XML TECHNOLOGIES FOR CARTOGRAPHERS

O. Cerba

University of West Bohemia, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of mathematics, Plzen, Czech republic

ota.cerba@seznam.cz

The SGML/XML languages (Standard Generalised Markup Language / eXtensible Markup Language) falls into the group of markup languages or into the group of metalanguages, which defines the logical and significant structure of documents.

The SGML/XML and related technologies are applied to many kinds of human activities. We can name a large list – for example the data formats for describing informations of sport (SportsML), music (MusicML, Standard Music Description Language, Music Notation Markup Language etc.), health (the standards of the organisation Health Level Seven) or philosophy (PhilML - Philosophical Markup Language).

The SGML/XML is also used in cartography. It is important for generation, describing, validation, viewing, sharing and distribution of digital maps. There are many examples – the languages HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) are used for creating web pages, which construct the framework for the internet presentation of the digital maps. The format SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) describes two-dimensional vector graphics. SVG has been applied for many cartographic projects (Online-Atlas zur Bundestagswahl 2005, Tirol Atlas, Internet Atlas of the Sri Lankan Central Province etc.). There are the another examples of the common SGML/XML using – the format for spatial data describing (GML – Geography Markup Language or KML – Keyhole Markup Language) and metadata format like RDF (Resource Description Framework) or Dublin Core metadata standard. Web services are built with the XML fundament also.

The set of the SGML/XML data formats is more wider. This paper describes the profitable SGML/XML news and the benefits of SGML/XML and related technologies for the digital maps.