FAQ

This page provides answers to some frequently-asked questions about Vimia GmbH.

Why is the company called "Vimia"?

It all started with the wish for a short name in the .COM domain. Not surprisingly, all the memorable English and German names seem to have been grabbed. So Steve thought back to his time as a student (he studied Swahili, amongst other things) and looked up "networks" in his old Swahili dictionary: out came "Vimia".

How is "Vimia" pronounced?

If you are familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet, the answer is: [vi'mi:a], i.e. with the stress on the second "i". Otherwise, you can hear here how Steve pronounces the word.

Are you related to the company Vímia in Buenos Aires ?

Our namesake in Buenos Aires is purely coincidental.

What is vimia.org?

The domain vimia.org belongs to Vimia GmbH and is reserved for open source (especially Xd). Java packages and similar written by Vimia as open source have names with the prefix "org.vimia...".

What is vimia.net?

The domain vimia.net is reserved for later expansion of Vimia GmbH (in the sense of networked cooperation).

Which technologies were used to implement this site?

This site was built – almost exclusively – with open source software. The most important components are the 4 Apache products: Cocoon, Roller, HTTPD and Tomcat. The only commercial component is a small Java library which generates GIFs because many versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer do not support the free format PNG.

Which standards are used?

All web pages are generated from standard XML data (XHTML) which is converted with XSLT into the look-and-feel of the target platform. The XML data includes some of the graphics, which are converted from SVG into PNG (and – if necessary – also GIF). CSS is used to define the layout for desktop and laptop computers.

Where does the design of this site come from?

The design of the site and Vimia's CD/CI come from Jude Winnall.