Conventions

This book uses a number of different styles of text and layout to help differentiate among various types of information. Here are examples of the styles used and an explanation of what they mean:

• q New words being defined are shown in italics.

• q Keys that you press on the keyboard, such as Ctrl and Enter, are shown in initial caps and spelled as they appear on the keyboard.

• q File and folder names, file extensions, URLs, and code that appear in regular paragraph text are shown in a monospaced typeface.

When we show a block of code that you can type as a program and run, it's shown on separate lines, like this:

       <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>         <Employee>           <FirstName>Bill</FirstName>           <LastName>Evjen</LastName>           <JobTitle>Technical Architect</JobTitle>           <Company>Lipper</Company>           <StartDate>10/04/2001</StartDate>           <WorkLocation>St. Louis, Missouri</WorkLocation>           <NumberOfDependents>3</NumberOfDependents>         </Employee> 

or like this:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>      <Employee>         <FirstName>Bill</FirstName>         <LastName>Evjen</LastName>         <JobTitle>Technical Architect</JobTitle>         <Company>Lipper</Company>         <StartDate>10/04/2001</StartDate>         <WorkLocation>St. Louis, Missouri</WorkLocation>         <NumberOfDependents>3</NumberOfDependents>      </Employee> 

Sometimes you see code in a mixture of styles, like this:

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>      <Employee>         <FirstName>Bill</FirstName>         <LastName>Evjen</LastName>         <JobTitle>Technical Architect</JobTitle>         <Company>Lipper</Company>         <StartDate>10/04/2001</StartDate>         <WorkLocation>St. Louis, Missouri</WorkLocation>         <NumberOfDependents>3</NumberOfDependents>      </Employee> 

When mixed code is shown like this, the code with no background represents code that has been shown previously and that you don't need to examine further. Code with the gray background is what you should focus on in the current example.

We demonstrate the syntactical usage of methods, properties, and so on using the following format:

      <?[target] [data]?> 

Here, the italicized parts indicate placeholder text: object references, variables, or parameter values that you need to insert.

Most of the code examples throughout the book are presented as numbered listings that have descriptive titles, like this:

Listing 1-8: Creating an XML file

Each listing is numbered (for example: I-8) where the first number represents the chapter number and the number following the hyphen represents a sequential number that indicates where that listing falls within the chapter. Downloadable code from the Wrox Web site (http://www.wrox.com) also uses this numbering system so that you can easily locate the examples you are looking for.