Title: The XML & SGML Cookbook: Recipes for Structured Information
Author:  Rick Jelliffe
Publisher:  Prentice Hall
Date:  1998
Reviewed by: Kasey Rios Asberry International Communications, SF
Published in:  Leonardo Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology

The XML & SGML Cookbook is a detailed, comprehensivereference on SGML, (Structured General Markup Language) and its subnbset XML (Extensible Markup Language). It is the most recent title in the Charles F. Goldfarb series on Open Information Management.

In the tradition of self-evidencing works (see Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information), this effort exemplifies fine information design. It is a cookbook of biblical proportions, organized as a continuum ranging from the structures of systems of documents, through document patterns and down to the level of characters and glyphs. Each entry is deeply referenced by other authors' approaches to the same element.

Jelliffe pays significant (and gratifying) attention to the difficult area of East Asian characters and mapping. I found the appendices nearly as exciting as the the text: together they provide an effective Rosetta Stone of special characters and their international standards definitions.

Jeliffe explores the interaction of human communicationsand computation via the primary conceptual toolkit of the designer: pattern language and structural comparison. Those engaged in information systems design may find this book both practical and poetic. It is rather rare for me to find myself so immersed in a technical work that I cannot wait to turn the page.

The XML & SGML Cookbook answers so many of the fundamental questions posed by the movement to implement the web as truly world-wide that my spirits were lifted in reading it- for the first time in several years this does not seem to be such an impossible dream.