Mostly due to the work that is going on over at Troped, an ongoing hypernovel, I have found the need to attempt to develop a new XML standard for fiction. I’ve written everything I can think of regarding what a standard markup language for fiction should try to accomplish, look like, function as, etc. over on this page. A Google Group is being thrown together as well as a Wikipedia page. There is a new way for us to deal with stories, one that is much more maleable then what we currently have. A user should be able to re-arrange a story, list the characters involved, see the chronology of the story, cross-reference where two characters appear together and much, much more. I explain most of the motivations over at the FicML home page.

Technorati Tags: fictionmarluplanguage, fiction, onlinefiction, ficml

I’m not sure why Ajax developers have become so ecstatic about DHTML development when they still face the problem of IE at Microsoft. Microsoft just has such a terrible reputation for ruining the party. The more complex Ajax apps become the easier it will be for Microsoft to break them. This is why I personally prefer Flash/XML app development. It’s not going to break (at least not due to Microsoft’s efforts).

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