While the reader is not expected to have prior expertise in XML, this book is most effective as an add-on to a more introductory tutorial because of the relatively fast pace. The authors set out to systematically - and quickly - covering the basics of XML first, namely the history of markup languages and a variety of languages and technologies that make up the standard. From there, the authors move into "narrative-centric documents" in the appropriate section focuses on the application of XML to books, articles, web pages and other text content. The book assumes the reader is clearly a talent to take the concepts quickly and to quickly build cumulative knowledge. This book is going to "data-centric" XML, explores the difference between object-driven Document Object Model (DOM) and event-driven Simple API for XML (SAX) in short. XML in a book not only on XML you should have, but definitely one that no XML coder should be without. Plain Topics covered: history of XML Document Type Definition (DTD) based on XML Namespaces Internationalization data format XPath XLink XPointer XSL XHTML Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XSL-FO Document Object Model (DOM), Simple API for XML (SAX)