Slashdot Mirror
U.S. House of Representatives Makes Resolutions in XML
RennieScum writes: "The House of Representatives is turning to technology with their test of XML for use with resolutions according to this article. It reports that the HR has made 100 DTDs and uses Microsoft Word and a special converter to do the job. Testing has begun and their goal is to start using it in January of next year. See also http://xml.house.gov/ And it looks like the DTDs will be free to use and distribute!"
Now we can all make our own crappy laws using XML! More downloads for Xerces.
Great, DTDs are obselete by now and Schemes have taken over.
If the government creates something original for it's use how can there be any arguement as to if it should be availible to the people..? (top secret, national security stuff aside)??
will it help create better laws?
no big sig
I guess that's the government for ya... why in the *hell* would you use DTDs when XML Schemas are so much better???
Oh well... at least it's a step forward - I'll applaud them for that.
A|Q|U|A
This is the government for you.
When every tool under the sun is using XML schemas, the House is announcing their support for DTDs.
I guess it's still a step forward.
A speech...
Going to http://xml.house.gov/Members/mbr107.xml renders a perfectly viewable directory of representatives in Internet Explorer, but Mozilla dumps it all as raw text in one giant paragraph. What gives?!?
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
So the government tries to update their use of technology to use an open format like XML and publish the DTD's and inevitably the first 10 slashdot posts complain that the government is too behind the times because that don't use new (and better) XML schemas! Talk about geeks! :)
Who said Freedom was Fair?
It reports that the HR has made 100 DTDs and uses Microsoft Word and a special converter to do the job.
But if they really want an intractible problem, they should use XML/Schema!
Free DTDs!!! I LOVE DTDs! Wooohoo! We definitely don't have enough of those already!
And who says a Republican government is only out to help the big guys. Free DTDs for all!
Happy 4th everyone! Damn I'm proud to be an American today. Free DTDs!!
-Russ
Me
It's because of the XSL style sheet they use. You can find it at http://xml.house.gov/Members/member-sorter-vb.xsl.
(Use view source to see the actual XSLT). Notice that they use VBScript!
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Check out the source for http://xml.house.gov/Members/mbr107.xml and then the corresponding schema: http://xml.house.gov/Members/member-schema.xml
Who said Freedom was Fair?
From the cited page...
...
Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, these DTDs are not subject to copyright protection and are in the public domain.
These DTDs can be redistributed and/or modified freely provided that any derivative works bear some notice that they are derived from it, and any modified versions bear some notice that they have been modified.
Sorry, cupcakes, that's not how the public domain works. If you release it into the public domain, you no longer have *any* control whatsoever upon the modification, reuse, or redistribution of the work. The required notice clause listed above in invalid.
Cite, cite (#3), cite.
Kuroth
The flag icon for Slashdot's 'United States' section is missing its first stripe - the stripe that represents Delaware, the first state admitted to the Union. While a simple oversight could be forgiven, it should be known from here on out that Slashdot is in fact aware of the missing stripe, and even worse, refuses to do anything about it!
This vulgar flag desecration and rabid anti-Delawarism must be put to a stop. Let the Slashdot crew know that we will not accept a knowingly mutilated flag or the insinuation that Delawarians deserve to be cut out of the union. I ask you, what has Delaware done to deserve this insolence, this wanton disregard, this bigotry?
This intentional disregard of a vital national symbol is unpatriotic. Why, the flippant remarks CmdrTaco made about our flag border on terrorism! I urge you to join the protest in each 'United States' story. Sacrifice your karma for your country by pointing out this injustice. Let's all work together to get our flag back. Can you give your country any less?
The flag icon for Slashdot's 'United States' section is missing its first stripe - the stripe that represents Delaware, the first state admitted to the Union. While a simple oversight could be forgiven, it should be known from here on out that Slashdot is in fact aware of the missing stripe, and even worse, refuses to do anything about it!
This vulgar flag desecration and rabid anti-Delawarism must be put to a stop. Let the Slashdot crew know that we will not accept a knowingly mutilated flag or the insinuation that Delawarians deserve to be cut out of the union. I ask you, what has Delaware done to deserve this insolence, this wanton disregard, this bigotry?
This intentional disregard of a vital national symbol is unpatriotic. Why, the flippant remarks CmdrTaco made about our flag border on terrorism! I urge you to join the protest in each 'United States' story. Sacrifice your karma for your country by pointing out this injustice. Let's all work together to get our flag back. Can you give your country any less?
...even if they are using a what some on this site would consider 'suboptimal' technology, the government's incorporation of ANY technology is better than none at all. Hell, the Senate doesn't allow laptops on the Senate floor! Hopefully, as the 'mainstream' government begins to use more open-standards technology and technology in general, they will be more willing to defend it against M$ and any other company that tries to 'embrace and extend' it.
My $0.02
<bill status="proposed" name="CBDTPA">
<sponsor name="Fritz Hollings" constituency="Disney">
<violatesAmendment number="1">
<violatesAmendment number="4">
<contribution donor="Disney" amount="24500.00">
<contribution donor="AOL" amount="33000.00">
<contribution donor="National Association of Broadcasters" amount="25000.00">
<excuse>Promote broadband adoption</excuse>
<excuse>Save the arts from extinction</excuse>
</bill>
The article actualy says It shows how each line, name and term has an identifying tag, created by exporting the document from a word processor such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect into a special XML template.
That would make sense since most of the US government still uses WordPerfect. WordPerfect comes with extensive XML publishing functions including making your own DTDs.
BTW Corel just announced that a new version of Ventura Publisher is coming out in the fall with cross platform XML publishing built in. The next version of WordPerfect is also going to have a much better XML publisher now that they bought XMetaL.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Don't you get it? Think about it.. the Army creates a computer game and releases it July 4 in an attempt to get good will with the 31337 QU4K3 D00dz..
:)
This is just the same thing: the House of Representatives releases support and DTDs for an awesome, buzzword-compliant, flashy XML technology on July 4 in an attempt to get good will with the hacker nerds
A quick question: the url just talks about the House of Representatives. Will the Senate be using these as well? Why not? Wouldn't you think that Congress would want uniform reporting requirements between both houses?
Either way, Senate or no, newest-standards-compliance or not (be polite and maybe they'll even fix that), this is really, really, cool. Maybe this is a first step toward making it so that at times that the government wants you to submit electronic documents (for example, resumes, or comments during the public comment period of an antitrust trial) they will accept DocBook.
VOTE
-- super ugly ultraman
heh, their XML documents don't even come close to validating. they say it's all beta, but wow, that's impressive. good to know my taxes are being put to good use - high-quality design. i think nsgmls says it best about their design:
value of attribute "regeneration" cannot be "yes"; must be one of "yes-regeneration", "no-regeneration"
<?xml:stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="member-sorter-vb.xsl"?>
in the 6th line of the above-referenced xsl document being used to transform the xml:
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl" language="VBScript">
basically, they're using the MSXML parser to do their XSLT on the client-side. I've been working with this stuff for a while, and there are a lot of advantages to doing this. The MSXML parser is a lot more mature & well documented than whatever comes built into NS6 & Mozilla(if you know better, please point me to some good resources for working with client-side XSLT on these browsers-- i've looked everywhere).
But it seems to me that public accessibility to to these documents should preclude this, and demand that the parsing be done on the server-side.
Beyond that, the fact that they're using VBScript instead of JavaScript for their scripting is indicative of the fact that the people in charge of this initiative are hardcore MS-Heads -- ther's no reason for it, you can do some extremely complex stuff with the MSXML parser and JavaScript.
I know this is paranoid, but my past experience has been that even people inside MS use JScript if they can avoid VBScript... unless they're forced to use it for marketing reasons. Wonder who's in charge of this initiative.
Open tools? Not likely:
: dt="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes">
<Schema xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-data"
xmlns
i think that they could have saved a buck or two by using open office. although, if it's not their money that they're spending, i doubt they care.
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
-
http://www.schemavalid.com/faq/xml-schema.html#a4
-
http://www.netcrucible.com/xslt/msxml-faq.htm#Q13
-
http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/XMLData-Reduced.htm
-
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-XML-data/
And thanks to this poster for pointing it out.Who said Freedom was Fair?
And it looks like the DTDs will be free to use and distribute!
Great, now I can make my own crazy laws! Yipee!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I thought the US Government was starting to learn that Microsoft software was to be avoided. By finding more uses for it, I am afraid that it is obviously not true.
Dig the notice at xml.house.gov -- The document type definitions (DTDs) presented on this site were developed at the U.S. House of Representatives by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, these DTDs are not subject to copyright protection and are in the public domain. These DTDs are in draft form. The U.S. House of Representatives assumes no responsibility whatsoever for their use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about their quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. These DTDs can be redistributed and/or modified freely provided that any derivative works bear some notice that they are derived from it, and any modified versions bear some notice that they have been modified. (emphasis mine)
...
Either these DTDs are copyrighted and they can place restrictions upon distribution or they arn't. This need people have to control everything is just driving me crazy. The whole reason for Title 17 Section 105 is so that the Government can't put restrictions on this kind of stuff (bills, laws, etc.)
Why use DTDs?
Have you ever tried to use XML Schema? It's a bloated peice of ****. Relax is tons better. And for the government's purposes, DTDs work much better and are an ISO standard.
I'd like to wish a happy july 4th to the country that funds Israel's terrorism, created the DMCA, and generally wipes it's ass on the rest of the world.
Happy July 4th you filthy pig fuckers.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
.... that the president can use an XSLT to make a bill into law?
But so is the constitution and noone much complains about upgrading that to version 2.0
"And it looks like the DTDs will be free to use and distribute"
Ummmmm if you're using a validating xml parser, you HAVE to have access to the dtd!!! All DTDs have to be free to use!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
XML is dependent on unicode, as the US Government site's reference states. Follow the W3C to unicode ,
Unicode is required by modern standards such as XML, Java, ECMAScript (JavaScript), LDAP, CORBA 3.0, WML, etc., and is the official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646.
Unicode is owned by Unicode Incorporated and all of it's documents and standarts are issued under a restrictive license with a unilaeral change clause:
Modification by Unicode Unicode shall have the right to modify this Agreement at any time by posting it to this site. The user may not assign any part of this Agreement without Unicodes prior written consent.
Dare I compare this evil arangement to ASCII and other predecesors? To have IBM, M$, Sun and other OWN the very format your data takes and to be able to change it and break previous implimentations at whim, and YOU may not? Who wants to be a plump nickle that any thing vaugly resembling unicode in the future will be called a "derivative" and it's distribution halted? Is this not a collusion of comercial software vendors to control information at it's most basic representation? Does anyone else here see this as the ultimate extention of copyright? Evil, Evil, Evil.
I'd rather see the US government continue to publish in the American Standard for Information Interchange. This extensible standard is no standard at all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A rare piece of insight indeed.
Listen up kiddies.
No Comment.
Using XML to describe XML simply makes sense. DTD's are antiquated, and I can't even transform against them for meta-meta-data tasks.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I agree. Mod parent up.
Using XML to describe XML simply makes sense.
In this case RELAX is far superior, it has both an XML and a non-XML represenatation and is build on top of a clean model by some brilliant fellas.
XML Schema, OTOH, is just a bloated mess.
DTD's are antiquated
Perhaps, but they are readable. XML Schema is anything but readable.
and I can't even transform against them for meta-meta-data tasks
Oh, now that's something you do every day. Using XML syntax for everything is just plain stupid. IF you have to do transforms, use RELAX, it has a cleaner model anyway... doing transforms on XML Schema is like pulling teeth.
You forgot Antarctica. It's an enemy, too. Everything that isn't ignorant, good-old-boy Republican is an enemy.
Give the parent post that 5th point. He's right.
Isn't free?
Standard HTML is just as searchable as long as you use the tags properly. One does have to wonder if M$ "encouraged" them to use this format.
I get seperate paragraphs (yet mashed together), yet I can paste the data to notepad or this text box and it looks even worse.
I can't post it because of this error:
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 6.2)
Get your Unix fortune now!
http://xml.house.gov/hr100_eh.xmls e.gov/hr6_ath.xml
http://xml.hou
http://xml.house.gov/hr10.xml
all just code
Get your Unix fortune now!
Internet Explorer 6 worked fine for me. Why not ditch Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera and go for a real web browser. There is a reason that IE is the #1 browser on over 93% of its user base. It is proven and *gasp* works.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" >
-<Flags>
-<Flag type="American">
<symbol type="Stars">
<count>50</count>
<background>navy</background>
<color>white</color>
</symbol>
<symbol type="Stripes">
<stripeno=1>
<stripeval>Deleware</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=2>
<stripeval>Pennsylvania</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=3>
<stripeval>New Jersey</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=4>4</stripeno>
<stripeval>Georgia</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=5>
<stripeval>Connecticut</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=6>
<stripeval>Massachusetts</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=7>
<stripeval>Maryland</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=8>
<stripeval>South Carolina</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=9>
<stripeval>New Hampshire</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=10>
<stripeval>Virginia</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=11>
<stripeval>New York</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=12>
<stripeval>North Carolina</stripeval>
<color>white</color>
</stripeno>
<stripeno=13>
<stripeval>Rhode Island</stripeval>
<color>red</color>
</stripeno>
</symbol>
</flag>
</flags>
Note: I'm from New Mexico, so I know what it feels like when a state gets left out. Rest assurred, my flag includes Deleware!
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Congress has always been full of lyahs and chetahs. That it's now full of schemas is really no surpise.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
No, this doesn't mean you can make your own laws. =P
Mmmm. Sig.
a commitment to open data formats. Even where we don't get open source code, this guar-
antees that we don't get the most virulent form of 'vendor lock-in', where failure to pay the
latest rent increase means we can't even access our own data anymore.
---
Fight Page Widening! Make your own line <br>:reaks.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
They're already using vb-script in their xsl stylesheet, I can see Microsoft trying to weasel their way in here (or some Microsoft-based consulting company). We need to get some open source software that can be of use to them, and hopefully to state governments as well. Anyone game?
Do you have ESP?
The real problem is that XML itself is too new. DTDs turned out to be too clumsy and limited, so schemas replaced them. What Congress really needs to do is wait 2-5 years for XML to settle down. By jumping in prematurely, Congress is running into pitfalls like the use of DTDs.
Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. - Yoda
--aything with links is essential to reforming legal texts into something useful. In the US, the laws are written in English. It should be the case that anybody with a high school education could read them and understand them with ease. The main reason lawyers get so involved in anything that has the slightest concern with the law is the twisted textual markup that is currently used makes the documents incomprehensible and extremely difficult to understand in full because of the need to obtain the hundreds of essential external references. This is wonderful news.
Even the stilted style of language referred to as legalese is partly a product of the need for a meta context within legal writing. This is long overdo, but awesome nonetheless.
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Didn't any of the XML supporters every study parsing in their CS classes? Or are they just web control freaks that didn't bother with anything past highschool. Oh wait, I'm talking about w3c so of course they are contorl freaks. At least most people ingored them.
The problem with XML is that it diverges into two dinstict worst cases. One requires and infinite amount of memory, the other and infinite amount of time. Both of these are bad things and much study of algorithms is about avoiding both of these conditions. Odd thing is most people in the IT field today have no clue about why this happens or even that it can happen. Of course these are the same programmers that coudn't describe a quicksort if they had to or descibe something in BNF grammar. And we wonder why most programmers today just produce garbage.
Old men with VCRs flashing 12:00 won't be able to use this. Too complicated. They will need people to do it for them. I'll do it if the pay is good.
How ya like dat?