"Ftrain's system differs from many CMS systems in that it designed for efficient STORYTELLING; this means that, rather than conveying news or building community, the point of the site is to give people a narrative experience. Currently the code base is only used/developed by a few individuals, although this will likely change within the next 6 months as a well-known national magazine begins to use the Ftrain system.

A highly expressive data format that blurs boundaries between category and content.

[create XML]/[create XSLT] as a means to achieve platform neutrality; the same code runs on most systems (Mac OSX, Unix, Windows, Cygwin), and inside most frameworks (Java, Python, Perl) - which means that the content is incredibly pliable and easy to manipulate regardless of your chosen framework.

Data sharing between sites: an XPath server that allows for Ted-Nelson style "transclusion" via a RESTian XPath server, allowing individuals to create fully-credited open "magazines" of each other's work (under development), without worrying about web interfaces.

XML/XSLT/CSS as a framework that allows the easy incorporation of user feedback and rapid development of new features.

The use of simple [create RDF] as a baseline for storing navigation/linking information.

A proposed "Reader Services" module which will help readers keep track of what they've read, annotate text, and suggest what they should read next, guiding them through large content frameworks.

Methods for dynamically generating printable (i.e. PDF) content via XSL:FO.

I would also like to talk about scalability, particularly the limits of the [create XSLT] processing model, and how this can be overcome through the use of XML databases, and explain how a storytelling system differs (and doesn't) from many other content management systems."

ftrain.com/xml/
sourceforge.net/projects/ftrain-ws/