XML Books

[Penman]

Currently on the bench and thought I'd use the time to learn XML. Can anyone recommend any reference books suitable for a non-programmer?

Thanks

[DimPrawn]

Before you buy a book, try this for free:

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp
http://www.informit.com/library/libr...STY_XML_21days
http://www.theserverside.net/books/a...sentialXML.zip

[xchaotic]

Depends on what you want to do with XML.
XML spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/) is rather simple:
there's only one document/root (top) node, and below that you have elements, attributes - the most basic ingredients, beyond that there are comments, namespaces and processing-instructions. That's all there is to know about XML.
What you probably might want to learns is more about schemas and validation and XSL, Xquery and other way to transform XML, and other way to work with it such as SAX.
But for starters a tip from my personal XML guru:
Don't look at XML as angle brackets, look at it as a tree.

A good editor will help visualise this, I recommend Oxygen, which you can trial for free and is really cheap anyway.

[lightng]

Before you buy a book, try this for free:

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp
http://www.informit.com/library/libr...STY_XML_21days
http://www.theserverside.net/books/a...sentialXML.zip

You've posted some useful stuff recently. Whats going on?

[NickFitz]

I seem to remember O'Reilly's XML in a Nutshell being OK.

You MUST read Henri Sivonen's classic piece HOWTO Avoid Being Called a Bozo When Producing XML before you can be released into the wild with your new skills

[DimPrawn]

You've posted some useful stuff recently. Whats going on?

I'm losing the plot.

[Penman]

Thanks for the suggestions. I hope that I'll only get half way through the list before bounding back into the exciting world that is Technical Documentation.

Penman