XML’s Birthday!

The XML specification became a W3C recommendation February 10, 1998 and just 10 years old! Not even a teenager yet and note how influential it is.
[from World Wide Web Consortium News]

XML Internationalization

The W3C has posted a document to help both developers and authors create XML documents that work across languages and cultures.  Best Practices for XML Internationalization is divided into primarily two sections:  best practices for those designing XML applications and those authoring XML content.
Best practices for authors include:

Specifying the language of content
Specifying text directionality
Overriding information [...]

Best Practices for XML Internationalization

The World Wide Web Consortium has published an updated working draft of Best Practices for XML Internationalization. From the draft:
This document provides a set of guidelines for developing XML documents and schemas that are internationalized properly. Following the best practices described here allow both the developer of XML applications, as well as the author [...]

More XML Standards

The World Wide Web Consortium now has 8 more XML standards available:

XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators
XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM)
XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization
XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX)
XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics

[from [...]

Patent on XML

Scientigo owns two patents which covers “the transfer of ‘data in neutral forms.’” They feel that the use of XML infringes on these two patents. Scientigo is planning on licensing this work, but others feel that the basis of XML goes back to SGML, which was created in the 1980s and which is based on [...]

Office Version 12 Will Default to XML Format

Microsoft Office 12, which should be available the second half of 2006, will not default to the popular doc, xls, and ppt formats. Instead, it will default to XML-based formats, e.g., docx, xlsx, and pptx.
If you continue to use Office 2000, 2003, or XP, there will be additional software that will allow you to read, [...]

Netscape 8 and Internet Explorer/Updated

Netscape has now come out with version 8.0.2, which fixes the issue below.
[from Netscape]
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Version 8 of Netscape just came out. Unfortunately, if you install Netscape 8, then Internet Explorer will not be able to display XML documents correctly. If you are a multi-browser user (like I am), you might want to wait on the Netscape [...]

Marking Up Language

The World Wide Web Consortium has updated their document called Authoring Techniques for XHTML & HTML Internationalization: Specifying the language of content 1.0. This document provides advice on how to provide access to the language(s) you are using within a web document. From the Introduction: 
This document provides guidance for developers of HTML that enables support [...]