Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Simon North
ISBN: 1575213966
Publication Date: 04/13/99

Part IV
Appendixes

Appendix A
Glossary

application

A piece of software on behalf of which an XML processor processes XML documents. More generally, a usage of the generic XML framework for a particular purpose, with its own DTD, linking conventions, and style sheets.

attribute

A name-value pair that is associated with an element and provides more information about the content of that element. Attribute values can be specified in the element’s start tag, or default values can be inherited from the DTD.

attribute declaration

A declaration in a DTD specifying an attribute’s name, type, and default value, if any.

attribute-list declaration

In a DTD, a list of attribute declarations for a particular element type.

cascading style sheets (CSS)

A style sheet language for rendering HTML documents.

CDATA section

A part of an XML document in which markup (apart from that indicating the end of the CDATA section) is not interpreted as markup, but is passed to the application as-is.

character

An atomic unit of text represented by a bit string.

character data

The actual text of an XML document, as opposed to the markup of the document.

character reference

An escape code for a single Unicode character that quotes the numerical value of its bit string.

comment

A piece of markup within an XML document containing text that is not to be treated as part of the document.

conditional section

In the DTD, a piece of markup that can be included in, or excluded from, the logical structure of the DTD, depending on the keyword at its start.

content model

In the DTD, a description of what might occur within instances of a given element type.

document

See XML document.

document element

The single element that contains all the other elements and character data that make up an XML document, also known as the root element.

document type declaration

A declaration at the start of an XML document that specifies where the external DTD subset can be found and includes the internal DTD subset.

document type definition

See DTD.

DSSSL

Document Style Semantics and Specification Language. An International Standard (ISO/IEC 10179:1996) that defines a transformation language and a style language for the processing of valid SGML documents.

DSSSL-o

A subset of DSSSL, called the online profile, proposed as a cut-down version of DSSSL suitable for rendering XML documents.

DTD

A set of rules governing the element types that are allowed within an XML document and specifying the allowed content and attributes of each element type. The DTD also declares all the external entities referenced within the document and the notations that can be used. See also external DTD subset.

element

A logical unit of information within an XML document.

element construction rule

An instruction in an XSL stylesheet that specifies which flow objects are to be constructed when a particular element type is encountered.

element content

In a DTD, a content model that allows other elements only inside instances of a given element type. (Compare with mixed content.)

element type

A particular type of element, such as paragraph. An element’s type is indicated by the name that occurs in its start tag and end tag.

empty element

An element containing no sub-elements or character data.

encoding declaration

A declaration of the character encoding scheme used for a particular text entity.

end tag

A tag that marks the end of an element, such as </section>.

entityAny data that can be treated as an object, such as an external file containing an image.

entity declaration

Part of the DTD. An entity declaration declares a name for an entity and associates it with a replacement string or externally stored data identified by a URL.

entity reference

A reference within the text of an XML document to a previously declared entity, signifying that the contents of the entity are to be processed at this point (processing can also mean simple inclusion).

extended link

A link that can involve any number of resources. An extended link doesn’t need to be co-located with any of the resources involved in the link.

external DTD subset

The part of the DTD that is held in a separate resource addressed by a URL. The external DTD subset is often referred to as the DTD of a class of documents. See also DTD.

external entity

An entity whose contents are contained in an external XML resource, such as an image file, referred to from within an XML document.

flow object

A formatting feature, such as a paragraph or a table cell, into which the content of an XML document is flowed under the control of an XSL style sheet.

flow object tree

The complete set of flow objects into which an XML document is converted by an XSL stylesheet.

generic identifier

The name assigned to an element type.

grove

A representation of an XML document in which each node represents a property of the document.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language. An encoding scheme for displaying and hyperlinking pages of information on the World Wide Web. Some versions of HTML are applications of SGML.

HyTime

ISO/IEC 10744 Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language. An SGML application that extends SGML capabilities to allow such things as multimedia capabilities and advanced addressing mechanisms.

inline link

See simple link.

internal DTD subset

The part of the DTD that is declared within the XML document itself, before the first start tag.

internal entity

An entity whose value is given in its entity declaration in the DTD.

locator

A character string that identifies one end of a link.

logical structure

The declarations, elements, character references, processing instructions, and so on that make up an XML document. These are all indicated by explicit markup.

markup

Information that is intermingled with the text of an XML document to indicate its logical and physical structure.

mixed content

In the DTD, a content model that allows character data to be mixed with sub-elements in any order. (Compare with element content.)

name

Within an XML DTD, a letter or underscore followed by zero or more name characters.

name character

A letter, digit, hyphen, underscore, full stop, or one of a set of special characters specified in the XML standard.

name token

Any mixture of name characters.

namespace

A method for qualifying the names used in XML documents by associating them with contexts identified by URIs.

non-validating XML processor

An XML processor that checks whether XML documents are well-formed but not whether they are valid.

notation

The format of an external entity, such as a GIF image or an MPEG video.

out-of-line link

A link that does not serve as one of its own resources.

parameter entity

A text entity used within a DTD or used to control processing of conditional sections.

physical structure

The arrangement of physical storage units (entities) in which an XML document is held.

processing instruction (PI)

A piece of markup that gives information or instructions to software that will process an XML document. A PI does not form part of the document’s character data.

prolog

The part of an XML document, including the XML declaration and DTD, that precedes the actual document element.

rendering

The act of processing a document so that it can be viewed. Rendering normally implies display on a screen but could also mean other forms of processing, such as text-to-speech conversion for the blind.

resource

Any addressable unit of information that can participate in a link. A resource can include complete XML documents, elements (or spans of elements) within them, and chunks of text.

root element

See document element.

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language. An International Standard (ISO 8879:1986) that describes a generalized markup scheme for representing the logical structure of documents in a system- and platform-independent manner.

simple link

An inline link, such as the familiar <A HREF=“”> tag in HTML, that links a specific point in an XML document to some target.

start tag

A tag that marks the start of an element, such as <para>.

style sheet

A set of instructions specifying how each element within a document is to be formatted.

traversal

Use of a link to access the resource at its other (or another) end. For simple links, traversal can be thought of as the action of following a link.

valid XML document

A well-formed XML document that also conforms to all the rules governing the structure of its content expressed in its DTD.

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium. A group of vendor companies that acts as a sort of standards body for the Web.

Web

A common name for the World Wide Web. An Internet service that uses the HTTP protocol and the HTML format to deliver documents.

well-formed XML document

An XML document that consists of a single (root) element containing correctly nested sub-elements. All entity references within a well-formed XML document refer to entities that have been declared in the DTD or are one of a small set of default entities, and all attribute values are enclosed in quotes. A well-formed XML document also obeys a few other rules.

XML

Extensible Markup Language. A profile, or simplified subset, of SGML.

XML declaration

A processing instruction at the start of an XML document that declares it to be XML code.

XML document

A document consisting of an optional XML declaration, followed by an optional document type declaration, and then followed by a document element.

XML processor

A program that reads XML documents, checks whether they are valid and well-formed, and makes their contents available to XML applications.

XPointer

A syntax for identifying the element, range of elements, or text within an XML document that is the target resource of a link.

XSL

The XML style language.

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