Upfront XHTML
Today’s publishing ecosystem has established one “flavor” of XML to be universal and fundamental: XHTML. No matter what flavors publishers use for archiving and interchange—NLM, DocBook, TEI, or proprietary adaptations of them—they all inevitably also need XHTML: it is the foundation of both Web and EPUB publishing. Contrary to the popular perception that it is not rich or rigorous enough for STM, XHTML—HTML/HTML5 playing by XML rules, including a formal schema or DTD—can be every bit as robust, hierarchical, and richly semantic as the traditional models for both content markup and metadata. In this session, Bill Kasdorf will describe how four scholarly publishers—Toronto, SAGE, Harvard Business Publishing, and the World Bank—are using XHTML not just as an output but as a foundation for a streamlined, forward-looking, web-optimized workflow, even when NLM, DocBook, or TEI are also part of their infrastructure.