Extensible Markup Language (XML) approved by WWW Consortium



The New York Times on the Web
June 30, 1999
Web Consortium Approves XML Design
By The Associated Press

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- An Internet standards body has approved coding
specifications that will allow the designing of Web pages using Extensible
Markup Language, or XML. 

The World Wide Web Consortium on Tuesday approved a standard for using
``style sheets'' in conjunction with XML, giving Web designers a wider
range of design and display options when using XML. 

Style sheets allow documents in an XML format to be easily converted into
HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, which is the programming language used
for displaying documents on the Internet. 

XML documents can be coded to identify any portion of a document, such as a
quote from a specific person. With this coding, search engines can give
users more refined search, finding only those documents where the specified
person is quoted. XML coding also could specify the zip code or codes that
a document's contents refer to, allowing searches to find information about
a specific zip code. 

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 browser already supports the new
specifications, while future versions of Netscape are expected to. 

The World Wide Web Consortium was founded in 1994 to develop common
standards for Web design. The consortium is jointly hosted by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institut National de Recherche
en Informatique et en Automatique based in France and Keio University in
Japan. 

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company 


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