Crane Softwrights Ltd. is a consultancy delivering Computer Systems Analysis and training services worldwide since April 1997. We focus primarily in structured text processing related to the Web-based Extensible Markup Language (W3C XML) family of Recommendations and the international Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML - ISO 8879:1986) family of Standards. We specialize in the structuring of and processing of information, in particular training and deploying the use of the W3C XSL/XSL-FO, XSLT, XPath and XQuery set of Recommendations and OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) artefacts and systems for electronic commerce and transportation.

Play ball! Visitors looking for the dice-and-peg-based board game developed by Crane Softwrights Ltd. to teach baseball principles to children, can find it freely-available in our public git repository here. Also available is a card-and-peg-based board game of pursuit that is fun for the whole family at the freely-available public git repository here.

Visitors looking for details regarding Ken's travel and humanitarian work can find it here. The adventure continued June 2019 with a return to Longido for another month. Travel from 2020 through 2023 was cancelled, so looking forward to June 2024!

As of July 2017 all books are available as free publications and the DVD-ROM is no longer available (replaced by the streaming video with hands-on exercises). Please consider making a donation (from the right margin of this screen) if you find the books are useful.

	Remember to check out all of the training and consulting services from the experts in the XML Guild. Crane's G. Ken Holman is a long-time member.
	Crane Softwrights Ltd. is a founding member of the http://goUBL.com commercial ecosystem for the support of UBL technology and UBL-based services and products.
	Find Crane Softwrights Ltd. on the Tradeshift social business network.
	Crane developed Pluralsight's XML Syntax Fundamentals course.
XSLT/XPath Hands-on Only US$125	Crane's Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath Video was recorded as a DVD-ROM. It is mounted for online streaming at the US-based Udemy site. The class offers five free hours of streaming video instruction, plus 19 hours of paid content covering our 5-day in-depth hands-on comprehensive training class. For a 30% discount off the list price of US$180, please use the US$125 coupon price.

1. Services we provide

Starting back in July 2010 we have been cutting back on the services we provide.

As of the end of 2014, in order to focus on volunteer work in standards committees, Crane Softwrights Ltd. no longer delivers or develops all of the books or training materials it has in the past. The existing training materials remain available for us to use with consulting clients, or for licensing by other training organizations and individuals, please contact us for details. A few training classes have recently been revived based on customer demand, see our schedule for details.

Note that we may take on piecemeal consulting to help fund our volunteer work, and we never say "never", but for all intents and purposes we are content keeping a couple loyal clients serviced and happy (rather than leaving them in the lurch). We aren't really expecting to take on any new big projects (but who knows what will catch our eye? We don't!).

It is our intention to develop and release more free developer tools in concert with our volunteer work. We've adopted the "donation business model" to help fund this ... please click on the "Donate" button in the right margin to contribute.

We also offer limited off-the-shelf services of well-defined popular tasks.

We have a network of peers in the industry to whom we will send leads that we decide we will not pursue ourselves. Please contact us if you think we can help you.

All four of Crane's PDF book titles are now available to download at no charge. We no longer plan to publish any revisions to any of our books. We hope that the current editions have served our customers well. We have shut down the http://books.CraneSoftwrights.com web site.

2. Humanitarian work and aid in Africa

If you are considering supporting humanitarian aid work in Africa, please consider supporting Project TEMBO and, in particular, designating your donation to the work of the Learning-in-Longido Community Centre. For Canadian tax deductions, the charity registration number is #856825872RR0001.

More details here.

3. Blog

Mr. Holman doesn't have a blog, but see the published essays he has announced on LinkedIn.

4. Suggested reading

Who would have thought the interlinked web of information we use today, and the problems and shortcomings of how we are obliged to use it today by those who publish the information we need, was prophetically described in July 1945 by Vannevar Bush in the article titled As We May Think? This is a very interesting article, not only for its prophecy, but for its recommendations. To paraphrase the editor's assessment of Dr. Bush's conclusion of the article: "The perfection of instruments that give access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages should be the first objective of our scientists."

For the lighter side of SGML and XML, Joe English's NOT the comp.text.sgml FAQ is a fun read, and I think that Sean McGrath is absolutely brilliant with his DeXiderata and Lord of the Schemas: Part 1 as the funniest collections of observations regarding the XML community and technology.

Some of the articles/essays that have been published by Crane are found through here on LinkedIn and through here on XML.com.

Ken has also contributed (though only in a small part so far) to the collection of SGML/XML songs.

Ken also designed, assembled and installed The TEMBO Network in Longido village, in Tanzania, Africa as a volunteer humanitarian aid project helping an Ottawa-based NGO.

Here is some important Awareness of Male Cancers information.