Taught Invisible XML today to my undergrads for the first time (last year had a guest speaker do it). This is lots of fun, to write a deliberate grammar instead of grabbing at patterns haphazardly with ad hoc regular expressions. Both are fun, but ixml kinda makes you feel like a serious wielder of Unicode lore. Or a Cheshire Cat.

https://invisiblexml.org
#ixml #digitalhumanities #xml #unicode

Have you heard of Invisible XML?

With it you create a grammar that describes the structure of a plain text document so it can be handled with XML tools. Very apropos.

Turns out there's a javascript implementation of the parser (Grammix), which runs in a browser. Very exciting!

The blog post shows an EPUB created with markdown and textile grammars and a single ixml parser.

#ixml #markupmonday #seedhtml #epub

https://blog.stewarthaines.com/2025/12/invisible-xml-to-epub-3.html

Despite rumours, #XML, #invisibleXML (#iXML) #XSLT, #XQuery all very much alive. They solve real problems and meet people’s needs.

native XSLT in the browser might go away. So applications like https://wendellpiez.github.io/PellucidLiterature/Amsel/amsel.scholia.xmll might stop working (made by Wendell Piez) which is sad but won’t affect large corporations and their revenue.

There is still no standard way to mark up a poem in HTML. No business case for it. But you can do it in XML with the #TEI.

#markupMonday

#ArtAdventCalendar

Day 20: Fish in glass

I made this as a title image for a talk I gave this year called "Invisible Fish" (about using InvisibleXML as a driver for my art shell). I love this little guy.

#XQuery #SVG #IXML #CreativeCoding

The @TEIConsortium TEI Consortium has posted its 'In Memoriam' for Dr C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen:
https://tei-c.org/2024/08/18/c-michael-sperberg-mcqueen-1954-2024-in-memoriam/
😢😭

A loss to the world and those interested in text technologies. We'll remember him at #TEI2024 and always.

#RIP #XML #XSD #iXML #W3C #XSLT @w3c

#GenerativeArt interlude

Fish

You haven't seen a lot of new works out of my lately because I've been playing with a whole new (textual) interface to my underlying components.

It is interesting when you have a different API with different affordances how you end up recasting/reworking a lot of things, so a lotta refactoring is happening too.

Anyway, here is one of the outputs of
"'unique huge diff-slant fish in some 10 deepsea tiling"

#SVG #XQuery #IXML #CreativeCoding

#GenerativeArt interlude

This week's little project is an experiment with using iXML to make a simple interface to my higher level drawing components.

ifish "4 red fish and pink octopus with yellow eyes deepsea background"

#XQuery #SVG #iXML #CreativeCoding