't stand working with data that isn't meaningful to me I've already gone off-piste working with my own data. One of the applications I have in mind is register documentation, so I made a basic file and structure, which I haven't yet figure out how to copy here without losing all the tags, and this ugly style sheet.
CHIP {display: block; font-size: 24pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: center}
REVISION {font-size: 24pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: left}
YEAR {display: block; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center}
MONTH, DAY {font-size: 12pt}
INTERFACE {display: block; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: bold}
ADDRESS {font-size: 16pt}
DESCRIPTION {display: block; font-size: 14pt}
REGISTER_FIELD {display: table-row; font-size: 16pt}
FIELD_NAME, FIELD_BIT, FIELD_ADDRESS, FIELD_DEFINITION, FIELD_RW, FIELD_RESET {border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; display: table-cell; font-size: 14pt}
Strangely, it works.
So there I have it. My first, ugly but functioning register doc. I'm sure it'll be refined as I progress thorough the rest of the book, but it's a good start. Next stop XSLT.
