XML has given rise to a sea of acronyms and terms. This section will
list the most significant terms, and sketch their relevance.
Many of the following definitions are taken from Lars Marius Garshol's
SGML glossary, at http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/larsga/download/diverse/sgmlglos.html.
- DOM (Document Object Model)
- The Document Object Model is intended to a platform- and
language-neutral interface that will allow programs and scripts to
dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of
documents. Documents will be represented as tree structures which can
be traversed and modified.
- DTD (Document Type Definition)
- A Document Type Definition (nearly always called DTD) defines
an XML document type, complete with element types, entities
and an XML declaration.
In other words: a DTD completely describes one particular kind
of XML document, such as, for instance, HTML 3.2.
- SAX (Simple API for XML)
- SAX is a simple standardized API for XML parsers developed by the
contributors to the xml-dev mailing list. The interface is mostly
language-independent, as long as the language is object-oriented; the
first implementation was written for Java, but a Python implementation
is also available. SAX is supported by many XML parsers.
- XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
- XML is an SGML application profile specialized for use on the
web and has its own standards for linking and stylesheets under development.
- XSL (eXtensible Style Language)
- XSL is a proposal for a stylesheet language for XML, which
enables browsers to lay out XML documents in an attractive
manner, and also provides a way to convert XML documents to
HTML.
