I read "Stamp on the ants ", which lead me to write "XML - One Ring to Rule them All... " because I'd seem some remarkably lame justification for XML. I saw an interesting response in "XML is first class, scripting languages are second class ".

At this point, we have an interesting tangential …

I harp on Design Goal 6 in the XML 1.0 Standard , "XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear". In Kontrawize, the response is XML editors help meet this design goal. "There are plenty of good XML-aware editors around, some of which are free." While true, I think this …

The XML folks seem to have a number of points:

• Ant already works. Complexity be damned.
• XML is fine for everything that's not Java. Except SQL. And CSS.
• Ant is "already" part of the technology stack, and it uses XML. Anything better isn't already there.
• Everyone already knows XML. They …

In the CW article, pseudonymous Mathias Thurman describes a demonstration of Microsoft's Rights Management Services product. The audience of executives identify a number of "Suppose..." scenarios, which the author dismisses as merely research subjects, concluding that "...the goal of this proof of concept was to introduce a group of executives …

Kontrawize author Anthony Coates warns that this is an attractive time sink. Thanks for the heads up.

My first round of research found HTML Slidy , but didn't find DocUtils + S5 . S5 is simpler and does less than Slidy. RST markup is far easier to cope with than HTML. This looks …

PPT has one big advantage: it is written by the same people who wrote Windows. So it can seize the Windows display and keyboard, and take control over the entire UI. I happen to think that's A Bad Thing™ but I may be in the minority on that.

Of course …

First, let me get this off my chest: Django http://www.djangoproject.com/ rules. There are a number of reasons, but they aren't the point of this posting.

When someone creates a twenty-minute application, they walk a fine line. The minimalist approach to software development can be viewed from two …

I've been using the Apache FOP http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/ to transform XSL:FO into PDF's. FOP works well enough for some DocBook processing, but it can't handle really complex stuff gracefully.

Can we also use this XSL:FO technology for producing PDF form letters as part of a …

Years and years ago I started using Delphi internet services. They had a complicated dialup arrangement through Sprintnet and Tymenet to a farm of VAX servers in the Boston area, part of Northeast Education and Research (NEAR) net. This was Delphi internet, character-mode, 9600 baud. I used Mac classic and …