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Creative Commons License Last modified: Sunday, 20-Aug-2023 17:28:38 UTC. Maintained by: Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar (eeb4 at psu.edu). Powered by firebellies.

Before you begin

Before beginning this assignment, you should prepare your workspace: Where do you want to do your coding homework this semester? You will be doing most of your coding work for this course in the <oXygen/> XML Editor. This is installed in the campus computer labs, and you may also install it on any other computer(s) you plan to work with this semester. Also, before beginning homework assignments, you need to read the related tutorials we have posted (plus notes you took in class) and keep these open and handy to consult as you are working. For the very first assignment, here is what you will need:

Goals

This assignment should give you experience with:

  1. Writing well-formed XML using elements and attributes.
  2. Making decisions in how to write XML so that it binds related kinds of information together by:
    • Nesting elements that relate to each other.
    • Thinking about the relationship between your markup and the source document.
    • Thinking of elements and attributes working together (like file folders with labels attached).
  3. Using basic features of the <oXygen/> software environment.

Try coding a poem in XML

To get started with XML coding, and working wtih a tree structure for modeling a document, start by coding a poem (which we absolutely chose because it is about trees and leaves). Our source document for this assignment is the poem Leaves by Lloyd Schwartz as posted on poets.org.

Coding the poem in <oXygen/>

Challenges and suggestions for this assignment

There is no single way to do this exercise, but I want you to think about how you nest levels of information (elements within elements), and the relationship between elements and attributes in XML.

When, where, and how to submit the assignment

Check and make sure you saved your file following our homework file naming rules, including giving it a .xml file extension. Submit your XML file on Canvas under Assignments for this exercise, before our next class.