Re: XML and the launch of Chemical Markup Language

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 06 Feb 1998 09:21:26


At 15:07 28/01/98, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>I have been invited to give a virtual lecture by VEI Ltd and Chemweb Ltd
>and I have taken the opportunity to "launch" Chemical Markup Language and
>also to promote the use of XML. Details are at:
>
>http://chemweb.vei.co.uk

The transcript of this lecture is - or will be - publicly available at this
address. Anyone registered is welcome to contribute to the discussion. I'd
welcome any corrections [I have deliberately simplified XML in places].
[There were two server-side breaks in transmission but I hope that anyone
who 'attended' was able to get all the material.

The 26 slides are also available at:
http://www.vsms.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms/talks/chemwebvei/001.html

which is the TOC. [The slides are deliberately not interlinked because of
the technology.] If you'd like to use material from these please let me know.

In passing I prepared the slides using conventional HTML editing tools
(Netscape). I kept thinking how it would have been preferable to use XML
for this and I think I was close to the break-even point for tooling up and
doing it in Java/XML. This would have solved renumbering problems, allowed
redesigned layouts to be transmitted to every slide, etc. I would have
still output the actual slides in HTML. I am a believer in using HTML for
presentations (since I feel it's more flexible/portable/re-usable than
other approaches). If other people feel the same way, perhaps we could
create a collaborative approach to XML/HTML-slide generation?

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg