so…

Making it much easier to format DocBook documents.

Do incomplete grammars have a place in a world of modular Invisible XML?

Announcing the First International Symposium on Invisible XML, a free and online event. The call for presentations is open now!

What does it mean for an iXML grammar to be modular? From a purely practical perspective, it means you can reuse rules defined in other grammars. But how does it work?

I can haz SVG? I can!

Modularity is an iXML feature that’s still very much in the experimental stage. My first attempt is available in NineML version 3.3.2.

XMLn’ter? I decided I could support marked sections identified with entity references.

Introducing a curated, crowd-sourced (that’s you) list of markup-related standards.

I still want XML out. I still always want XML out.

Another surprising (to me) observation about the XML grammar for XML.

The grammar for XML grammars is infinitely ambiguous. That came as a surprise to me.

Could :: Couldn’t. Should :: Shouldn’t. Would :: Wouldn’t. XML :: XMLn’t.

Thoughts from the Husband of an Uncivil Woman.

I’ve migrated and updated my “Saxon XInclude” processor.

I didn’t intend to spend all morning fussing with dependencies, but at least I got a weblog posting out of it. And maybe I’ve tossed some stones off the path for next time.

The annual markup geekfest that is Balisage is happening next week! I’ve published the schedule in an .ics file again this year.

Maybe it’s time to start collecting “tips and tricks” for XProc pipelines? Perhaps I should revamp exproc.org? Tip: how can I make an empty sequence into an empty document?

In the end, I did automate it.

That’s a trip and a half in early June, 2025.

It’s the switching costs that get you.

It would be difficult to develop and release a complex piece of software without a build tool. At the same time, a build tool is a complex piece of software that is very frustrating when it gets in the way.

Pipelines inside pipelines with pipelines using pipelines for pipelines to do pipelines because pipelines. Pipelines!

I’ve pushed an update for the XML Resolver, 6.0.13, and a patch on the legacy V5 branch, 5.3.0, to address a security vulnerability.

An updated little hack to leverage Saxon for evaluating XPath expressions in Emacs.

A little hack to leverage Saxon for evaluating XPath expressions in Emacs.

Making common things easy with a little XML Calabash hack.

As my holiday winds down (Happy New Year, by the way!), I’ve published one more XML Calabash 3.x release. I’ve also started pushing them to a snapshots repository.

Using iXML to parse a command line interface.

That sure is a dull title. If I cared about “engagement”, I’d find a way to stick “interactive XProc pipeline debugger” or “Schematron assertions in pipelines” into it. But I don’t, really. Care that is. ’s all true, though.

The story of XML Calabash 3.x has some twists and turns, but the last few alphas have passed all the tests and it’s finally possible to start thinking about some of the fun things.