XML

markup language by the W3C for encoding of data

The Extensible Markup Language (short XML) is a markup language like HTML but is extensible.[3] It's created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML defines rules for the construction of a document. XML adds context to the information in a document. It does not say how this should be displayed.

XML
Filename extension.xml
Internet media typeapplication/xml[1]
text/xml[2]
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI)public.xml
UTI conformationpublic.text
Developed byWorld Wide Web Consortium
Type of formatMarkup language
Extended fromSGML
Extended toNumerous, including:
XHTML, RSS, Atom, KML
Standard1.0 (Fifth Edition) November 26, 2008; 15 years ago (2008-11-26)
1.1 (Second Edition) August 16, 2006; 17 years ago (2006-08-16)
Open format?Yes

Some programs get information out of an XML-document. To do that, they need an API.[4] There are many APIs for XML.

You can write a description of an XML document in a way that is useful for programmers. There are several languages for this; the best known is called DTD.

Syntax

XML uses less than (<) and greater than (>) to show tags. For example, a paragraph in HTML would be <p>.

A closing tag is a tag used to enclose the value of the tag. The tag has a slash (/) before its name. For example, </p>

A tag which is empty can be represented as an opening tag but with a slash before the >. For example, <p/>

The XML specification defines a valid XML document as a well-formed XML document which also conforms to the rules of a Document Type Definition (DTD).[5][6]

Languages

The following languages are based on XML.

Text

  • XSL-FO
  • DocBook
  • DITA
  • XHTML (HTML based on ALL)
  • TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)
  • NITF (News Industry Text Format)

Images

  • SVG (vector graphics)
  • X3D (3D modelling language)
  • Collada (Language to change informations between different 3D programs)

Earth

  • Geography Markup Language (GML)
  • GPS Exchange Format (GPX): XML for GPS informatons
  • Keyhole Markup Language (KML): coordinates for Google Earth
  • OpenImmo : XML for Houses with position informations

Multimedia

  • SMIL (Informations with times from multimedia)
  • MPEG-7 (for MPEG-7)
  • Laszlo (LZX)

Safety

  • SAML (describe and send informations about safety)
  • XML Signature
  • XML Encryption

Other

There are a lot more languages that use XML. A couple of them are:

Sources

Other websites