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Well, this time around, I wanted to check out the stance XML is having in terms of office documents like text, spreadsheet and presentation. I must say, that once I went through quite a lot of links and search results and charting out the chronological developments in this regard - I was tempted to title this post as: OOXML Vs ODF. Trust me, there are enough written about both the formats pitting them against each other.

In brief, OOXML is a standard being pushed by Microsoft. ODF is one, that is being developed by IBM and others like OpenOffice.org. Both are applications of XML. And as any one may except, once Microsoft is involved and happens to be on one side of a polarized pair of standards, there will be a struggle. There is enough mud-slinging going on from both sides.

For now, I defer from placing both OOXML and ODF under study. There are many arguing for both the sides, and a mere “OOXML Vs ODF” search will lead to relevant articles and blog posts. It is also amusing to note that there are several individuals who stay away from both the stands and have managed to get themselves into it. (I guess, now I am another of this group).
Both the open standards have been formed as a standard at ISO - Organization for International Standards. Due to this, many argue the sanity of ISO as to having two standards that are implemented as applications of XML.

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This time around, we look at another of an XML application - Mathematical Markup Language or MathML.

No, do not worry. I know we are all scared of Math or at least most of us are. I will not be proposing any theorems or solving any trigonometric problems or problems in calculus. We will leave that for the ones who are versed in it - mathematicians and scientists.

Mathematical notations present a tricky problem in terms of storing as file. What do you store about the equations? The content information or the presentation information?

Both these approaches have been explored and implemented earlier. In terms of presentaion, TeX - a typsetting system created by Donald Kunth, that allows one markup text as well as mathematical notations (may be complex), in terms of how they must be displayed. There is even a Wordpress plugin that allows notations formated in LaTeX (derivation of TeX) to be displayed in a blog post. Also, there has been development in terms of storing mathematical content - OpenMath - where the context is maintained.

MathML, an applicaiton of XML, can store mathematical notations in terms of presentation and/or content.

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I know - this is the second post today. I have been making regular posts here since I was absent for a while, but this post does not count in one of them.

This post is in line with the previous post today, where I talked about my cell phone - the BlackBerry 8700g. I finally got my laptop. I had ordered it long back, and it was in the UPS had delivered it at my apartment office. The apartment office’s working hours is 9:00am to 6:00pm - exactly the time when I will be at my work.

I finally have a decent system. The older antique - I gave it to my father when I came to US. This one has pretty neat configurations:

• Manufacturer: DELL
• Model: Inspiron 16400
• Processor: Intel® Coreâ„¢ 2 T 5600 @ 1.83GHz
• Memory (RAM): 2 GB
• NVidia GeForce
• And more features that I cannot find details about …

Next, I just need to get a wireless mouse, and I will be back on track with respect to KalaaLog. But for Splat, that is not a dependency and you can expect more posts here.
Pictures are copyright of Arun Sasidharan. (Arun Sasidharan © 2007).

Well, I thought I would just have a note here that I got cell phone yesterday.

It is quite surprising that after the post that Rosalin did here at Splat titled “iPod Vs BlackBerry“, I ended up buying an iPod and now an BlackBerry.

I even got a Jabra BT350 along with it as an offer of my cell phone service provider.

For the day I have used it, I have found the BlackBerry 8700g to be a sturdy device that has decent PDA capabilities along with the phone. I have not used its enterprise features like email and internet, but that requires provisions from the service provider. (I am not even sure what my plan includes - I am a bit dull in this regard).

I even liked the Jabra BT350 - a BlueTooth hands free device that is quite useful if you happen to talk for more than few minutes. Once fully charged, one can talk for 7 hours continuously and has a stand by time of 200 hours. But I like it because it makes me look partly like a cyborg.

Pictures are copyright of Arun Sasidharan. (Arun Sasidharan © 2007).

SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics, is an application of XML. SVG is a markup language (based on XML specifications) for describing static and animated vector graphics. It is an open standard drafted by W3C - World Wide Web Consortium, that released the XML specifications.

History

The SVG 1.0 become a W3C recommendation in 2001.  In 2003, the specification was extended to SVG 1.1 to allow for modularization. Thus, the two subsets, SVG Tiny and SVG Basic became profiles of SVG 1.1. SVG Tiny 1.2 was released in 2006.  The SVG Full 1.2, that is said to contain specification for multipage documents is not released as of date.

Features 

The vector graphics have the distinctive feature of being scalable.  And hence, the word “scalable” seems to have been included in the acronym.  In actuality, vector graphics in general, and SVG in particular allows for other transformation than scaling like translation and rotation.

There are three types of elements that can exist in a SVG document/file.

• Vector graphic shapes like lines (straight and curved), circles/elipses, and bounded shapes like polygons
• Raster images
• Text

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Why is it that as an organization or company grows large, it seems to start operating on the other side of moral line? Does it not seem like a pattern that seems to be followed by every behemoth out there?

This story is not about a malicious person. There are many of them out there, and we can put them aside for now. This story is about the successful organizations that have grown immensely. They start of humbly with noble mission statements, and they stick to it. The initial groups of people are most of the times, people with moral values. It is these moral values that give them success and they grow as an organization. From this stage onwards, they seem to be in news for all sort malicious acts.

Yes, this is about the code that Google “borrowed” from Sohu. (News credit: Thilak)

What is it about the nature of a large organization that has made Google come up in similar news? For that matter, what is it about large organizations in general, that makes them deteriorate from their noble mission statements?

Some of the causes for this are obvious and others are a bit more subtle. I will try to break them down into two categories.

• The Observer
• The Observed

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