Simon Willison’s Weblog

RELAX NG now an ISO standard

Via James Robertson, RELAX NG (altogether too many caps) has been published by ISO as an International Standard. RELAX NG compact syntax is will hopefully join it soon.

RELAX NG is the sane alternative to XML Schema. It’s a schema language which allows you to define the “shape” of a class of XML documents—a bit like a DTD but far more flexible. The reason I like it is the compact syntax, which lets you define schemas using a non-XML syntax similar in some ways to CSS. This makes defining new types of XML document far less unpleasant.