QR Codes in your documents

QR codes are one method to ease the information exchange between classical medias and mobile devices (common usage direct link to the corresponding web page in paper based catalogs, manuals, ....).

But how to create those QR codes without too much complexity?

Google Chart API provides:

• chart wizard to create QR codes and corresponding styling
• infographics API to create static images based on posted chart definition (URLs)

viola. You now have a easy to use backend for creation of QR codes using e.g XSL-T.

The following code is taken from "QR Codes in DTIA Output" which shows how to create QR codes for PDF output of the DITA-OT using XSL-FO:

<!-- Insert QR code -->
<xsl:template match="*[contains(@class,' topic/xref ')]
                      [contains(@outputclass, 'qrcode')]">
<fo:external-graphic>
<xsl:attribute name="src"><xsl:value-of select="concat('https://chart.
googleapis.com/chart?cht=qr&amp;chs=100x100&amp;chl=', .)"/>
</xsl:attribute>
</fo:external-graphic>
</xsl:template>

 see: http://ditanauts.org/2012/03/14/qr-codes-in-dita-ouput/

Sample (code: <img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=200x100&cht=qr&chl=http%3A%2F%2Ftrent-intovalue.blogspot.de%2F2006%2F05%2Ftrent-definition.html" width="200" height="100" alt="" />):

HTML5 and XML

HTML5 will be the main syntax for the Internet in the next few years and will replace the today most frequently used HTML 4.01. Main driver for this shift was Google and is now adapted by all major browser / OS vendors and organizations.

The main advantage of HTML5 are the new amount of build in features which reflect most of the todays common requirements for web based applications.


Why XHTML 1.0/1.1 failed so far? It mainly was much to strict for the web community - the web and also the world is a non perfect place and therefore HTML5 is much more suitable to fit into this world than the XML based approach of XHTML can provide.

Does this mean XML for the web has loose and does not make sense at all. No there is still space for the XML based standards beside HTML5:

• XHTML5
  XML serialization of HTML 5 with stricter parsing rules
  mime-type: application/xhtml+xml
• Polyglot XHTML (see http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/#polyglot-documents)

Major advantage of using XML to express the content on the web is a much more easier way to integrate the resulting content into XML processing chains using regular XML transformation tool chains.

• Easier Reuse content for different channels using XSLT / XQuery
• Retrieve content as XHTML and extract only dedicated parts (views) required for different use-case
• Store and request the content using XQuery based infrastructure

The drawback is that today only the newest browser support the mime-type "application/xhtml" therefore for a while Polyglot XHTML might be a good opportunity to deliver the mass and keep processing use-cases doable.

A good summary of Polyglot XHTML and related XML based alternatives for HTML5 can be found here: http://www.xmlplease.com/xhtml/xhtml5polyglot/

XSLT Version 2.1

XSLT Version 2.1 Draft published. As mentioned in the published draft the main goal is making streaming of transformation easier for implementors.

Streaming makes life easier whenever you have to process huge input streams of information to reduce memory footprint and deliver already processed chunks to the next consumer before the complete stream is successful processed.

On the other hand XSLT 2.0 which is a recommendation since 3 years is not widely adopted from implementors of XSLT engines -- Saxon, AltovaXML and few commercial ones-- so far.

Why? The main reason is complexity compared to the corresponding benefit. The implementation of a XSLT engine passes the 2.0 conformance tests is expensive and complex compared to the benefit for most users / use-cases. As in any commercial product each new feature / requirement should be qualified against the value and cost / effort it brings into the standard.

The interesting question would be -- how to measure benefits of a feature? How to interview the "users" of a standard? There is no trivial answer and that might be the main reason why standards tend to get over complex.

identify content: powerful but tricky

regular expression and xpath are two approaches to identify a matching subset of content within a given amount of content for further usage. the first one based on plain text the second one based on xml.

both are powerful but if you not using it on a day by day basis are tricky and error prone. error prone means that you have to avoid all edge cases where a given expression shouldn't match but it does or the other way around where a given expression should match but it doesn't.

if you work in XML related world you often need both approaches e.g. using XSLT or XQuery.

there are few commercial IDE's which helping out to develop the right expression for the required use case but there are two which i'm often use dedicated to help you dealing either with regular expressions or xpath

SketchPath

powerful standalone tool to create and verify xpath expression. support for xpath 2.0 and most features you ask for in this context. this tool is based on well-known Saxon for xpath 2.0 and .net subsystem for xpath 1.0

home: http://pgfearo.googlepages.com/

Regulator

powerful standalone tool to create and verify regular expression. with buildin regex analyser and on-the-fly validation, code generation (for .net and vb only), ....

download: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/regulator/Regulator20Bin.zip?modtime=1189740236&big_mirror=0