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1. The XML bulletins can be viewed using web browsers.
Are they designed to be read by human beings?
The XML weather bulletins on this site are designed to
be used by information systems (computers). Please consult your Information
Technology divisions / sections / units on how to integrate weather information
provided by this site into your systems. Information embedded in the XML
weather bulletins can also be found at HKO Internet web site (http://www.weather.gov.hk/) in a human readable form.
2. How can I use the XML weather bulletins?
The XML weather bulletins in this web site are provided in "real-time", in the sense that they are updated as timely as they are disseminated to other channels such as the media. You can develop computer programs to poll the weather bulletins from
this web site and make use of the weather information in the XML files. Some possible applications include:
3. Why XML?
The XML has many advantages over the traditional encoded data method. Some of them include:
4. Can I decode the XML weather bulletins available in
this site?
There are a number of free or commercial XML parsers that
are capable of reading standard XML documents. Some popular ones include:
Apache Xerces: http://xml.apache.org/#xerces IBM XML4J: http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xml4j James Clark XP: http://jclark.com/xml/xp/index.htmlA comparison of such XML parsers can be found at http://webreference.com/xml/column22/2.html. 5. Can the XML weather bulletins be converted into other
format, for example, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)?
XML documents can be easily converted into any other formats
by applying eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) on the documents. An online tutorial on
XSL can be found at http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/default.asp.
6. What is the use of the XML Schemas?
XML Schemas define the structure of the XML documents and can be used to validate XML documents. An online tutorial on XML Schema can
be found at http://www.w3schools.com/schema/default.asp.
7. What is a "Mixed" bulletin?
In a "Mixed" bulletin, XML tags are in English while the
data is in Traditional Chinese (Big 5). As not all parsers can manipulate
XML documents with Traditional Chinese markup tags, a "Mixed" version
is provided to facilitate processing of the XML documents that contain data in
Traditional Chinese.
8. Why is there no XML Schemas listed for the "Mixed"
weather bulletins?
As XML tags in the "Mixed" weather bulletins are in English,
they are validated against the XML schema for the English bulletins.
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