After years of working with Flare, I should know this. But..

This forum is for all Flare issues related to styles, stylesheets and XML.
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el_jefe
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After years of working with Flare, I should know this. But..

Post by el_jefe »

Hello all,

I'm trying to learn more about the relationship in Flare between XML and HTML. When I'm editing topics, Flare tells me I'm using the XML Editor. I'm editing HTML (.htm) files though, not XML files. Can someone clarify for me why it's called XML Editor?

Thanks for your guidance!

:mrgreen:
Psider
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Re: After years of working with Flare, I should know this. B

Post by Psider »

I believe HTML is a subset of XML, so technically, when you edit HTML you could be said to be editing XML. :p

Also, I think the first bit of code at the top is <?xml someotherstuff>, which is setting the document to be specifically xml. This stands for eXtensible Markup Language, which allows people to 'extend' it; that is, add their own bits. So I think this allows some of the Flare editor smarts and also places hooks for the compiler which then translates it into standard HTML (for web output) so that the browsers can understand it.

This is my own interpretation and not official, technical or necessarily correct. :)
devjoe
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Re: After years of working with Flare, I should know this. B

Post by devjoe »

Flare topics are XHTML files, which are written in a strict subset of HTML which makes them also valid XML files.
This means that capitalization of opening and closing tags must match, all elements must be closed (even ones like <img> and <br> which aren't containers; these usually use the self-closing XML format with a / at the end of the tag), attributes must have values (so some HTML attributes that work just by being named within a tag are written as attribute="" to give them a value), and a lot of things browsers tolerate but are not technically according to spec are strictly forbidden.
SteveS
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Re: After years of working with Flare, I should know this. B

Post by SteveS »

XML is designed to carry data, while HTML is designed to display data.

HTML has a controlled set of tags while in XML the author defines the tags and document structure.

XML stores data as plain text.

XHTML is HTML written as XML.

Some single sourcing applications author in xhtml and convert it to html during the build process.

So, when Flare styles something using Flare's unique elements its using xml, the tags and structure have been defined by madcap. It gets converted to html when you build a target.

There is lots of information on the net, www.w3schools.com is a good place to start.
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