XML Browser | XML Editors | XML Parsers | XSL Processors
XML popularity means that many vendors are supporting it. This means that many applications are available to manipulate XML documents.
This section lists some of the most commonly used XML applications.
An XML browser is used to view and print XML documents. Microsoft Internet Explorer has supported XML since version 4.0. IE 5.0 has greatly enhanced the XML support.
Netscape Communicator currently has no support for XML except for Mozilla, the open-source version of Netscape Communicator. Mozilla has a strong support for XML. However, because Mozilla is still a work-in-progress, it is not yet stable enough for practical usage.
There are other XML browsers. The most interesting is InDelv XML Browser, which has the most complete implementation of XSL for the time being.
There are three XML editors: text editors with syntax highlighting, tree-based editors and pseudo-WYSIWYG editors.
Text editor:
user: programmers
example: eNotepad
Tree-Based Editor:
user: experienced users
example: Microsoft's XML Notepad
WYSIWYG Editors:
user: end-users
example: XMedaL
The word parser comes from compilers. In a compiler, a parser is the module that reads and interprets the programming language. XML parser helps to isolate programmers from the specifics of the XML syntax.
Examples of XML parsers include: IBM's XML for Java. Applications, such as Oracle 8i, also include XML parser.
In many cases, you want to use XML "behind the scene". You want to take advantage of XML internally but don't want to force your users to upgrade to an XML-compliant blowser.
In all these cases, you will use XSL. XSL enables you to produce classic HTML that works with current-generation browsers (and older, too) while enabling you to retain the advantages of XML internally.
To apply the magic of XSL, you will use an XSL processor, such as LotusXSL.
