The XML Summer School runs at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, from Sunday 15th to Friday 20th September 2024. The week-long event is made up of courses which range from the basics of XML to advanced topics in linked data, web design, and publishing.
Your support for our advertisers helps cover the cost of hosting, research, and maintenance of this FAQ
The XML FAQ — Frequently-Asked Questions about the Extensible Markup Language
Section 1: Basics
Q 1.15: Where do I find more information about XML?
Online and offline resources
Adam Retter writes:
XML Slack Workspace
There's a new Slack Workspace for the XML Community announced with a link in an article on XML.com. This is a vendor independent workspace, hosted by Lauren Wood and XML.com, and equally open to XSLT, XQuery, XForms, or whatever X technology. (Thanks to Debbie Lapeyre for the pointer.)
Online, there's the XML Specification and the ancillary documentation available from the W3C; Robin Cover's XML Cover Pages with an extensive list of online reference material and links to software; and a summary and condensed FAQ from Tim Bray; and thousands of reference resources available by typing ‘xml’ into Google or other search engine.
For offline resources, see the lists of books, articles, and software for XML in Robin Cover's XML Cover Pages (articles and books). That site should always be your first port of call for archived resources.
For access to experts, particularly in consultancy and training, see the XML Guild, whose members form a consortium of some of the best independent XML consultants in the world.
The events listed below are the ones I have been told about. Please mail me if you come across others: there are many other XML events around the world, and most of them are announced at conferences, on Twitter, and on the mailing lists and newsgroups.
Conferences
This list covers conferences and meetings in the field of Markup, mainly XML but including some non-XML events in closely-related areas (eg LATEX, Markdown, etc).
Upcoming - XML Summer School 2024
- TEI Conference 2024
The Text Encoding Initiative represents the accepted standard XML format for literary and historical texts in the Humanities. The TEI 2024 Conference will be held in the Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina from 7-11 October 2024. Pre-conference workshops will run on the 7-8 October, with the conference opening and running for the 9-11 October.
Many TEI users also use LATEX via XSLT for creating PDF.- Declarative Amsterdam 5
The sixth edition of Declarative Amsterdam will take place on 7 and 8 November 2024 at the Science Park, Amsterdam. It will be a hybrid conference with the opportunity to attend live or online, for both attendees and presenters.
Declarative techniques are a style of computing that expresses the purpose of computation without describing its control flow. It allows you to focus on the ‘what’, rather than the ‘how’.
Done and dusted - ConTEXt 2024
The 18th International ConTEXt meeting will be held on August 17–23, 2024, in Lutten/Hardenberg, The Netherlands.
- Balisage 2024
Balisage is the premier conference on the theory, practice, design, development, and application of markup. We solicit papers on any aspect of markup and its uses, including XML, XSLT, xQuery, JSON, LATEX, Markdown, and many others (paper submissions due 5 April 2024). The conference will run from 29 July to 2 August, and will be virtual again this year, so local watch-parties are encouraged.
Many aspects of LATEX markup are closely related to the use of XML markup and the handling of structured documents.- TUG 2024
Following the very successful online meetings of past years, the TEX Users Group 2024 meeting will take place at the Hotel Grandior in Prague (Czech Republic) on July 19–21, with Tom Hejda leading the local organization. Full details are at http://tug.org/tug2024. There will be a LaTeX developers' workshop on July 18; the topics will be around tagged and accessible PDF, as with last year.
Many XML users also use LATEX for their formatting via XSLT, so there are important areas of overlap in terms of facilities.
- XML Prague 2024
XML Prague 2024 will take place 6–8 June 2024 in the University of Economics, nam. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic.
Markup UK and XML Prague are held in alternate years, at this year it’s XML Prague’s turn. We are looking forward to meeting you in June 2024 in Prague and in 2025 in London.
- GuIT 2024
Annual meeting of the Gruppo Utilizzatori Italiani di TeX (Italian language TeX Users Group) in Brescia, Italy, 4 May 2024. For details see https://www.guitex.org/home/en/meeting;
- BachoTEX 2024
In Bachotek, Poland, 1–5 May 2024. For details see https://www.gust.org.pl/bachotex/2024-en;
- DANTE 2024
The 65th annual spring meeting of the DANTE (German-speaking TEX Users Group) will take place in Ilmtal-Weinstrasse (https://www.dante.de/veranstaltungen/dante2024/) on 4–6 April 2024.
- Typefi Pacific User Group 2024
Typefi is hosting a free virtual event on 28 February at 1pm AEST for those in Pacific time zones. Visit the Typefi website to register.
- DITA Europe 2024
DITA Europe takes place in Helsinki, Finland on 12–13 February preceded by a DITA Open Toolkit day on the 11th. Register and more information at https://ditaeurope.infomanagementcenter.com.
- Face/Interface 2023
The meeting takes place December 1 and December 2 at Stanford. The topic () is about non-Latin typography and more, with Chuck Bigelow as the keynote speaker. The event is free, but pre-registration is required at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/faceinterface-global-type-design-and-human-computer-interaction-tickets-720692238887 (list of talks is also on that page). We do not know if the conference will be streamed or recorded.
- GUTenberg 2023
The next GUT annual meeting will take place on November 18 in Paris, with a day of talks and discussions. Details at https://framaforms.org/inscription-a-la-journee-gutenberg-2023-du-18-novembre-2023-1695645002.
- Libres écritures numériques
On 16 November 2023, in Lyon (France), a workshop will be held (in French) focusing on people who choose their tools carefully when writing or manipulating text. Tools such as LATEX, Markdown, HTML, XML-TEI, and the myriad scripting languages. Registration is required. Schedule of talks and more information: https://www.ixxi.fr/agenda/seminaires/libres-ecritures-numeriques This workshop will be streamed and recorded.
- Declarative Amsterdam 5
The fifth edition of Declarative Amsterdam will take place on 2 and 3 November 2023 at the Science Park, Amsterdam. It will be a hybrid conference with the opportunity to attend live or online, for both attendees and presenters.
The first day will feature tutorials, combining presentations and hands-on sessions to give an introduction to specific topics. The second day will be a symposium, with shorter presentations. Speakers can discuss new ideas, frameworks, applications of declarative methods, and best practices.
Declarative techniques are a style of computing that expresses the purpose of computation without describing its control flow. It allows you to focus on the ‘what’, rather than the ‘how’. While the conference is mainly focused on XML and related technologies, much of the underlying principle holds true for the LATEX user interface also.
Declarative Amsterdam will have presentations on past experiences, current trends and future perspectives in fields such as functional programming, declarative data modelling, databases, XML and related technologies, JSON, CSS, semantic web, data science, data visualization, grammars, parsing, and domain-specific languages.
- Future of Text vol IV
The fourth annual Symposium on the Future of Text will be held in London (and online) on the 4th of October 2023. This is to announce ‘The Future of Text’ Vol IV which is now open for proposals (see below).
This year we are focusing on text to extend cognition in extended environments, from paper in notebooks to reams of paper across tables and onto walls, with screens, projections and head mounted devices, interacted with directly as well as through AI.
If you are able to attend on the day in London, please contact mailto:frode@hegland.com as soon as possible so that your name can be on the door for the venue.
You may choose to propose an article for the book, a presentation for the symposium or both.
- ConTEXt 2023
The 17th International ConTEXt meeting will be held on September 10-16th, 2023, in Prague-Sibřina, Czech Republic.
- Balisage 2023
Balisage is the premier conference on the theory, practice, design, development, and application of markup. We solicit papers on any aspect of markup and its uses, including XML, XSLT, xQuery, JSON, TEX, Markdown, and many others. The conference will run from 31 July to 4 August, and will be virtual again this year, so local watch-parties are encouraged.
Many aspects of LATEX markup are closely related to the use of XML markup and the handling of structured documents.- TUG 2023
Following the very successful online meetings of past years, the TEX Users Group 2023 meeting will take place at the Hotel Collegium Leoninum, Noeggerathstrasse 34, 53111 Bonn, Germany from July 14–16, with a Tagged PDF developers’ workshop on July 13; physically if possible but the conference will be streamed.
- DANTE 2023
The 65th annual meeting of DANTE (German-speaking TEX Users Group) will take place on July 13, 2023 in Bonn (https://www.dante.de/veranstaltungen/dante2023/), immediately prior to the topic ‘TUG 2023’ in question A.15 on ‘Where do I find more information about XML?’.
- MarkupUK 2023
MarkupUK 2023: although primarily related to XML, all forms of markup are discussed. From 2022, Markup UK and XML Prague will be held in alternate years, starting with XML Prague. We are looking forward to meeting you in June 2022 in Prague and on 1–3 June 2023 at the Mile End campus of Queen Mary University of London.
- GuIT 2023
The GuIT meeting 2023, the 19th Italian conference on TEX, LATEX and digital typography, will be held in Rome on May 20, 2023. For further details: https://www.guitex.org/home/en/meeting.
- BachoTEX 2023
Jerzy Ludwichowski writes: The war in Ukraine is raging still, but none the less we decided to organize BachoTEX 2023, and to make up for the lost time by keeping the same theme as the cancelled 2020 conference, “A model kit: modeling and implementing text typesetting in TEX and other systems”. The dates are from 29th of April until 3rd of May, 2023, at Bachotek near Brodnica, in the north-east of Poland. Registrations will be announced separately as soon as possible.
Training
This list covers training events and resources in the field of Markup, mainly XML but including some non-XML events in closely-related areas (eg LATEX, Markdown, etc).
- Character and higher-level encoding
The Sanskrit Library offers a course, “UT102. Character and higher-level encoding.” A prerequisite is advanced competency in Sanskrit, fluency reading Devanagari script, and regular access to a computer and basic computer use skills. Date and time: 9–11am US Central time, 20 January – 4 May 2024, except 23 March. See https://sanskritlibrary.org/courses/ut102.html.
- The Complete XML Developer
The Complete XML Developer runs from 26 February to 1st March and covers XPath, XSLT, XQuery, and XML Databases. It is taught in-person, and attendees will follow a hands-on approach to ultimately develop a complete XML Application over the course of the week. The full course outline is available at https://evolvedbinary.com/training/the-complete-xml-developer_training-course-outline.pdf and the sessions are held at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, London.
- Delightful Computing
Courses are live but online, or can be on site for a course with a venue available and at least six participants.
XSLT: Two to Three - three intense days covering the differences in XPath and XSLT since version 2. Now includes some notes on XSLT 4.
XSLT Booster - for people who have used XSLT 1 but not 2, or who are rusty on XSLT 2, this gives a one-day or half-day step up.
CSS for XML People - three days, topics include CSS for Print, CSS for Web, Web accessibility, and more.
Custom (bespoke) courses, e.g. introductions to DocBook or to XSLT, can be half-day up to a full week.
Discounts for advance booking, for more than three people from the same organisation, and yes, barefoot discount, since people always ask for it! on request.
- XML for Humanists
Consulting and training in XML technologies for digital humanists and librarians. Events can be scheduled on request to David Maus at Digital Humanities Publishing https://dmaus.name.