I created the recently released Compendium-TA case studies using DocBook because I am so attracted to the idea of write once - present in multiple formats.

My initial experiments are with html output and pdf output. I haven't customised either output at all, although I have used svg graphics in the pdf and jpg in the html. The correct image files to use are selected by the XSLT translation processor.

I use the oXygen XML Editor to do all my processing and editing as it is a nice wrapper for the DocBook and FO processing, and as a beginner in this area, I like things being easy.

The more I look at XML, the more I want to learn about it. And although initially incomprehensible, XSLT is surprisingly simple to use to convert XML from one set of tags to another.

Next time I work with a big name test tool or defect tracker, I will probably spend some time writing API scripts to output the data as XML so that I can write fairly general XSLT and Python/Perl/{insert name of favourite scripting language here} scripts to work with a simple XML format instead of a proprietary API.

Of course, if the vendors all support export to XML, then that will be less of an issue. From the specs on the web site Test Track Pro seems to do this very well.

I am not sure that I want a standard dtd for software testing, but I will be interested in seeing what DTDs there are out there. I found xmlTestSuite on my initial search.

If you are interested in XML then I have found CafeConLeche.org and xmlhack.com useful xml resources and subscribe to their rss feeds.