Using XML and XSLT to process and render online journals

Abstract

Describes an approach to the processing and presentation of online full‐text journals that utilizes several evolving information technologies, including extensible markup language (XML) and extensible stylesheet language transformations (XSLT). Discusses major issues and trade‐offs associated with these technologies, and also specific lessons learned from our use of these technologies in the Illinois Testbed of full‐text journal articles. Focuses especially on issues associated with the representation of documents in XML, techniques to create and normalize metadata describing XML document instances, XSLT features employed in the Illinois Testbed, and trade‐offs of different XSLT implementation options. Pays special attention to techniques for transforming between XML and HTML formats for rendering in today’s commercial Web browsers.

XML and e‐journals: the state of play

“…As already mentioned, some journal DTD owners have reached the stage of converting their SGML DTDs to XML. Many SGML features are not permitted by XML; the following omissions have proved of particular relevance to journal DTD conversions (Apps and MacIntyre, 2000;Cole et al, 2001):…”

“…Here, XML facilitates many advances. The implications of XML for journal metadata is a huge subject and discussed in detail elsewhere (Cole et al, 2001;Rosenblum and Golfman, 2001).…”

“…Others are simply referring to the production of well-formed XML files, that is files that obey XML tag rules such as no tag omission and so on, but do not refer to an XML DTD. In many cases, these files are still valid SGML and are created using the original SGML DTD and SGML software, a useful`h alf-way house'' (Cole et al, 2001) on the way to valid XML.…”

Publishing Mathematics on the Web

“…Web-specific approaches, adaptations of print-optimized approaches, and recent developments in semantic math initiatives are then discussed and categorized. Illustrations are drawn from the Illinois Digital Library Journal Article Testbed project (described in detail elsewhere, e.g., Schatz et al 1999, Cole et al 2001. The Illinois Testbed, created in 1994, currently contains over 65,000 online journal articles in multiple digital formats from more than 50 academic journals and handbooks in physics and engineering.…”

Challenges of serials text encoding in the spirit of scholarly communication

“…The use of XML and XML-related technologies to publish online journals is not new to academic libraries (Cole et al, 2001;Wusteman, 2003). In Wusteman"s "XML and e-journals: the state of play," she provides an overview of markup standards and their evolution with an emphasis on XML-derived standards.…”