Introduction | Question

[Jeremy <je...@cs...>]

Hi there, 

I just signed the user mailing list.
I am a postdoc in Canada, in the middle of two weeks of 
intensive SGML/XML/DTD/XML SHEMA/XSLT learning,
taking a break from the application process.

My research is more in computational complexity and Evolution Theory,
but I would like to use some XML languages in conjonction with DOCBOOK
to organize and publish my databases (DBs) for my teaching (a DB of
solved problems), application (a DB of university where to apply),
administrative paperwork (a DB for extended CV): I hope to master the
current available techniques and to developp my own later (a random
XSLT transformation? efficient algoritms?).

Currently I am just reading/installing/configuring/trying. 
I installed PSGML, XSLIDE, TDTD, and finally XSLT-PROCESS.

Questions:

1) I am using Emacs under UNIX, Free BSD and Linux usually. 
Under Emacs, when I load
   xslt-process-mode, I get the messages
*********************  Exert from buffer *Messages* **************************
Loading xslt-process (source)...
Loading subr...done
eval-buffer: Symbol's function definition is void: defimage-speedbar
******************************************************************************
I believe I installed everything correspondingly to the manual, and
the last version of each package (in particular of speedbar).  A weird
thing is that neither the already installed speedbar package, neither
the more complete version I installed, defined the speedbar-version
function cited in the manual of xslt-process.
Did I do something wrong or should this message be added to the "Known
problems and limitations" section of the manual? I don't care much as
I can launch xemacs when I need it, where everything works fine, just
thought I would signal it.

2) Do I miss anything to my survival pack in the XML world? Especially
for Emacs/XEmacs? I was planning to use XPath as well, but will
probably postpone a bit.  I installed DOCBOOK and tried it
succesfully, I hope I will put my CV and other administrative
documents to definitely maintain a single version of each instead of
the usual tex/html english/french various versions.

3) Before getting interested in XML I was already putting
<?francais("");english("");?> in my php webpages,
\begin{francais}\end{francais}\begin{english}\end{english} in my tex
files, <FRANCAIS></FRANCAIS><ENGLISH></ENGLISH> in my other bilingual
files, using function, macros, or a custom parser to obtain the
specific languagage versions for each document. I plan to do the same
with DOCBOOK and other packages. Did by chance anybody develop
something similar already? (I saw the example <para lang=en> but am
not satisfied with it as you have to define for every title too, I
think I would prefer a <FR></FR><EN></EN> syntax.)

Have a great day,

-- 
Jeremy                             (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~jeremy)