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Microsoft pre-released their XAML-in-the-browser tech­no­logy, WPF/e earlier this week. XAML inside.

XAML “smells” like the W3C’s Scal­able Vec­tor Graph­ics (SVG). DOM-inside-a-DOM, Declar­at­ive anim­a­tion, 2D graph­ics. XAML maybe not SVG, but it cer­tainly tips its hat to SVG.

Adobe today pre-released their XML-in-a-PDF tech­no­logy, Mars, for Acrobat 8. Essen­tially, Mars as a tech­no­logy is presently delivered as plu­gins for Adobe Reader 8 and Acrobat 8 Pro­fes­sional. You can save an exist­ing ‘bin­ary’ PDF out as a .mars file. These .mars files are like .jar or .war files: mani­fes­ted, struc­tured ZIP files. Look­ing inside a descrip­tion of a page, you have an SVG Tiny 1.2+ (as Adobe state, SVG/FSS0 rep­res­ent­a­tion. The spe­cific­a­tion clearly doc­u­ments that .mars takes the cur­rent concept of PDF, a doc­u­ment format, and extends this as XML.These tech­no­lo­gies do not dir­ectly inter­sect: an XML rep­res­ent­a­tion of SWF rather than PDF would be closer to XAML. Hav­ing cross-platform viewer sup­port for Microsoft’s XPS would be closer to PDF.

I was pre­ma­ture in say­ing SVG was deprec­ated.

RIP Scal­able Vec­tor Graph­ics (SVG).

Deprec­ated equals don’t use it. The momentum in the web-world has slowed to grind­ing halt.

Whilst SVG is a W3C tech­no­logy, not owned by Adobe, the ori­ginal spe­cific­a­tion came from PGML.

Sad, there was much poten­tial for SVG. All it would have taken was Adobe to make a stand­ard pro­gram­ming model and builder applic­a­tion and SVG really could have taken off. SVG is an example of good tech­no­logy becom­ing can­non fod­der, lost in the charge to an enemy: rather than tech­no­logy being used for good.

Today, we have two XML-based model for gen­er­at­ing rich inter­faces: MXML and XAML. One is in the oper­at­ing sys­tem and a part of a down­load, the other requires a bolt-on applic­a­tion in the browser.

SVG pre-dated these tech­no­lo­gies by some years. A stand­ard­ised wid­get lib­rary; exten­sion into 3D and co-operation by large com­pan­ies could have advanced the world of rich, con­nec­ted applications.

Stand­ard file formats invite com­pet­it­ive­ness in soft­ware applic­a­tions. Con­sider open, stand­ard­ised file formats like world-free trade. The most effi­cient and best sur­vive. A dar­winian selec­tion for the best.

Bet­ter luck next time.

Fur­ther to Adobe Enter­prise XML Strategy Stuff, Adobe XML Archi­tec­ture Spe­cific­a­tion. Note this is sub­ject to change.

Saw an inspir­ing present­a­tion from Tony Wheeler, Founder and CEO of Lonely Planet.

Some inter­est­ing Adobe Enter­prise XML Strategy Stuff

Hav­ing lots of fun with XSL-FO. I don’t know why I didn’t go and learn this stuff sooner. In my exper­i­ments, I am using styles and flows as defined by Adobe Frame­Maker over­rid­ing the XSL-FO com­mands. Next stop: XSLT.

All this is in aid of some Adobe Doc­u­ment Server demon­stra­tions I am doing over the next couple of weeks. Also learn­ing how to use JScript as an ASP lan­guage. I would have pre­ferred to be cod­ing in PHP; but the COM to PHP stuff is a little bey­ond my ken at the moment. Keep things as simple as pos­sible. Oh yes, the music of the 1980s assists greatly.

Present­a­tion from Open­Pub­lish 2002. Scripting+XML=Productivity

For those who atten­ded the XML Asia Pacific con­fer­ence, the demo files I used Adobe Tips, Tricks and Techniques