James Clark (born <time datetime="1964-02-23">23 February 1964 ) is a software engineer and creator of various open-source software including groff, expat and several XML specifications.

Education and early life

Clark was born in London and educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford where he studied Mathematics and Philosophy.

Career

Clark has lived in Bangkok, Thailand since 1995, and is permanent Thai resident. He owns a company called Thai Open Source Software Center, which provides him a legal framework for his open-source activities. Clark is the author and creator of groff, as well as an XML editing mode for GNU Emacs.

Work on XML

Clark served as technical lead of the working group that developed XML—notably contributing the self-closing, empty element tag syntax, and the name XML. His contributions to XML are cited in dozens of books on the subject. Clark is the author or co-author of a number of influential specifications and implementations, including: Clark is listed as a member of the working group that developed the Java Stream processing API for XML (StAX) JSR 173 at the JCP.

Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA)

From <time datetime="2004-11">November 2004 until late 2006, Clark worked for Thailand's Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA), to promote open source technologies and open standards in the country. This work included pushing the Thai localization of OpenOffice.org office suite and the Mozilla Firefox web browser, along with other open source software packages. Other projects at SIPA include: