Reliable XML Publishing Tools?

[JSWolf]

And ePub is mostly XHTML. Try making ePub with just XML and it won't work.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And ePub is mostly XHTML. Try making ePub with just XML and it won't work.

Yes it does, since XHTML is XML. You mean XML with another (or no) scheme.

[skreutzer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Try making ePub with just XML and it won't work.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

You mean XML with another (or no) scheme.

Certainly one cannot make an ePub or anything else just with XML, since XML is a universal formatting technique for text-oriented data and therefore doesn’t define any semantics of the data, it’s very generalized, abstract.

XML is very simple: we encapsulate text within markers called “tags” that mark the beginning and the end of a semantic meaning, therefore we always have pairs of markers, beginning and end. Those tags provide a name for the semantic meaning which is written in between < and >. An end tag, to distinguish it from the start tag, begins not only with <, but with </. Start tags can provide attributes in the form key="value". Tags can contain text or other tags, therefore can be nested, but are forbidden to overlap. There is only one “root” tag.

And basically, that’s it. No mention of specific tag names or specific semantic meanings, to express, for example, the structure of a web document, a scalable vector graphic, phone book data or whatever. Without those names, one can’t use raw, pure XML, since it would transport no semantic meaning at all. While XHTML is quite popular, there are many, many, many other XML-based formats for a lot of different uses, you can even make your own! And if you do so or if you use the XML-based formats by other people, you can benefit from powerful tools which are available to do all kinds of things with XML-based formats. Those tools and techniques, however, usually aren’t that easy to use, it’s more in the domain of software developers, but on the other hand, the whole plan is that a user never has to deal with the XML-based formats directly.

As the OP mentions XML publishing, we all assume that he is looking into generating formats with XML (from or to or in between) using XML technology, most likely with the intend to automate reoccurring or big tasks.

Originally Posted by fiume

xml epubs

is indeed a little bit confusing.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And ePub is mostly XHTML. Try making ePub with just XML and it won't work.

XHTML is XML. So all the tools that handles XML could use XHTML too. For example I usually create Indexes using XQuery onto XHTML.

ePub2 had a strange thing called XML island too, deprecated in EPUB3, that was interesting, but with poor support. In XML island you could use every XML you want, with a fallback in XHTML. For example I created some years ago an ebook in TEI XML, linked to a CSS, and some readers supported it (Ibooks).

Oblivious I DO NOT suggest to use XML island today.

f.