World and Electronic Document Building

Again, I apologise for ditching out on everybody last week again. I was more tired than hell by the time I got home from a long day at work and so just could not write so late in the evening. They were training me on some technology at my job with the state and so it was, as exciting as it was, quite complicated and some what intensive in that it felt like there was very little room for mistakes. But my trainers had been really good with me and very understanding that it was all new to me.

Speaking about technology, and the machine they trained me on did involve documents, I've been getting more into reading up on and even learning a variety of program languages. Right now I'm taking an online course in XML through my job, and, as complicated as it can get, it is really interesting. I'm also reading articles on the subject and am just finishing up a book on the history of computer programming that's been really interesting. The more I read up on computer programming and even computer innovation in general, the more I discover computer technology to be an art. XML is especially great for document production and therefore writing and publishing both in print and electronically. It is much like HTML, or more like XHTML which is actually a combination of XML and HTML. The first one means "hyper textual markup language, the other "extensive hyper textual markup language". And so XML stands for "extensive markup language". It is often used with HTML and so that's how XHTML formed as its own program language although all three of these languages are not programming languages in the same since as C++ or JAVA are which are made more for the hardware's function. XML, HTML and XHTML are languages specifically used to produce online documents and Websites.

I think I mentioned last time that, as with nearly all other artistic professions in this country, opportunities for software and program development professions with the private sector have become a somewhat rarity. But we as artists (writers as well as illustrators) can always use such electronic documentation languages for our own art. These languages can be used to construct and design our own Websites that we can display our stories, poems and art on and promote and market them. The great thing about such languages is that we don't have to be full time programmers just to use them! In using them we are working with both a science (technology) and an art to make art, and for some of us to make a science that has not come into actuality yet and therefore to make science fiction! And for some of you fantasy writers and artists? Developing electronic documents, particularly for Web and application development, is very much like world building.

I really see a lot of avenues and possibilities with the combining of art and computer technology, including program languages, coming to us even more than they already have!

Until next time . . .

--STR