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582 lines
29 KiB
582 lines
29 KiB
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
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"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<head profile="http://www.amk.ca/foaf/author">
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<meta name="generator"
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content="HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 1st April 2002), see www.w3.org" />
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
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content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
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<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf"/>
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<title>Dave Raggett</title>
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<style type="text/css">
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/*<![CDATA[*/
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body {margin-left: 20pt; margin-right: 20pt}
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blockquote.splash {
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background: rgb(255,204,255);
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padding-left: 0.5em;
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padding-right: 0.5em;
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padding-top: 0.2em;
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padding-bottom: 0.2em;
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border: none;
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margin-right: 5%;
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text-align: center;
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font-weight: bold;
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font-family: "Comic Sans MS", serif;
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}
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.key { font-size: smaller; font-style: italic }
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.subtitle {
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font-style: italic;
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text-align: center;
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}
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a img { border-width: 0; border: none }
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/*]]>*/
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</style>
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</head>
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<body background="texture.jpeg" bgcolor="white">
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<a href="profile.html"><img src="dsr-46c.jpg" width="80" height="100"
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alt="Photo" border="0" align="left" vspace="10" hspace="10" /></a>
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<h1>Dave Raggett</h1>
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<p>This is my home page where you can learn about my interests,
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achievements and how to contact me. Here is my
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<a href="cv.html">Curriculum Vitae</a><!-- and <a
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href="profile.html">bio</a>--> and my <a
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href="http://people.w3.org/~dsr/blog/">blog</a>.</p>
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<p><small>W3C staff can access my <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/Team/Raggett">work plan and travel
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schedule</a>.</small></p>
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<p><small><a href=
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"http://www.faeriekeeper.net/20041stqtr.htm"><img alt="icon"
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src="talkinghands.jpg" border="0" align="middle" width="25"/></a>
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Recipient of <a href="http://www.faeriekeeper.net/20041stqtr.htm">
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Talking Hands Award</a> in January 2004.</small><br clear="all" />
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</p>
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<p class="key">[I tend to sign my emails with this <a href="pubkey-20040130.asc">
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public key</a>]</p>
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<blockquote class="splash"><em>Try out my free Web-based
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|
alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint:
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<a href="/Talks/Tools/Slidy">HTML Slidy</a>
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and take a look at my <a href="http://www.w3.org/2006/05/Slidy-XTech/slidy-xtech06-dsr.pdf">XTech 2006 paper</a>. See also my cross browser <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/2007/03/XForms-Transitional">XForms-Transitional</a>
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library for richer forms with less scripting.</em></blockquote>
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<p>I am a member of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/">W3C Team</a>.
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My current roles include: driving W3C work on the relationship
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between XBRL and the Semantic Web, research on privacy and identity
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management for the EU <a
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href="http://www.primelife.eu/">PrimeLife Project</a>, chairing
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the <a href="/2005/Incubator/model-based-ui/">W3C Model
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Based User Interface Incubator Group</a> and also the <a
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href="/2007/uwa/">W3C Ubiquitous Web Applications Working Group</a>.
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I am also a member of the <a href="http://www.xbrl.org/StandardsBoard/">XBRL
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Standards Board</a>.</p>
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<p>I was a W3C Fellow for many years on behalf of a number of
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companies, most recently <a href="http://www.justsystems.com">Justsystems</a>,
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and before that <a href="http://www.volantis.com">Volantis</a>,
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<a href="http://www.canon.com">Canon</a>, <a
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href="http://www.openwave.com/">Openwave Systems</a>,
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and <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/">HP Labs</a> in Bristol, England.
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I have been very closely involved with the development of HTML from
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the early days (HTML+, HTML 3.0, 3.2, 4.0, XHTML) as well as setting
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up the IETF HTTP working group and helping to initiate work on VRML.
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|
I used to be the activity lead for <a href="/MarkUp/">XHTML</a>,
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<a href="/MarkUp/Forms/">XForms</a>, <a href="/Math/">MathML</a>, <a
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href="/Voice/">Voice Browsers</a> and <a href="/2002/mmi/">Multimodal
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Interaction</a>. I am a visiting professor for the <a
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href="http://www.uwe.ac.uk/">University of the West of England</a>.</p>
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<p>I have recently become involved in work on <a
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title="Extensible Business Reporting Language"
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href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBRL">XBRL</a>, a markup
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standard for financial reports defined by <a
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href="http://www.xbrl.org/">XBRL International</a> with the support
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of financial institutions around the world. XBRL makes use of XML
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Schema, XLink and XML Namespaces to give precise semantics to
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financial data. There is a huge potential for combining XBRL
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with the Semantic Web as a basis for analysing financial data and
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combining it with other sources of information. My starting point
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has been to develop an open source tool (<a href="http://xbrlimport.sourceforge.net/">xbrlimport</a>) to translate XBRL into RDF,
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and I am looking forward to working with others on realising the
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potential. The Semantic Web, with its ability to represent a World
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|
Wide Web of machine interpretable data and metadata, will give users
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tremendous flexibility for exploring huge amounts of information
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about companies and markets.</p>
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<p>I joined the EU <a href="http://www.primelife.eu/">PrimeLife
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Project</a> in February 2009 to help with work on privacy enhancing
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technologies. The project is funded by the European Commission's 7th
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Framework Programme. I am particularly interested with the the
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concept of privacy providers as a new class of web services giving
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users life long control over their personal data. You get to determine
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just how much personally identifying information you disclose to
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websites. The approach also offers single-signon and opportunities
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for supporting micropayments as value added features for participating
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websites.</p>
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<p>I have also been working on broadening the Web to include all kinds
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of network appliances, whether in the home, office or on the move, and
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at the same time reducing the cost and complexities involved in
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developing Web applications through declarative languages that enable
|
|
higher level authoring tools. The long term aim is to avoid the need for
|
|
Web application authors to have to learn the intricacies of markup,
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|
style sheet and scripting languages, and the infuriating variations
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|
across browsers. This will reduce the development and maintenance
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costs compared with today's approaches, whilst improving the quality
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and the end-user experience on whatever device he or she is using.
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|
I launched the <a href="/2005/Incubator/model-based-ui/">Model
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Based User Interface Incubator Group</a> in October 2008 to evaluate
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research on model-based user interface design as a framework for
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authoring Web applications and with a view to proposing work on
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related standards.</p>
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<p>My software projects have included <a href="http://xbrlimport.sourceforge.net/">xbrlimport</a>, <a href="#tidy">HTML Tidy</a>,
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<a href="#ezmath">EzMath</a>, <a href="/Talks/Tools/Slidy">HTML
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Slidy</a>, <a href="/2006/11/XForms-Tiny/">XForms-Tiny</a> and
|
|
several experimental browsers. I am currently exploring the potential
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|
of custom XML applications written in <a href="http://haxe.org/">Haxe</a>
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and deployed via the extremely ubiquitous flash player. I have
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developed components for rendering and for editing SVG that work on
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any browser with Flash Player 9 and above. I am utilizing these
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components for a Web-based slide editor/viewer named XML Slidy.
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The longer term aim is to explore the potential for declarative
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models of distributed web applications as part of my work on the
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Ubiquitous Web.</p>
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<!--
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I am now working on
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|
prototyping extensions to browsers on desktops and embedded systems
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|
to support multimodal interaction and device coordination. This is part of
|
|
my vision for the Ubiquitous Web which seeks to apply Web technology to
|
|
make it much easier to build distributed applications as a synthesis between
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|
the Web and ubiquitous computing. Please visit the <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/2006/ubiweb-wiki/W3C_Ubiquitous_Web_Wiki">Ubiquitous
|
|
Web Wiki</a>.</p>
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
<p><a href="http://www.bath-divers.co.uk/"><img src="redsea05.jpg"
|
|
align="right" alt="Diving with Alex in the Red Sea 2005"/><img
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src="rib.jpg" alt="diving trip" align="right" /></a>In my spare time
|
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I enjoy diving with the <a href="http://www.bath-divers.co.uk/">Bath
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Sub-Aqua Club</a>, and recently became an assistant instructor. Here
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are my <a href="http://people.w3.org/~dsr/Photos/">collections of
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photo's</a> for my recent diving trips to the Scilly Isles, the
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southern Red Sea, and to South Africa for tiger sharks and the
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famous sardine run. I am married with a son and a daughter, and live
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in Bradford on Avon, near Bath in the west of England. Since August
|
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2007 I have been a visiting professor for the University of the West
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|
of England in the Faculty of Environment and Technology. <!--You can find
|
|
out more about me in my <a href="profile.html">bio</a>.--> Read about
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|
my interests below:</p>
|
|
|
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<p style="clear:both">Recent publications/presentations:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://www.sofsem.cz/sofsem10/presentations/invited/Raggett.pdf">The
|
|
Web of Things: Extending the Web into the Real World</a>, January 2010,
|
|
an Invited talk at <a href="http://www.sofsem.cz/sofsem10/index.php">SOFSEM
|
|
2010</a>, 36th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory
|
|
and Practice of Computer Science, Špindlerův Mlýn, Czech Republic</li>
|
|
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/0423-dsr-lbs/slides.pdf">Geolocation
|
|
on the Mobile Web</a>, 23 April 2008, W3C Track, WWW2008 conference,
|
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Beijing, China</li>
|
|
<li><a href="http://http://www.internet-of-things-2008.org//prg/slides/raggett.pdf">Towards
|
|
the Web of Things</a>, 27 March 2008, Internet of Things, Zurich, Switzerland.</li>
|
|
<li><a href="www.w3.org/2008/Talks/0305-dsr-mw2/slides.pdf">Towards the Web of Things</a>,
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Mobile Web 2.0, Seoul, 5 March 2008</li>
|
|
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0926-dsr-WDC/slides.pdf">Towards
|
|
the Web of Things</a> at <a href="http://www.webdevconf.co.uk/">UWE Web
|
|
Developer's Conference</a> in Bristol, UK on 26 September 2007</li>
|
|
<li><a href="/2007/03/html-forms/">Google Tech Talk on Forms, 5 March
|
|
2007, Mountain View</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="/2006/Talks/0919-dsr-ubiweb/ubiweb.pdf">Ubiquitous
|
|
Web presentation</a> on 19 September 2006 at <a
|
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href="http://www.ce2006.org/">CE2006</a>, Antibes, France</li>
|
|
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/2006/05/Slidy-XTech/">Slidy, a web-based
|
|
alternative to PowerPoint</a>, XTech on 19 May 2006, Amsterdam</li>
|
|
<li><a href="http://www.loquendo.com/en/news/dave_raggett_interview.htm">Interview</a> in the March 2006 edition
|
|
of the Loquendo Newsletter</li>
|
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<li><a href="/2006/03/ubiweb-ngw.html">Web Applications and the
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|
Ubiquitous Web</a>, on 13 March 2006 at the <a
|
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href="http://www.webxcon.com/">Next Generation Web Conference</a>,
|
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Seoul, Korea</li>
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<li><a href="/2006/03/ubiws-intro.html">Outline</a> on 7 March 2006
|
|
to the Japan Members meeting of the <a
|
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href="/2006/02/ubiwebws-agenda.html">W3C Ubiquitous Web workshop</a></li>
|
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<li>My <a href="../../2006/02/woa/">Tech Talk on the Web of Applications</a>
|
|
at the Googleplex on 1st February 2006, Google recorded the talk, see the <a
|
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href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8950294834635667990">video</a></li>
|
|
<li><a href="/2006/01/ajax-speech.pdf">Applyng AJAX to add speech
|
|
services to Web browsers</a> on 31 January 2006 at <a
|
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href="http://www.avios.com/conference.htm">AVIOS/SpeechTek
|
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West</a></li>
|
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<li>Presentations on <a href="/2005/Talks/0621-dsr-mmi/">MMI Activity</a>
|
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and <a href="/2005/Talks/0621-dsr-ubiweb/">Ubiquitous Web</a> at <a
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href="/2005/03/MWeb-seminar.html"><em>Multimodal Web Applications
|
|
for Embedded Systems</em></a>, W3C seminar 21 June 2005 - Toulouse, France</li>
|
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<li>Demonstration of a text to speech extension for the Mozilla-Firefox
|
|
browser and its application to render RSS to speech at the <a
|
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href="http://www.w3.org/2005/03/02-TechPlenAgenda.html">W3C Technical
|
|
Plenary</a>, 2nd March 2005, Boston, MA.</li>
|
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<li>Presentation on the <a href="/2005/02/tp-2005-ubiweb.pdf">Ubiquitous
|
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Web</a> at W3C Technical Plenary, 2nd March 2005, Boston, MA.</li>
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<li><a href="css-mmi/">CSS Extensions for Multimodal Interaction</a>,
|
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written together with <a href="/People/maxf/">Max Froumentin</a>,
|
|
and introducing the principle of modality independence.</li>
|
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<li>Position paper for the <a href="/2004/09/mwi-workshop-cfp.html">Mobile
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|
Web Initiative Workshop</a>, 18-19th November 2004, Barcelona, Spain:
|
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<a href="/2004/10/mobiweb-ui.html">Winning users over with more attractive
|
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and more flexible mobile web applications</a> [<a href=
|
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"/2004/10/mwi-draggett.pdf">Slides</a>].</li>
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|
</ul>
|
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<h3 align="center"><em>The Ubiquitous Web</em></h3>
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<p>The Ubiquitous Web seeks to broaden the capabilities of browsers
|
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to enable new kinds of web applications, particularly those involving
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coordination with other devices. These applications involve identifying
|
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resources and managing them within the context of an application session.
|
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The resources can be remote as in a network printer and projector, or
|
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local, as in the estimated battery life, network signal strength, and
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audio volume level. The Ubiquitous Web will provide a framework for
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|
exposing device coordination capabilities to Web applications. I organized
|
|
and chaired a <a href="/2006/02/ubiwebws-agenda.html">W3C workshop on
|
|
the Ubiquitous Web</a> in Tokyo on 9-10 March 2006 as a means to share
|
|
use cases, research results, and implementation experience. The workshop
|
|
raised a number of security related issues, and the importance of
|
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extending the web application model out into the physical world of
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sensors and effectors. In March 2007 I launched and the <a href="/2007/uwa/">Ubiquitous Web Applications working group</a>. I organized
|
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a <a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/02/dmdwa-ws/">Workshop on declarative
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models of distributed web applications</a> in June 2007, in Dublin,
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Ireland, and plan to hold further workshops on related topics to guide W3C's standards activities in these areas.</p>
|
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<h3 align="center"><em>Voice Browsers</em> and <em>Multimodal
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Interaction</em></h3>
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<p>I ran a workshop in 1998 to look at the opportunities for W3C to
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take a role in extending the Web to support voice interaction as
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the means for browsing Web content. This led to the setting up of a
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<a href="/Voice/">Voice Browser activity</a> and a working group to
|
|
develop related standards. I was the W3C Activity Lead for Voice
|
|
Browsers until March 2005. Voice Browsers offer the means to access
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Web-based services over any telephone, or for hands & eyes free
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operation such as in a car. Voice interaction allows browsers to
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shrink in size as you no longer need the physical space for a high
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|
resolution display. The primary initial market is for replacing the
|
|
current generation of touch-tone voice menuing systems, so common
|
|
these days when you call up companies. Voice Browsers allow you to
|
|
use spoken commands rather than having to press "1" for this and "2"
|
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for that etc.</p>
|
|
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<p>My interest in multimodal interaction started years ago, and led
|
|
to work within the Voice Browser activity and more recently to a
|
|
new W3C <a href="/2002/mmi/">Multimodal activity</a> of which I am
|
|
the W3C Activity Lead. This work is still at an early stage, but aims
|
|
to weave together ideas for visual, aural and
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|
tactile interaction with the Web, offering users the means to
|
|
choose whether to use their eyes or ears, and fingers or speech as
|
|
appropriate to the context in which they find themselves.</p>
|
|
|
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<p>Whilst I was working for <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/">HP
|
|
Labs</a> I developed a voice browser together with a student
|
|
(Guillaume Belrose) to test out ideas for using context free
|
|
grammars for more flexible voice interaction dialogs. The
|
|
applications were written in XML using a language we called <a
|
|
href="/Voice/TalkML">TalkML</a>. More recently, I have begun to
|
|
study ideas for the use of natural language in multimodal
|
|
systems, based upon event driven nested state machines, and inspired
|
|
by <a href="http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~harel/">David
|
|
Harel</a>'s work on State Charts. <a href="/People/maxf/">Max
|
|
Froumentin</a> and I, explored this in some ideas for <a
|
|
href="css-mmi/">extending CSS to describe interaction</a> based
|
|
upon the idea of <em>text as an abstract modality</em>. Whilst
|
|
CSS is perhaps easier for authors, an XML based representation
|
|
for state machines is likely to provide greater flexibility, and
|
|
this is now being pursued within the Voice Browser working group.
|
|
I am currently working on developing a means to integrate speech
|
|
with web pages via an open source proxy speech server based on
|
|
HTTP. This will be usable with any modern web browser without
|
|
the need for plugins, and is being developed to enable widespread
|
|
experimentation with multimodal web applications.</p>
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
<p>Some talks I have presented on voice interaction include:</p>
|
|
|
|
<ul>
|
|
<li>
|
|
<p><a href="multimodal-2002Nov.ppt">Multimodal Interaction</a>,
|
|
(PowerPoint), MIT Lab for Computer Science, 15th November 2002</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>
|
|
<p>The Voice area is hotting up, and there are frequent conferences
|
|
devoted to it. Here is <a href="/2000/10/VoicePortals/">an
|
|
introduction to W3C's work on voice standards</a> I gave to the
|
|
Voice Portal conference, held in London on 11th October 2000</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>
|
|
<p>For a presentation on the Voice Browser Activity, see the <a
|
|
href="/Voice/2000/DDay/">Developer's Day talk</a> given on 19th May
|
|
2000 in the Mobile track at <a href="http://www9.org/">WWW'9</a>
|
|
conference held in Amsterdam, See also <a
|
|
href="/2000/Talks/WWW9-Mobile-Web/">Tomorrow's Web</a>, presented
|
|
at <a href="http://www9.org/">WWW'9</a> on May 16, and covering the
|
|
challenges of dealing with an every increasing range of ways of
|
|
accessing the Web.</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>
|
|
<p>I organized and presented at the <a
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href="/2000/09/Papers/Agenda.html">W3C/WAP Workshop on the
|
|
Multimodal Web</a>, Hong Kong, 5-6 September 2000.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>This workshop addressed the convergence of W3C and WAP
|
|
standards, and the emerging importance of speech recognition and
|
|
synthesis for the Mobile Web. Read the position papers and summary
|
|
of break-out sessions.</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
<li style="list-style: none">
|
|
<p>See also the talk on <a
|
|
href="/Talks/1999/09/15-london-voice/slide1.html">Voice
|
|
Browsers</a> as presented to the WAP Forum, in London on 15th
|
|
September 1999.</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
|
|
<li>
|
|
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0514-VB-DDay/">Style
|
|
sheets for Voice Browsers</a>, as presented at the Developer's Day
|
|
at WWW8 in Toronto, on 14th May 1999.</p>
|
|
</li>
|
|
</ul>
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>Computers with Common Sense</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<!-- <h4 class="subtitle">... the next frontier for computing ...</h4> -->
|
|
|
|
<p>I am intrigued with the idea of giving computers a modicum of
|
|
common sense, or in other words a practical knowledge of everyday
|
|
things. This would have huge benefits, for instance, much smarter
|
|
ways of searching for information, and more flexible user interfaces
|
|
to applications. While it might sound easy, this is in fact very
|
|
difficult and has defeated traditional approaches based upon
|
|
mathematical logic and AI (artificial intelligence). More recently,
|
|
work on speech recognition and natural language processing using
|
|
statistical methods have shown great promise. Statistical approaches
|
|
offer a way out of the combinatorial explosion faced by AI, and I
|
|
am excited by work in cognitive science on relevancy theory and the
|
|
potential for applying statistical learning techniques to
|
|
semantics, learning on the fly or from tagged corpora.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>My long term aim is to understand this better and to put it into
|
|
practice in the form of a multi-user conversational agent that is
|
|
accessible over the Web, so that we can harness the power of the Web
|
|
to allow volunteers to teach the system common sense knowledge by
|
|
conversing with it in English (and eventually other languages).
|
|
I plan to work on an open source broad coverage statistical natural
|
|
language processor for parsing and generation, and a relevancy-based
|
|
inference system for natural language semantics. Here are <a
|
|
href="Sense/">some more details</a>. If you are interested in
|
|
collaborating on this, please contact me.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3 id="tidy" align="center"><em>Tidying up your markup!</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy">"HTML tidy"</a>
|
|
is an open source utility for tidying up HTML. Tidy is composed
|
|
from an HTML parser and an HTML pretty printer. The parser goes to
|
|
considerable lengths to correct common markup errors. It also
|
|
provides advice on how to make your pages more accessible to people
|
|
with disabilities, and can be used to convert HTML content into XML
|
|
as XHTML. Tidy is W3C open source and available free. It has been
|
|
successfully compiled on a large number of platforms, and is being
|
|
integrated into many HTML authoring tools. Recently the maintenance
|
|
of Tidy has been taken over by a group of dedicated volunteers on
|
|
SourceForge, see: <a
|
|
href="http://tidy.sourceforge.net/">http://tidy.sourceforge.net/</a>.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>XForms — the future of Web
|
|
forms</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>A few years ago, I set up a working group that is focusing on
|
|
standards for the next generation of Web forms. The key idea is to
|
|
separate the user interface and presentation from the underlying
|
|
data model and logic. This allows content providers to plug in
|
|
different user interfaces as befits different devices, for example,
|
|
voice browsers, cell phones, palm-tops, television and desktop
|
|
machines. <a href="/MarkUp/Forms">XForms</a> builds on XML to
|
|
transfer form data as structured data.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>XForms whilst rooted in forms, is also about the common building
|
|
blocks for interactive Web applications. The aim is to make it
|
|
easier to build powerful Web applications in a world where
|
|
increasingly everything will be interconnected. Web servers, for
|
|
instance have now shrunk to the size of a single chip. We want to
|
|
make it easier to achieve the layout and behavior you want without
|
|
the need to struggle with complex scripts or having to hack layout
|
|
using tables and spacer gifs etc.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3 id="ezmath" align="center"><em>An easy way to add Math to Web
|
|
pages</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>In 1993 I first started work on how to incorporate mathematical
|
|
expressions into Web pages. This work led me to set up the W3C Math
|
|
working group which has produced the <a href="/Math">MathML</a>
|
|
specification. MathML is an XML application and very verbose. In
|
|
search of an easier to learn and more concise notation, I have been
|
|
inspired by how people say mathematical expressions when reading
|
|
aloud. The result is now available for downloading as a plugin and
|
|
standalone editing tool for the <a
|
|
href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/EzMath">EzMath</a> notation
|
|
developed together with Davy Batsalle from ENST. EzMath is
|
|
particularly simple to use as well as providing a convenient way to
|
|
author MathML. Have a look and see how much smaller and more
|
|
obvious EzMath is compared to MathML! I later worked on a
|
|
reimplementation of EzMath with a filter for mapping XHTML+EZMath
|
|
to XHTML+MathML.</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>Easier ways to add style and behaviour to
|
|
Web pages</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>I am interested in ideas for easier ways to apply style and
|
|
behaviour to HTML and XML documents. My approach has been to look
|
|
at ways to extend ECMAScript to combine extensible cascading style
|
|
rules (CSS) with object-oriented scripting. I sketched out the
|
|
ideas in a proposal called <a href="spice">Spice</a>, which was
|
|
officially submitted to W3C by Hewlett-Packard, and led to work
|
|
with IBM, Microsoft and Netscape in <a
|
|
href="http://www.ecma.ch/">ECMA</a> on a new edition of ECMAScript.
|
|
This has taken a long time to develop but is now nearing
|
|
completion.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p><img src="xhtmlbook.jpg" align="right" alt="book cover" border="0"
|
|
width="120" height="155" hspace="10" /></p>
|
|
|
|
<!--<h3 align="center"><em>"<a
|
|
href="http://www.wrox.com/Consumer/Store/Details.asp?ISBN=1861003439">
|
|
Beginning XHTML</a>"</em></h3>-->
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>"Beginning XHTML"</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>XHTML follows in the footsteps of HTML, combining the benefits
|
|
of its easy to understand vocabulary with the versatile syntax of
|
|
XML to create an Extensible HTML, which will be easily accessible
|
|
not only by today's desktop browsers, but by other equipment - such
|
|
as cell phones - without the processing power to interpret the now
|
|
lenient rules of HTML. Anyone who wants to learn how to create a
|
|
Web page will need to learn XHTML. Sadly this book is now out of
|
|
print.</p>
|
|
|
|
<br clear="all" /><img
|
|
src="html4.gif" alt="book cover" align="left" border="0"
|
|
width="120" height="147" hspace="10" />
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>"Raggett on HTML 4"</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<!--<h3 align="center"><em>"<a
|
|
href="http://cseng.aw.com/book/0,3828,0201178052,00.html">Raggett
|
|
on HTML 4</a>"</em></h3>-->
|
|
|
|
<p>'Raggett on HTML 4' was published (1998) by Addison Wesley, ISBN
|
|
0-201-17805-2. The intelligent person's guide to HTML 4, as written
|
|
by one of the chief architects of HTML, and editor of the HTML+,
|
|
3.0, 3.2 and 4.0 specifications. Here is
|
|
<a href="book4/ch01.html">Chapter 1 - introduction to the World
|
|
Wide Web</a>, and <a href="book4/ch02.html">Chapter 2 - a history of
|
|
HTML</a>. See also these notes on <a href="the-early-days-of-the-Web.html">my
|
|
personal involvement with the early days</a>. Sadly this book too is
|
|
now out of print.<br clear="all" />
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>Subsetting and Extending HTML</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>The range of browser platforms is undergoing a massive expansion
|
|
with set-top boxes for televisions, handhelds, cellphones, voice
|
|
browsers and embedded devices as well as conventional desktop
|
|
systems. Defining HTML as the lowest common denominator of these
|
|
devices would fall far short of the potential for the upper end. As
|
|
a result, W3C has worked on ways to <a
|
|
href="/TR/xhtml-modularization/">modularize HTML</a> and how to
|
|
combine it with other tag sets, for instance <a
|
|
href="/Graphics/SVG">SVG</a> (W3C's web drawing standard), <a
|
|
href="/AudioVideo/">SMIL</a> (used for multimedia
|
|
synchronization), <a href="/Math/">MathML</a> (mathematical
|
|
expressions) and <a href="/RDF/">RDF</a> (used for representing
|
|
metadata).</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>A key ingredient in this, is the means to formally specify a
|
|
<b>document profile</b> that defines what tag sets can be used
|
|
together, what image formats, the level of style sheet support,
|
|
which scripting libraries can be used etc. The document profile
|
|
provides the basis for interoperability guarantees. It also makes
|
|
it feasible to provide transformation tools for converting content
|
|
from one profile to another.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>I developed a way of formalizing document profiles as a set of
|
|
modular assertions, that break free of the limitations of document
|
|
type definitions (DTDs) as used in SGML and XML. The approach is
|
|
being named <a href="dtdgen/Docs/">Assertion Grammars</a>. An early
|
|
spin-off from this work is a tool for generating DTDs called
|
|
<b>dtdgen</b>. When I get time, I plan to combine this with ideas
|
|
developed for XForms, to produce a powerful new way to describe XML
|
|
document integrity constraints that bursts free of the static
|
|
nature of XML Schema, to cover dynamic constraints expressed in
|
|
fuctional and logical terms.</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>Much later in August 2006, when trying to write modular schemas
|
|
for an XML grammar for DOM events, I came up with a way to combine
|
|
assertion grammars with <a href="http://relaxng.org/">RelaxNG</a>.
|
|
The result is expressed in XML and allows you to write definitions
|
|
that extend earlier ones, but without the need to modify the definitions
|
|
they extend. This is in contrast to RelaxNG, which allows definitions
|
|
closer to the document's root element to refer to definitions that
|
|
are closer to the leaves in the document tree, but not the other way
|
|
around. The problem with the top down nature of most grammar formalisms
|
|
is that if you want to add a new definition, you can't just compose
|
|
sets of grammar rules, since the new definition has to be referenced
|
|
from the old, and that means changing the old definition. My
|
|
approach borrows from type definitions for object oriented programming
|
|
languages as well as from the tree regular expressions that form the
|
|
basis for RelaxNG. The new approach is called <a href="exert.html"
|
|
title="XML assertions"><strong>Exert</strong></a> as a contraction for XML
|
|
assertions.</p>
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
<h3 align="center"><em>Speeding up the Web!</em></h3>
|
|
|
|
<p>I am very much concerned with scaling issues for the Web. Right
|
|
now the Web is still in its infancy. Techniques that sort of work
|
|
today, won't work for tomorrow. My ideas are based around the
|
|
notion of service replication as a replacement for file caching.
|
|
DNS is a poor basis for naming resources and I am interested in
|
|
higher performance and more appropriate alternatives. With a
|
|
distributed approach based on cooperative resource sharing and load
|
|
balancing, perhaps we can find a way to make the web a more
|
|
effective medium for durable electronic records.</p>
|
|
-->
|
|
|
|
<!--
|
|
<p>When I formed the HTTP working group in 1994, I
|
|
tried to get the IETF to work on a next generation protocol, but
|
|
it has taken until now to get enough people interested in this.
|
|
W3C is currently working on <a
|
|
href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP-NG/">HTTP-NG</a> as a
|
|
first step, but further work is needed before the service
|
|
distribution concept can be effectively realize.</p>
|
|
-->
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Email: <a
|
|
href="mailto:dsr@w3.org">dsr@w3.org</a>, phone: +44 1225
|
|
866 240 <!--mobile: +44 7917 839 038 (GSM)--></p>
|
|
</body>
|
|
</html>
|
|
|