thru \

[etc etc]. Yes, there's a lot of presentation-oriented cruft in there, but while it's still at the development stage we have to cater for a lot of people who think they should still use \ in all cases. It'll go eventually, and I'd expect to see HTML 5 or 6 being much more like TEI (a personal view). I would refer all queries about "why do we have to type these *@!#% tags" to http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/markup.html and the comment that follows it. ///Peter -- Peter Flynn | pflynn@curia.ucc.ie | ...persuade users that spreading Computer Centre | +353 21 276871 x2609 | fonts across the page like peanut University College | +353 21 277194 (fax) | butter across hot toast is not the Cork, Ireland | Opinions are my own. | route to typographic excellence... Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 14:14:29 UT From: Peter Flynn \ Organization: University College Cork Message-ID: \ References: <3da1rd$6vv@hopper.acm.org> <1994Dec22.131725.14671@calspan.com> <1995Jan3.105658.26647@skeatnatcorp.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Magazine DTD [Gerry Murray] | Anyone working on a DTD for magazines? | (As against books, serials and the like) [Matthew Stringer] | Out of curiousity, what are you looking for in this DTD? From an | information standpoint, I see very little difference between a magazine | and a serial, aside perhaps from some special representation for ad | copy. [Dominic Dunlop] | Ummm. Go into your local convemience store. Pick up the magazine | nearest the check-out. Examine it dispassionately, asking the | questions ``How similar is this to a serial?'', ``How can I usefully | encode it using (say) the TEI DTD?'', ``Er... What serves as | punctuation in display material?'', ``Hey! Are those \

s or | what?'', ``Does this crap come before or after that shit?'', ``What | the hell is THAT??''... This doesn't work on the mags closest the checkout in some stores. Those ones consist mostly of large color pictures with a small amount of reported speech in the captions :-) but I'm sure they could be encoded using the TEI dtd... | Experience on the British National Corpus has taught me that the more | popular a magazine, the more horrible it is to encode. More research | is needed on this subject. Were there time enough and cash, I'd write | a paper... This is true if you have a requirement to encode the visual data relating to the design. Encoding the textual information does not seem to be a major problem, although it's messy. ///Peter -- Peter Flynn | pflynn@curia.ucc.ie | ...persuade users that spreading Computer Centre | +353 21 276871 x2609 | fonts across the page like peanut University College | +353 21 277194 (fax) | butter across hot toast is not the Cork, Ireland | Opinions are my own. | route to typographic excellence... Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 14:16:42 UT From: Peter Flynn \ Organization: University College Cork Message-ID: \ References: <3ebrmo$ltf@dove.nist.gov> <3ef0jj$qn0@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Re: SGML FAQ or Web Site [Frederick R. Phelan, Jr.] | Ahh, no responses ... | | Please anything ... | just a URL for anything even remotely touching on SGML :/) I still have a copy of the "Gentle Guide" chapter from TEI P2 at ftp://www.ucc.ie/pub/sgml/p2sg.ps ///Peter -- Peter Flynn | pflynn@curia.ucc.ie | ...persuade users that spreading Computer Centre | +353 21 276871 x2609 | fonts across the page like peanut University College | +353 21 277194 (fax) | butter across hot toast is not the Cork, Ireland | Opinions are my own. | route to typographic excellence... Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 14:31:53 UT From: "Frederick R. Phelan Jr." \ Organization: NIST Message-ID: <3egvsp$hh3@dove.nist.gov> References: <3ebrmo$ltf@dove.nist.gov> <3ef0jj$qn0@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Re: SGML FAQ or Web Site [Frederick R. Phelan, Jr.] | Ahh, no responses ... | | Please anything ... | just a URL for anything even remotely touching on SGML :/) Thanks for the overwhelming response! I appreciate all the information. Fred Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 14:37:56 UT From: Matt Timmermans/MSL \ Message-ID: <9501051842.AA9957@notes.microstar.com> References: \ <9412300638.AA7907@notes.microstar.com> \ <9501041819.AA9616@notes.microstar.com> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Paul Prescod] | Creating distinct tags for all of those typographic cases is the | correct solution. [Matt Timmermans] | Please present some logical or practical support for this assertion. [Paul Prescod] | [...lots of excellent document reuseability points...] | | [A] Clearly SGML text cannot represent the full gamut of human thought. | But it seems to me that it can represent all existent formatting | conventions on the "meaning" side instead of the formatting side. | [B] After all, there are a finite number of meanings for superscript! | [C] If you are superscripting for a reason that is not widely known | then the meaning of your superscript is going to be ambiguous anyways. ([?]'s not in the original text) If everything in that last paragraph were true, then we would be in agreement. [A]: The full gamut of human thought can be represented in ASCII. It can certainly be represented in SGML. The key point here, however, is that not all of the information in a document can be consumed algorithmically, i.e., you CAN'T mark up the meaning of everything. [B]: If everyone on Earth were to create a new meaning for superscript every second until the end of time, there would still be a finite number of meanings for superscript, so this statement is correct. Any complete list, however, would be obsolete in less than a second. [C]: This is clearly not true. I have never seen this [\] notation in a posting before, and yet I'm willing to bet that you have no difficulty understanding it. A new meaning for superscript can be introduced unambiguously in any document as long as that document explains (explicitly or contextually) the meaning to its human(!) readers. As I mentioned in a previous posting on this subject, there is a _tradeoff_ between the presentation-based features in a DTD and the reusability of its instances. In practice, this is a tradeoff between DTD reusability and document reusability. Both are important. | How do you represent \ to a blind person? Yelling? How do you represent graphics to a blind person? If your DTD includes pictures, then blind people are out anyway -- you might as well include \ too. When deciding your DTD's presentation-based feature set, that feature set should be considered as a whole. | What if you want to find all chemicals listed in a document? I probably should have made this more clear, but I never meant to imply that one shouldn't mark up chemicals as chemicals, only that this does not _necessarily_ mean you can't have \ as well. There is, of course, the difficulty of convincing authors to choose \ when they mean \, but that is a different argument -- and it's not as difficult as it seems if you have the proper authoring software. \ -- Matt Timmermans | Phone: +1 613 727-5696 Microstar Software Ltd. | Fax: +1 613 727-9491 34 Colonnade Rd. North | BBS: +1 613 727-5272 Nepean Ontario CANADA K2E-7J6 | E-mail: mtimmerm@microstar.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 15:04:24 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> Subject: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? I once heard someone mention that SGML does not work all that well for complex equations. Does anyone out there know why? Are there some serious limitations? While I'm on the subject, has anyone used an SGML editor to create documents that are equation-heavy? If so, was it difficult? Do you feel that some editors are better than others for this task? It's my understanding that most SGML equation editors are WYSIWYG and easy to use. Agree? Disagree? Thanks for your input -- -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 15:06:04 UT From: Daniel D Suthers \ Organization: University of Pittsburgh Message-ID: <3eh1ss$9l1@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> References: <00989F7C.C3495CC4.9@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: discontinuous segments; TEI [Lou Burnard] | The following solutions are proposed by the TEI: | 1. Use CONCUR (as D Suthers says) -- but note that very few vendors support | this feature (I make it ONE, at the last count) | 2. Use empty boundary-markers ("milestones" in TEI-speak) to mark where | improperly-nesting regions begin and end | 3. Fragment all overlapping elements, and then use linking attributes of | various kinds to represent the intended structure. | 4. Introduce empty JOIN elements pointing to reconstituted "virtual" | elements | (The last of these is effectively what Erik suggests) | If you want examples, let me know. There is also a TEI technical paper Please do post examples -- this will help me & others interested in this issue understand the alternatives more fully. Thanks! Also I'd appreciate a pointer to the tech paper. -- Dan Suthers | Learning Research & Development Center suthers+@pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh +1 412 624 7036 voice | 3939 O'Hara Street +1 412 624 9149 fax | Pittsburgh, PA 15260 +1 412 363 3992 home | http://info.pitt.edu/~suthers Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 15:46:34 UT From: Ron Peterson \ Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept Message-ID: <3eh48q$k78@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Glenda Jeffrey] | I once heard someone mention that SGML does not work all that well | for complex equations. Does anyone out there know why? Are there | some serious limitations? The problem is that the DTD's are designed for tagging mathematical expressions based on appearance instead of content. What is needed is DTD's for each branch of mathematics or science that has special notation. Nobody wants to do the work or pay for it. Ron Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 15:54:17 UT From: Gerry Murray \ Organization: ACM Network Services Message-ID: <3eh4na$hln@hopper.acm.org> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Glenda Jeffrey] | I once heard someone mention that SGML does not work all that well for | complex equations. Does anyone out there know why? Are there some | serious limitations? | | While I'm on the subject, has anyone used an SGML editor to create | documents that are equation-heavy? If so, was it difficult? Do you | feel that some editors are better than others for this task? It's my | understanding that most SGML equation editors are WYSIWYG and easy to | use. Agree? Disagree? Gotta admit, Glenda, I found Arbortext's equation editor pretty damn good. Gerry Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 16:02:19 UT From: Mike Meyer \ Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Message-ID: <19950105.7840548.74D4@contessa.phone.net> References: \ <19950102.745EDE8.12DBA@contessa.phone.net> \ <19950103.73ED9A0.7A39@contessa.phone.net> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Paul Prescod] | As I said, there is still no need for \ or \ in the | SGML+DTD source document. Quite correct, but the question was whether there was a need for things like \ and \ in HTML, not in "the source DTD". If you're going to use HTML as a presentation DTD as suggested, it needs either \ and \ or to have every tag from all other DTDs. Since the latter is clearly impractical, you have to live with the former. That some people use HTML as the source DTD mean you wind up with \ and \ in the source DTD. Not much you can do about that. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 17:55:36 UT From: Wolfgang Rieger \ Organization: MUC.DE e.v -- private Internet access Message-ID: <3ehbqo$8sn@marvin.muc.de> References: \ <3e8c0k$8m8@marvin.muc.de> \ Subject: Re: MS Word and SGML [Paul Prescod] | What is the easist way to convert from SGML to Word or RTF? [Wolfgang Rieger] | The best way is to convert from SGML to RTF and from there to Word. [Paul Prescod] | Do I write something to convert from SGML to RTF myself or is there | something that does it already? I'd be using a Perl script or C-program to do the conversion. I think there are conversion tools, too, but I'm not sure (at least I cannot tell from where to FTP them). But since the conversion is fairly easy, there is IMHO no real need for general SGML2RTF tools. | The problem with RTF is that there is no guarantee that future versions | of Word will continue to produce "meaningful" RTF. For instance it | seems like WordPerfect replaces styles with their formatting codes. So | its RTF output is basically useless from a structural point of view. There are compatibility problems with the different versions of RTF as used by different Microsoft products and (still more) RTF generated by software from other vendors. However, this does not apply if you generate RTF to be read by WinWord without using any special features. | One problem I can see: I do not believe that Word styles can be | arbitrarily nested as SGML tags can be. Am I wrong? SGML tags cannot be nested arbitrarily deep. The TAGLVL quantity specifies the limit. You may change that by modifying the SGML declaration, but there may still be the limits imposed by the processing system (i.e., it's system declaration). Concerning RTF: I do not see a limit in the specs. There is no hierarchical document structure in RTF files. Wolfgang Rieger -- Wolfgang Rieger Email: rieger@colin.muc.de c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung WWW : http://www.muc.de/~rieger Frankfurter Ring 193a Tel. : +49 89 323 19 93 80807 Munich Fax : +49 89 323 19 93 Germany Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 18:15:14 UT From: Wolfgang Rieger \ Message-ID: <3ehcvi$8sn@marvin.muc.de> References: \ Subject: Re: Q: seeking a bibliographical DTD [Basile Starynkevitch] | I'm seeking for a bibliographical DTD, for storing bibliographies (like | the bibtex format) for instance. I have written a simple DTD when I converted the SGML bibliography by Nelson H. F. Beebe from BIBTEX to SGML. The DTD is more strict than the BIBTEX specification, and there is no documentation. | Also, is there some publicly available DTDs (or other SGML related | files) on the Internet (eg an ftp site)? If you (or others) are interested, I can mail it to you or upload it to some FTP server. -- Wolfgang Rieger Email: rieger@colin.muc.de c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung WWW : http://www.muc.de/~rieger/ Frankfurter Ring 193a Tel. : +49 89 323 19 93 80807 Munich Fax : +49 89 323 19 93 Germany Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 19:04:49 UT From: Joe English \ Organization: Helpless people on subway trains Message-ID: <3ehfsh$il0@crl2.crl.com> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Glenda Jeffrey] | I once heard someone mention that SGML does not work all that well for | complex equations. Does anyone out there know why? Are there some | serious limitations? I don't think there are any serious limitations. With liberal use of SHORTREFs and tag minimization, I believe that math can be encoded in SGML with about the same amount of difficulty as it can in LaTeX, possibly less. The QWERTZ (now LinuxDoc) DTD has a fairly good system for math. The main limitation of QWERTZ as compared to LaTeX is that you can't define parameterized macros in the document. (I'm pretty sure even that's possible with SGML, though I haven't tried it yet...) HTML 3 will also include mathematics support, and the AAP has a DTD fragment for maths. All of these schemes are presentation-oriented, which goes against what's usually considered the "SGML philosophy", but it seems to be the only viable approach for general-purpose mathematics. I don't know of any domain-specific semantic tag sets for mathematics, but those should be no harder to design than any other DTD. --Joe English jenglish@crl.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 19:15:03 UT From: Mary Holstege \ Message-ID: <9501051915.AA17359@mercury> References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ <9412300638.AA7907@notes.microstar.com> \ <9501041819.AA9616@notes.microstar.com> Subject: Re: Big characters in html Matt argues for tags such as \ or \ by making the observation observation that it is impossible to enumerate all the possible uses for such a device: [Matt Timmermans] | There is no comprehensive list of all possible reasons to use | subscript. In fact, there can be no comprehensive list because new | uses for subscript pop up continually, limited only by the creativity | of authors. | | By attempting to enumerate all of the possible reasons for subscript, a | DTD designer would be stifling that creativity. This is just not | acceptable unless you really _need_ to know why _all_ subscripted | things are subscripted. The observation is correct, but the conclusion doesn't follow. The right response, it seems to me, it not to throw up your hands and say "therefore we must mark according to the presentation" but to say "therefore we need to be able to augment DTDs in a simple and straightforward fashion". Because there is no "the" presentation -- there is "a" presentation, today's presentation on this here display device. You can bet that some day some one will want to know why you subscripted that bit of text and they will curse your name if you don't tell them. Like maybe subscripts and Braille don't work very well together or maybe on a 4 line display they don't look so great. You the author presumably had some good reason for making the subscripted elements visual distinctive using a device shared in other contexts: Which is more important -- the distinctiveness or the alikeness? If you don't care then why mark it as distinctive in the first place? The onus is on DTD designers to provide good hooks for making additions to the DTD and on SGML-2 to make the provision and use of those hooks more pleasant. -- Mary Holstege@kset.com -- Mary Holstege, Sr. Member of Technical Staff KnowledgeSet Corporation 555 Ellis Street Tel: +1 415 254 5452 Mountain View, CA 94043 FAX: +1 415 254 5451 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 19:31:27 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <3efpfv$g8p@data.interserv.net> Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Chet Ensign] | I think that you are both bringing in valid points here. But I want to | side with Matt and say that it *is* a data creation problem. (please restrict yourself to 80 characters across...many of us still use archaic user-hostile systems) | Paul, you refer to authors as "domain experts." But in my experience | in the technical writing field, most writers are not domain experts at | all. Sad but true, too many companies put any writer on a project, | regardless of their experience. But whether writers are domain experts or not, they are the ones who have to use the conventions. Would you rather they just "chose" a convention or used one they were not sure about: "I _think_ I've seen superscript used to mean this..." or would you prefer that they just put it in a DTD and let a true domain expert make the formatting decision. | And in fact, one of my writers raised just this point today. The | problem with very, very rich SGML structure, she said, is that it gets | in the way of writing. The writer, cruising along, on a roll, getting | stuff done, suddenly punches the Insert Element button and gets one | cazillion and three elements that are valid at that location. And that | is pretty distracting. You and your writer are _so_ very right. Absolutely correct. The problem, though, is either: 1. There are elements outside of the domain, more than they would have to know if they applied direct formatting. 2. There are too many elements in the domain. Either problem should be solved with a domain specific application. A software program that moves the really commonly used elements to a button bar, the often used elements to a menu and the rest to a huge listbox that they seldom see. The big job of the future for SGML experts is writing these applications. We need to improve our tools and make them more "embeddable" and "extendable", though. Instead of concentrating on general purpose editors we must start concentrating on making and using SGML-based application development tools. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 21:01:52 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ \ <9501041819.AA9616@notes.microstar.com> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Peter Flynn] | e. \$\backslash \backslash E\backslash \backslash \backslash =\backslash |\; \backslash m\backslash \backslash c\backslash 2\backslash \backslash \backslash \; |\; |\; I\; submit\; that\; this\; is\; a\; problem\; of\; targeting:\; (a)\; and\; (b)\; are\; easiest\; |\; to\; type\; but\; (c)\; is\; more\; explicit;\; (e)\; is\; the\; most\; useful\; for\; retrieval\; |\; in\; that\; it\; provides\; most\; information\; (e)\; does\; not\; have\; to\; be\; more\; difficult\; to\; type.\; You\; just\; need\; a\; smart\; entry\; system\; with\; intelligent\; application-specific,\; domain-specific,\; even\; user-specific\; "defaults."\; Paul\; Prescod$ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 21:20:27 UT From: Chad Dull \ Organization: Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH (USA) Message-ID: <3ehnqr$s96@falcon.bgsu.edu> Subject: Need help getting started in SGML research I am a graduate student in Scientific and Technical Communication at Bowling Green State University. I am participating in an independent study class dealing with SGML/CALS/HTML. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start research? Also, I would like to subscribe to the SGML listserv. Could someone please tell me how to accomplish this? Any assistance whatsoever will be greatly appreciated. I look forward to monitoring this newsgroup as we begin our research. Please post or reply to me at chaddul@bgnet.bgsu.edu. Thank you Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 21:51:30 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501052151.AA37024@source.asset.com> References: \ <3efpfv$g8p@data.interserv.net> Subject: Re: Big characters in html Fascinating, Chet. If they are "cruising along, on a roll, getting stuff done, suddenly punches the Insert Element button and gets one cazillion and three elements that are valid at that location" and are "distracted": 1. What are they writing about if they don't know what they are writing about? 2. Why can't they choose correctly if the rich DTD declares what they are writing about? 3. If there are that many choices at each node, is this a well-structured domain? 4. Is distraction sufficient to prevent closure? It's the classical entropy problem of information theory. If a signal requires more energy to identify and reply to than is available in the system at that space/time quanta (intersection of all active systems of view), the system collapses. What you seem to indicate is: 1. The competence of the human component is low. 2. The system which is provided to compensate for the human incompetence is itself, incompetent. Ergo: whatever management system provided that helping system to the human system failed to provide a correct analysis or a correct choice of both systems, so the system which manages the other systems is incompetent. Is that only a data creation problem? That kind of competence problem was the central issue which lead to the creation of the enterprise engineering which is a sub-domain of systems engineering. Now the *writer* (data creator) is probably competent at English, and was competent to be an *editor*. The competence to create data was probably upstream in the guise of an *engineer* who may have captured that data creation (*content*) in a specification or a database (depends on the tools again). What was the goal for creating the artifact you mention? 1. Well-written and attractively formatted text and graphics with a robust indexing scheme. 2. Correct and current data structured to preserve product description values. If it is the first, and your *helper system* is distracting, your layouts are over-built or badly structured. If it is the second, your subject domain declaration is over-built or badly structured. There are more types, of course, but the point is made. The roles of the individual performers are badly defined. When we were writing the content models for the US Army DTD for IADS, at one point, an editor standing behind us complained that no one would ever figure out what all of those tuple values meant, so the element types were confusing. At that instant, her boss who was a technical writer said that the element types obviously constituted a parts list. The hidden issue was that once SGML and a stylesheet were applied, the content displayed correctly without the need for editing. Who is confused depends on who is looking and what roles they have played or hope to play in the future. This is why many who have some background outside computer science, SGML, networks, WWW, etc. despair whenever another group however well-constituted suggest that "one good DTD is all we need". As has been said many times, a DTD reflects a point of view about the information to be marked up and the intent for marking it up: AND NOTHING MORE. Systems which work well using applications based on the SGML standard enable the users point of view to be captured. Only that makes it useful and easy to apply. For that to work well, the presentation (editors point of view) is separated from the content layer (subject or domain experts point of view) and they are united by a common location and addressing model. The secret is lots of little DTDs...well-documented, and systems that understand SGML and not just one application of it. "The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the 'real meaning' of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all." -- Marvin Minsky: The Society of Mind, p. 64 Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 22:29:19 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19950103.73ED9A0.7A39@contessa.phone.net> \ <19950105.7840548.74D4@contessa.phone.net> Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Mike Meyer] | Quite correct, but the question was whether there was a need for things | like \ and \ in HTML, not in "the source DTD." If you're | going to use HTML as a presentation DTD as suggested, it needs either | \ and \ or to have every tag from all other DTDs. Since | the latter is clearly impractical, you have to live with the former. | | That some people use HTML as the source DTD mean you wind up with | \ and \ in the source DTD. Not much you can do about that. My humblest apologies. I thought we were talking about non-HTML SGML DTDs. When you said HTML I read SGML. HTML is fine as a presentation language. It should be used primarily as an output format and not a source format. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 05 Jan 1995 22:51:27 UT From: "Bruce F. Webster" \ Organization: Pages Software Inc Message-ID: \ References: <3eh8o6$c58@gateway.dircsa.org.au> Subject: Re: Word Perfect -- HTML/SGML conversion? [Arthur Marsh] | How does WordPerfect Intellitag fit in with all this? Pages by Pages 1.7 will import WordPerfect documents (as well as MS Word, Frame MIF, AmiPro, etc.) and can then export them as HTML...nicely styled HTML, at that. Of course, it runs on NEXTSTEP, but that hasn't stopped some firms that want to us it. Check out our home page (see below) for more information. ..bruce.. -- Bruce F. Webster | The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with CTO, Pages Software Inc | truths for which Archimedes would have bwebster@pages.com | sacrificed his life. http://www.pages.com | -- Ernest Renan Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.infosystems.www.users,alt.etext,comp.text.sgml Followup-To: news.groups Date: 06 Jan 1995 00:34:30 UT From: "M. L. Grant" \ Organization: Mount Cuba Observatory Message-ID: <3ei36m$du@news.halcyon.com> Subject: PLEASE READ: comp.infosystems.www.announce has passed The vote for comp.infosystems.www.announce (moderated) has passed, by a margin of 602 to 19, with 2 invalid votes. Please find the vote ack in news.groups or news.announce.newgroups to see the official result post. It contains both a listing of who voted how and the group's charter. The result was posted on 5 January; there will be a 5-day discussion period. If there are no serious problems with the vote, the group will be newgrouped around the 10th. -- "Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun." M. L. Grant grant@coho.halcyon.com \ Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 03:33:02 UT From: Arthur Marsh \ Organization: DIRCSA - Disability Information and Resource Centre Message-ID: <3eh8o6$c58@gateway.dircsa.org.au> References: \ Subject: Re: Word Perfect -- HTML/SGML conversion? [Peter da Silva] | Anyone got tools (commercial or otherwise) to convertWord Perfect | documents into something like HTML or some other SGML document type? [John Liebson] | Quarterdeck says it will have one first 1/4 95; that's all they said, | so far. [Bob Goldschmidt] | And Interleaf will publish the Cyberleaf product 1Q95. That one looks | promising. How does WordPerfect Intellitag fit in with all this? -- Arthur Marsh, telephone +61-8-370-2365, fax +61-8-370-2133, +61-8-223-5082 arthur@gateway.dircsa.org.au, arthur@cswamp.apana.org.au .endofsig Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 04:49:54 UT From: Mike Meyer \ Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Message-ID: <19950105.762EAD0.12F51@contessa.phone.net> References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Peter Flynn] | Claiming that HTML is a presentation format is only partially right: if | it were pure presentation then it would not have \ and \, | only \ and \, and it would have typeface/size specs instead of \

| thru \

[etc etc]. This is only true if you control the presentation media. You don't control that for HTML - you have no idea what the person on the other end is going to use for a presentation device. This is why you need tags that describe the document structure, rather than control a presentation device. Including every possible structural tag in a DTD would lead to impractical browsers/authoring tools/etc. So after you do the ones that are most useful, you punt and put in control things that work on the majority of presentation devices. Deciding what "most useful" and "majority of presentation devices" means is the hard part. In fact, that's what this argument covers. One end of the argument is that all possible tags qualify as "most useful" and none as "majority of presentation devices." The other inverts those two. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 07:07:37 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3eiq7p$pjl@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: <3e8c0k$8m8@marvin.muc.de> \ <3ehbqo$8sn@marvin.muc.de> Subject: Re: MS Word and SGML As Tim Bray mentioned, we've had a lot of experience with creating SGML from Microsoft Word 6. Rebecca Benfield and I presented a poster and short paper at SGML '94 which, with all due modesty, is the last word on the subject. I would be happy to send a copy to anyone interested - unfortunately it is in some God-awful format (RTF) so it would be easiest to employ the assistance of our good 'ole postal service. We base everything on Word styles. It isn't without its limitations - if you must know read our paper. Our filters are written in Perl. Below are a couple of programs which some of you might be interested in. sty2sgml is a little like an SGML transformer, except instead of performing actions upon encountering elements it is triggered by styles in an RTF file. The transformation language is Perl, of course! What we do with this is to insert hidden text with the SGML tags wherever we encounter a relevant style - in other words we produce a still valid RTF file. This is somewhat useful for performing QA visually (the SGML tags have the same formatting as the thing the style marks). Later we simply strip out all RTF to get a parsable SGML file. Our process has some advantages over MS's SGML Author - Perl is free and we can do virtually anything we want with the programming power of Perl - and disadvantages - transformation and parsing are not integrated with Word. This program works for our files but it isn't the world's greatest RTF parser. RTF is nasty and sooner or later will get you. I have had occasion to wish I written this in C using Paul DuBois' RTF parser (except I don't know if it works, but it seems to be a solid effort). Another approach would have been to use a Rainbow maker to produce rainbow SGML from RTF. I actually looked into this and don't remember why I decided not to do that - but this seems to work so we're happy. There is a second program which prints out the RTF stylesheet (useful for starting a transformation script), and there is an example of a transformation script. The documentation is pretty good, considering that this is hacking, par excellence. There are several files concatentated together-it is obvious where the divisions are from the headers. Happy new year all. Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606 michael@textscience.com V +1 510 444 2962 ----------------------code follows------------------------------------------- ############################################################### # sty2sgml - transforms RTF styles # # # # INPUT: RTF file to be converted # # CODE style code type - conversion code # # OUTPUT: STDOUT converted RTF file # # COMMAND: perl sty2sgml RTF CODE > RTF.sgm # # DESCRIPTION: # # Main routine, convert files with RTF styles # # to SGML, using a code table. The code table # # associates processing code (in perl) with the # # appearance of styles, given by name. (The style # # names can be extracted from an RTF file using the # # prstysh utility.) Here is the syntax of the CODE # # file: # # # # STYLE_NAME \\tab CODE # # STYLE_NAME is the name of style used in the # # document. When it is encountered CODE will be # # executed. CODE may begin on the line following # # the style name. CODE may be continued on following # # lines but the first character MUST be a \\tab. # # Comments are allowed. The first non-blank char- # # acter must be a '#'. # # # # Writing CODE: Before CODE is executed the text # # to which the style applies is put in $_. CODE # # fragment therefore manipulate $_ in some way. # # The desired output should be returned in $_ # # since this will be written to the output file # # after CODE is complete. # # There is are two useful subroutines: surrcontent, # # and startcontent. # # surrcontent surrounds the styled text with whatever # # arguments are given for BEFORE and AFTER. It # # returns the new string # # BEFORE_TEXT STYLE_TEXT AFTER_TEXT # # e.g., # # $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'\','<\\hi>'); # # will write \$_<\\hi> to $_ (where $_ represents # # the string content of $_) # # startcontent puts a string before the start of the # # of the styled content. It returns the new string # # BEFORE_TEXT STYLE_TEXT # # e.g., # # $_ = \&startcontent($_,'\; # search for {\\stylesheet to skip definitions if (/\\{\\n?\\\\\\n?s\\n?t\\n?y\\n?l\\n?e\\n?s\\n?h\\n?e\\n?e\\n?t/) { print $`.$&; $_ = $'; # skip to end of stylesheet /;\\n?}\\n?}/; print $`.$&; # ready to begin scanning for styles $_ = $'; } eval $stylenamecode{'init'}; while (/(\\{\\n?)?\\\\\\n?(((c|c\\n)?s)\\n?\\d\\n?(\\d|\\d\\n)?\\d?)/) { print $`; $style = $2; if ($stylenumcode{$style} eq "nop") { print $&; $_ = $'; } elsif ($3 eq "cs") { $string = $&.$'; $pos = 4; $level = 0; $olda = '0'; $a = substr($string, $pos, 1); while ($a ne "}" || $olda eq "\\\\" || $level != 0) { if ($a eq "{" && $olda ne "\\\\") { $level++; } elsif ($a eq "}" && $olda ne "\\\\") { $level--; } $pos++; $olda = $a; $a = substr($string, $pos, 1); } $_ = substr($string, 0, ++$pos); # the rest of the string to the end $after = substr($string,$pos); # at this point we must deal with nesting # in the $_ buffer - we should process # $_ for nested CS recursively $_ = \&stynest($_,length($&)); eval $stylenumcode{$style}; print $_; $_ = $after; } else { $_ = $&.$'; /\\\\par (\\}*)/; $_ = $`.$&; $after = $'; # at this point we must deal with nesting # in the $_ buffer - we should process # $_ for nested CS recursively $_ = \&stynest($_,4); eval $stylenumcode{$style}; print $_; $_ = $after; } } print $_; close(FILE); sub stynest { local($buffer) = @_[0]; local($offset) = @_[1]; local($newstring); local($after); local($match); local($style); local($before); local($next); local($string); local($pos); local($level); local($olda); local($a); $newstring = substr($buffer,0,$offset); $_ = substr($buffer,$offset); while (/(\\{\\n?)?\\\\\\n?(c\\n?s\\n?\\d\\n?(\\d|\\d\\n)?\\d?)/) { $before = $`; $next = $'; $match = $&; $style = $2; if ($stylenumcode{$style} eq "nop") { $newstring .= $before.$match; $_ = $next; } else { $newstring .= $before; $string = $match.$next; $pos = 4; $level = 0; $olda = '0'; $a = substr($string, $pos, 1); while ($a ne "}" || $olda eq "\\\\" || $level != 0) { if ($a eq "{" && $olda ne "\\\\") { $level++; } elsif ($a eq "}" && $olda ne "\\\\") { $level--; } $pos++; $olda = $a; $a = substr($string, $pos, 1); } $_ = substr($string, 0, ++$pos); # the rest of the string to the end $after = substr($string,$pos); # at this point we must deal with nesting # in the $_ buffer - we should process # $_ for nested CS recursively $_ = \&stynest($_,length($match)); eval $stylenumcode{$style}; $newstring .= $_; $_ = $after; } } return $newstring.$_; } sub surrcontent { local($buffer) = @_[0]; local($preceding) = @_[1]; local($following) = @_[2]; $_ = $buffer; if (/[^\\\\]\\}$/) { chop; s/(\\\\[^ ]* )((.|\\n)*)/$1$preceding$2$following\\}/; } else { s/(\\\\[^ ]* )((.|\\n)*)/$1$preceding$2$following/; } return $_; } sub startcontent { local($buffer) = @_[0]; local($preceding) = @_[1]; local($pos); local($chars); local($at); $chars = length($buffer); $pos = 0; while ($pos < $chars) { $at = substr($buffer,$pos,1); if ($pos < $chars && $at eq "\\\\") { if (++$pos >= $chars) { last; } $at = substr($buffer,$pos,1); if ($at eq "\\\\" || $at eq "{") { last; } # beginning of data # search for end of rtf command (making the # dangerous assumption that this isn't an escaped # data character with the exceptions of above of # backslash and curly-brace while ($at ne " ") { if (++$pos >= $chars) { last; } else { $at = substr($buffer,$pos,1); } } $pos++; } # simply skip group markup elsif ($at eq "{" || $at eq "}") { $pos++; } else { last; } } if ($pos == $chars) { $_ = $buffer.$preceding; } else { $_ = substr($buffer,0,$pos).$preceding.substr($buffer,$pos); } return $_; } ############################################################### # prstysh PRint STYleSHeet # # Prints out the style names and numbers defined # # in the RTF stylesheet table. # # # # Input: ARGV[0], file name of file from which # # styles will be printed # # Output: STDOUT, list of style numbers and names # # Command: perl prstysh RTF-FILE > STYLESHEET-REPORT# # # # 8/22 M.Leventhal # ############################################################### do "ssntbl.pl"; $file = shift @ARGV; %styleass = (); \&ssntbl($file,*styleass); foreach $style (sort keys (%styleass)) { print "Style: $style Name: $styleass{$style}\\n"; } ############################################################### # styctbl.pl - STYle Code TaBLe # # Parses a style code table, storing the # # style name and perl code of each style in # # an associative array. # # # # \&styctbl(filename,assocarr) # # INPUT: filename - name of file containing # # a style code table # # I/O: assocarr - pointer to associative array # # for output of (name, code) # # pairs # # # # 8/22 M.Leventhal # ############################################################### sub ssntbl { local($file) = @_[0]; local(*styletable) = @_[1]; open(FILE, $file); undef($/); $* = 1; while (\) { # search for {\\stylesheet if (/\\{\\n?\\\\\\n?s\\n?t\\n?y\\n?l\\n?e\\n?s\\n?h\\n?e\\n?e\\n?t/) { $_ = $'; # search for {\\s24 ... ;} style definition, # OR {\\*\\cs24 ... ;} character style definition, # save style number and extract style name while (/\\{\\n?(\\\\\\n?\\*\\n?)?\\\\\\n?(c?s\\n?\\d\\n?\\d?\\n?\\d?\\n?)[ \\\\]\\n?[^;]*;\\n?\\}/) { $next = $'; $stylenumber = $2; $_ = reverse($&); $name = ""; /\\};([^\\\\]*)\\\\/; $match = $1; while (chop($1) eq "'") { $name = $match."\\\\"; $_ = $'; /([^\\\\]*)\\\\/; $match = $1; } $_ = reverse($name.$match); /[^ ]*\\n? ((.|\\n)*)/; $_ = $1; s/\\n//g; $stylename = $_; $styletable{$stylenumber} = $stylename; $_ = $next; } last; } } close(FILE); } ############################################################### # styass.pl - STYle ASSociate # # Associates associative array of stylenumber, # # style name, with associative array of style # # style code. # # # # \&styass(aanumname,aanamecode,aanumcode) # # INPUT: aanumname: associative array of style # # number,name pairs # # aanamecode:associative array of stylename,# # code pairs # # I/O: aanumcode: associative array of style # # number, code pairs. Code # # is eval'able perl code or the # # keyword nop in no action is # # associated with the style # # # # 8/22 M.Leventhal # ############################################################### sub styass { local(*aanumname) = @_[0]; local(*aanamecode) = @_[1]; local(*aanumcode) = @_[2]; foreach $stylenumber (keys(%aanumname)) { if (defined ($code = $aanamecode{$aanumname{$stylenumber}})) { $aanumcode{$stylenumber} = $code; } else { $aanumcode{$stylenumber} = "nop"; } } } ############################################################### # styctbl.pl - STYle Code TaBLe # # Parses a style code table, storing the # # style name and perl code of each style in # # an associative array. # # # # \&styctbl(filename,assocarr) # # INPUT: filename - name of file containing # # a style code table # # I/O: assocarr - pointer to associative array # # for output of (name, code) # # pairs # # Here is the syntax of the CODE file: # # # # STYLE_NAME \\tab CODE # # STYLE_NAME is the name of style used in the # # document. When it is encountered CODE will be # # executed. CODE may begin on the line following # # the style name. CODE may be continued on following # # lines but the first character MUST be a \\tab. # # Comments are allowed. The first non-blank char- # # acter must be a '#'. # # # # Writing CODE: Before CODE is executed the text # # to which the style applies is put in $_. CODE # # fragment therefore manipulate $_ in some way. # # The desired output should be returned in $_ # # since this will be written to the output file # # after CODE is complete. # # There is are two useful subroutines: surrcontent, # # and startcontent. # # surrcontent surrounds the styled text with whatever # # arguments are given for BEFORE and AFTER. It # # returns the new string # # BEFORE_TEXT STYLE_TEXT AFTER_TEXT # # e.g., # # $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'\','<\\hi>'); # # will write \$_<\\hi> to $_ (where $_ represents # # the string content of $_) # # startcontent puts a string before the start of the # # of the styled content. It returns the new string # # BEFORE_TEXT STYLE_TEXT # # e.g., # # $_ = \&startcontent($_,'\) { # col 1 alphanumeric a style name, must be # followed by a tab if (/^([A-Za-z0-9][^\\t\\n]*)[\\t\\n\\s]*(.*)/) { if ($oldstyle) { $codetable{$stylename} = $code; } else { $oldstyle = 1; } $stylename = $1; $code = $2; } elsif (/^ *#/) # comment { ; } else { $code .= $_; } } $codetable{$stylename} = $code; close(FILE); } ############################################################### # update.mup - sty2sgml code table for updates # # # # UPDATE HISTORY # # M.Leventhal Text Science 12/13 # ############################################################### init # Remove any character-styled paragraph breaks # (Usually picked up marking a citation at the beginning # of a paragraph, causes null citation to be indexed.) # Convert to non-cs paragraph break. s/\\{\\n?\\\\\\n?(c|c\\n)?s\\n?\\d\\n?(\\d|\\d\\n)?\\d?[^ ]* (\\n?\\\\\\n?p\\n?a\\n?r\\n? )\\}/$3/g; # Change hidden text Interleaf components which have been # marked with character styles (usually because they are # adjacent to a CEB entity which has been character styled) # to hidden text with styling (so that interleaf componets # aren't marked as citations.) s/\\{\\n?\\\\\\n?(c|c\\n)?s\\n?\\d\\n?(\\d|\\d\\n)?\\d?\\\\\\n?v\\n?(\\\\| )[^<]*(<[^>]*>)\\}/\\{\\\\v $4\\}/g; Ref-external-CEB $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Ref-internal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Case-Interim $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Ref-external-Other $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Ref-form $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \

}', '{\\v \

}{\\v \}'); Ref-organization $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Case-Cal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Stat-Cal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Act-Cal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Case-Federal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Stat-Federal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Act-Federal $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Unrecognized $_ = \&surrcontent($_,'{\\v \}{\\v \}', '{\\v \}{\\v \}'); Form Head-Atty Drafted ; Form Head-Judicial C ; Form Head-Preprinted ; Chapter Title ; Chapter Number ; Form Indent ; Form Flush ; Form Cen Instr ; Normal Flush ; RQuote Indent ; RQuote Flush ; Head-Other s/^/\\{\\\\v \\\}/; Head w/ \\'a7 s/^/\\{\\\\v \\\}/; Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 08:12:19 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3eiu13$q36@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: \ Subject: Re: SGML syntax question: discontinuous consistency / interruptions? There is good reason for interest in CONCUR - it almost seems to do something useful. I wrote some time ago (I'm quoting myself so I don't have to think about this again. It makes my head hurt.): "SUBDOC and CONCUR are optional features which are mechanisms for defining and combining classes. Since the root element is the only explicit superclass in an SGML document the only importation we can make of another class structure is at the document level, which is what SUBDOC does. A stronger classing mechanism should make it possible to import sub-class hierarchies at any level, although this would also result in name-space limitations. CONCUR is, despite its straightforward origin as a technique for cominbing abstract and functional markup, an exotic beast, requiring that a single document support the complete resolution of separate hierarchies. Although some interesting examples can be concocted CONCUR is probably only practical where the document consists of a single set of elements with more than one application class. This is a genre of multiple inheritance. While CONCUR has the advantage of allowing multiple sets of markup to exist over one set of data independent of each other, standard multiple inheritance would facilitate, as in SUBDOC, finer gain combinations of class definitions than that of document classes." Makota Murata did the definitive study of CONCUR in a paper called "File Format for Documents Containing both Logical Structures and Layout Structures" presented at SGML '94. ('bout the only _serious_ paper ever presented at an SGML conference.) Murata's email address is murata@rst.fujixerox.co.jp. Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 13:07:58 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3ejfbe$78v@argo.hks.com> References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Peter Flynn] | 2 | a. E=mc | | b. $E=mc^2$ | | c. \$E=mc\backslash 2\backslash \backslash$ | | d. #italm#10pt#sbs(E=mc)#shfv5#6pt(2)#shfv-5#10pt | | e. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 13:57:40 UT From: Steve Willcox \ Organization: Ziff Desktop Information Message-ID: \ Subject: DTD inheritance model I'm starting to design DTDs for documents of several different types where all of the document types share some common elements -- such as an Author and Title. I'm not aware of any explicit construct in SGML that allows DTD inheritance as there is in object oriented languages like C++. I guess that one approach would be to put the common element definitions in one file and include it in all the types (DTDs) that share these common defintions. I would think that people designing DTD must run into this frequently since documents tend to lend themselves well to object-oriented concepts but I haven't seen any books or material on this. I'd appreciate any info or thoughts on this subject. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 14:30:26 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <9501041819.AA9616@notes.microstar.com> \ <9501051842.AA9957@notes.microstar.com> Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Matt Timmermans] | [A]: The full gamut of human thought can be represented in ASCII. It | can certainly be represented in SGML. The key point here, however, is | that not all of the information in a document can be consumed | algorithmically, i.e., you CAN'T mark up the meaning of everything. Agreed. But anything that is "distinct" enough to be a new formatting convention can be represented through meaning-based tags. | [B]: If everyone on Earth were to create a new meaning for superscript | every second until the end of time, there would still be a finite | number of meanings for superscript, so this statement is correct. Any | complete list, however, would be obsolete in less than a second. Then what you need is a user level way to extend the meaning->formatting mapping. NOT a way to circumvent it. | [C]: This is clearly not true. I have never seen this [\] | notation in a posting before, and yet I'm willing to bet that you have | no difficulty understanding it. A new meaning for superscript can be | introduced unambiguously in any document as long as that document | explains (explicitly or contextually) the meaning to its human(!) | readers. My above comment addresses this also. | How do you represent graphics to a blind person? If your DTD includes | pictures, then blind people are out anyway -- you might as well include | \ too. When deciding your DTD's presentation-based feature set, | that feature set should be considered as a whole. But pictures are sufficiently beneficial to sighted people that we must (regretfully) inconvenience blind readers. I still do not understand the benefit of \ over a user-extendable DTD and style sheet mechanism. If you can explain the benefit to me, I might be willing to let the blind fend for themselves. | I probably should have made this more clear, but I never meant to imply | that one shouldn't mark up chemicals as chemicals, only that this does | not _necessarily_ mean you can't have \ as well. There is, | of course, the difficulty of convincing authors to choose \ | when they mean \, but that is a different argument -- and it's | not as difficult as it seems if you have the proper authoring software. Again, I don't understand why they should _ever_ type subscript when they could, instead, DEFINE chemical and choose a formatting mapping for it. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 16:11:38 UT From: Chet Cady \ Organization: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Message-ID: <3ejq3q$i82@oclc.org> Keywords: Books Handbooks Subject: Is THE SGML HANDBOOK under revision? Recently I tried to order Goldfarb's THE SGML HANDBOOK, and it was out of stock at the bookstore (which normally carries it) and at the bookstore's supplier. The clerks had the opinion that it could be under revision, and that the publisher had either recalled the current edition or just wasn't replenishing them. Does anyone know for sure? If it's not being revised, I'll go to another bookstore and get it ASAP. But if it is being revised, I'd hate to shell out the $ ~100 only to find the book isn't up to date. Thanks! Chet Cady cady@oclc.org Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 17:06:22 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950106T170622Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <3ejq3q$i82@oclc.org> Subject: Re: Is THE SGML HANDBOOK under revision? [Chet Cady] | Recently I tried to order Goldfarb's THE SGML HANDBOOK, and it was out | of stock at the bookstore (which normally carries it) and at the | bookstore's supplier. The clerks had the opinion that it could be | under revision, and that the publisher had either recalled the current | edition or just wasn't replenishing them. | | Does anyone know for sure? If it's not being revised, I'll go to | another bookstore and get it ASAP. But if it is being revised, I'd | hate to shell out the $ ~100 only to find the book isn't up to date. the book is as up to date as it can be, possibly more so, since it contains suggested changes to the standard that have not been formally approved by ISO vote. more likely, it's the small prints that has bitten the publisher again (and which is a contributing factor to its high price). last time it went out of stock, a few months went past with the occasional mail and news article requesting information. let me know if there's any dire need. #\ -- guvf vf abg n synzr Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 17:44:11 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501061744.AA26787@source.asset.com> References: <3ddn9b$945@news1.delphi.com> <9501032222.AA23699@source.asset.com> <3eioel$qep@news1.delphi.com> Subject: Re: Recent Postings I completely agree that by proper use of the declaration feature one can detect a new version of SGML and that this is the mechanism by which it should be indicated. I apologize for not recognizing the emphasis on *version*. I am reacting badly to the *kill all the lawyers* tone that has pervaded the CTS of late. Whether anyone appreciates it, the computer scientists need the lawyers for activities in which compSciHeads have little experience or skill. This goes both ways, of course, but it is terribly difficult to argue with lawyers. I have enjoyed all occasions when I've argued with the document editor of the SGML standard, but it always scares the living daylights out of me and I am not a lawyer or a compSciHead... just an SGMList. |-) However, the point that proper hierarchies are not always possible when modeling is still valid. It is always possible to use links as the DSSSL-Lite teams are suggesting and as was done in earlier hypertext systems to point to non-hierarchical relationships that must be invoked at some point in the model. (It would be civil if they would also use standards-based and not specification-based links, but that is an issue of DTD design.) The inclusion exception feature of the current version of SGML is also capable of including such information for the processing system. One common use of it is to include \, \ etc tags at the root of the definition. It is a practice that some hold in disfavor, but it works most of the time. The problems of declaring typographic applications in domain-specific applications are well known and are the same for any mixed domain design. Stroustrup discusses the issues of the upward compatibility of C into C++ at some length in his book on the design of C++. It should be kept in mind that object-orientation has both advantages and objections. Preserving compatibility in these areas is a bit different from broadcast television. Programmers who use both C, C++, assembly, etc, tell me that while some kinds of databases work well with objects, print drivers and other device- oriented applications do not. Most metaphors have an advantage for one application and a disadvantage for others but that is just the "No Size Fits All" aspect of a messy universe. But take away the messiness, and it quits evolving which means it is effectively, Dead. Witness the debate of relational vs object-oriented databases. The advantages of OOP accrue to the programmer, whereas, the relational advantages accrue to the data maintainer. Neither have significant advantages for the information user (domain user) who does not and need not understand the underlying implementation metaphors. Hypermedia has information user advantages. In one sense, it is not a database type, but is an integration technology for allowing the information user to accrue advantages of the others without the need to master them. Hypermedia as a document database is really only one application of general techniques, but as the book metaphor is so familiar to large numbers, it can be easily applied. That is why Bill Gates and so many others are following the leads of others in calling for document-centered systems. But what one considers a *document* has to be more than a set of pages bound between two covers. Hypermedia looks much like windowing technology because it is. None of us could live with haphazard changes in the X specifications either. MSWindows and OS-Warp aren't ours to control, so that issue is moot. The NTSC standard kept the use of color TV off the market in the US right into the 1960s although the technical issues with the system were solved 20 years earlier. There wasn't a problem with the TV set technology, as it isn't for high definition TV; it was issues of which solution would be adopted and how the cost of the new systems could be absorbed by the broadcast networks. There were technical (whose solution is best and cheapest) and economic/political (whose company or country will dominate the businesses after the solution is adopted as a standard) dimensions to the issue. As we are seeing in discussions of applying style, procedural semantics and integration via hyperlinking technology, the same issues are being weighed in public and in private. So, as long as: o  Change occurs in the standard through public processes mediated by the rules of ISO so that rule of law prevails and not "who shouts loudest" or has the biggest customer base o  A feature offers a clearly demonstrable improvement to the standard for a sufficient number of users and systems (an issue Stroustrup goes to great lengths to explain) o  Systems that must implement the feature are provided a migration path that does not engender unwarranted expense (cost vs functionality) o  Changes are not made that only provide a feature best provided by an application then I support you all the way. What Paul Prescod is saying is right. My turn on that is we should concentrate on application builders that are separable from application domain editors. If one understands this, it is very easy to build environments that are domain-specific. However, the SGML standard must rule because it is the only slowly changing piece capable of holding the environment together. A DTD is not capable of this as the HTML experience is beginning to demonstrate. It can only hold together an application and then only if all of the application systems correctly apply the rules of the standard and the specification. It's all about control by human agreement. That is why the standard emphasizes the parsing aspects as it is the parser that tests adherence to the agreement. Yes, we can have many levels and versions of the agreements, but once the agreement is violated intentionally as seems to be the case with NetScape, then it is: o  A parser's job to detect the mess o  A lawyer's job to sort out the mess, and get new agreements. Without enforcement, even this is of dubious utility. o  After that, the market votes and programmers and application designers cope with the mess. Sorry, but that is the job of the programmer and the application designer. Humans haven't evolved a better way. What you say is quite sensible. What we learn or need to improve the standard should be incorporated in the new version. Experience in all of the dimensions required to evaluate a change is not even across the participants, so patience is required. Standards change slowly; specifications change at a medium rate, and applications change constantly. This view of time scale is necessary for evolution to proceed in the face of chaotic influences. Therefore, I think it is always desirable to maintain compatibility, but not rigid adherence to an unchanging rule. Rule by law is adaptable, in fact, it is what makes adaptation possible. What is desirable is cool measured debate on why a change is necessary and what the advantages of change will be weighed against the disadvantages. No, SGML isn't perfect, but crucifixion can also result when we choose revolution over evolution. History teaches the danger of "crying for Barrabas". Thanks for your cool and measured response, Jeffrey. It is a pleasure. Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 18:15:13 UT From: Eric Berg \ Organization: Slip.Net Message-ID: \ References: <3ebrmo$ltf@dove.nist.gov> <3ef0jj$qn0@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Re: SGML FAQ or Web Site [Frederick R. Phelan, Jr.] | I would like to get a description of the SGML format. | | Is there a book, URL, or FAQ available? [Frederick R. Phelan, Jr.] | Ahh, no responses ... | | Please anything ... just a URL for anything even remotely touching on | SGML :/) Try this: http://www.sgmlopen.org -- Eric D. Berg Electronic Publishing Specialist Internet: eberg@slip.net Compuserve 71172,43 Tel./FAX: +1 415 626 2013 San Francisco, California Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 19:05:42 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3ek4a6$14i@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: \ Subject: Re: DTD inheritance model [Steve Willcox] | I'm starting to design DTDs for documents of several different types | where all of the document types share some common elements - such as an | Author and Title. | | I'm not aware of any explicit construct in SGML that allows DTD | inheritance as there is in object oriented languages like C++. | | I guess that one approach would be to put the common element | definitions in one file and include it in all the types (DTDs) that | share these common defintions. | | I would think that people designing DTD must run into this frequently | since documents tend to lend themselves well to object-oriented | concepts but I haven't seen any books or material on this. | | I'd appreciate any info or thoughts on this subject. Some of us have given this some thought. First, you might be able to achieve your objectives using modular DTD construction. Put your common element definitions into files and use entities to reference them. You also might need some cleverness with your container element content models. You are really interested in inheritance if what you want is specification of behavior, i.e., you want to create elements that are a little different. HyTime will help you to do some of that. Certainly you should go have a look at it. If you want to do things more correctly or completely than HyTime allows you must do it yourself. You may either, like HyTime, create a mechanism using SGML attributes to put the definitional machinary that you need into the element definitions or may define your classes and behavior outside of SGML. There have been efforts to use OODBMS for this purpose - the most interesting example I know of is a German project using the model language VODAK. As I said, some of us are interested in this. My take is that some not too grevious modifications could be made to ISO 8879 to provide a standard definitional mechanism for inheritance. Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606 michael@textscience.com V +1 510 444 2962 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 20:18:41 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ <19950105.762EAD0.12F51@contessa.phone.net> Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Mike Meyer] | Deciding what "most useful" and "majority of presentation devices" | means is the hard part. In fact, that's what this argument covers. | One end of the argument is that all possible tags qualify as "most | useful" and none as "majority of presentation devices." The other | inverts those two. There are two arguments going on here. One is about SGML and one about HTML. I agree that HTML is a formatting language like PostScript or LateX. It is not what I would call a "proper" SGML language. It uses SGML constructs and SGML terminology, but it "violates" the principle of SGML. That doesn't mean it is not good at what it does, or that there is a problem with it, or that it should be changed. My argument was with Matt who seemed to think that other SGML languages which are _supposed_ to be structure oriented should also incorporate formatting. I say: there is no need for it. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 22:04:49 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950106T220449Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ Subject: Re: SGML syntax question: discontinuous consistency / interruptions? [Daniel D Suthers] | Could you elaborate on why it has "no technical value." Perhaps the | specific "dubious feature" you mention above had no value, but | concurrent structures could be of great value to some communities who | may not care about historical objections. oh, somebody can always come up with a use for absolutely anything. that doesn't make everything people can use a good idea, but somewhere down the line, someone else will claim that you can't take away the bad ideas "for hysterical reasons", as random historical artifacts of design are popularly called. CONCUR is crippled by ISO 8879. I advocate that one should look beyond the words and look for the spirit of the law, in this case the standard, but the spirit of SGML is such that CONCUR can have no possible technical value beyond its flawed intentions as a political pacifier between the ODA crowd and the SGML proponents. I recognize the political situation at the time, do not agree with the solution, and think it would be a tragedy beyond compare to burden SGML systems with CONCUR, both now and in the future. fortunately, most SGML systems vendors have reached similar conclusions, and you won't find support for CONCUR. one could argue that the issue is thus moot, and that I draw attention to an issue that is better off six foot under and forgotten. CONCUR is useful only for that final composed edition of a document, where the page layout and the final text of the document is published. in short, it is a presentation encoding mechanism that could have enabled searches in one structure with positions that show up in the other, but this, too, is flawed, as there is a well-known lack of one-to-one correspondence between characters in the source document and glyphs in the page composition. how does CONCUR work, according to ISO 8879? in parsing an SGML document, you can choose between the base document type declaration, optionally with link declarations, _or_ some concurrent document type declaration. the one you choose is called the "active" document type. you can _not_ choose to do a parallel two-document-type parse and still be conforming. therefore, if you can or want to do this in your processing system, you are already in non-conformance land and nothing I can say will matter, anyway. I have previously argued that CONCUR is a separate and orthogonal feature to what SGML already does: it is a mechanism to merge two documents that may or may not have any common text. as a mechanism, it fails to take into account that most interesting text processing causes the input to be _rearranged_. the common text that is shared between two documents, one raw, one cooked, may turn out to be in vastly different places. you can choose to represent this in various convoluted ways, either giving precedence to the original ordering, or giving precedence to the formatted ordering, or none of them. in either case, you have to let your document undergo major surgery to undo the entanglement if you intend to use both orderings, which was the stated intention. SGML has one major philosophical flaw that all document designers will have to fight, and this is a flaw shared with all specification languages and with all explicit argumentation: that which is not included, does not exist. i.e., when you create an element hierarchy to embody and encode a particular structure, you do so at the expense of all other hierarchies proportional to the granularity of your encoded structure. just as an argument that highlights certain points in preference to all other possible points can be flawed or incomplete by virtue of this preference, an SGML document type that tries to argue too strongly for a particular view of a document will ipso facto exclude all other views. for researchers, this is bad news, because the encoding of an observation is necessarily unable to capture the uncertainty and ambiguity that the researcher is unable to resolve, and which the encoding is supposed to aid. at this point, to impose one structure over another prematurely is perhaps worse than to impose none. SGML is not restricted to documents that _contain_ their data. judicious use of the content reference attribute category (CONREF) will allow leaf (data-only) nodes to contain pointers into other sources for their contents, which will have to be retrieved by the application. teaching your processing engine how to resolve such references such that you would perceive the document you parse as if it actually contained the data thus referenced is a piece of cake unless you want it not to be. HyTime takes this approach to linking things together several steps further. remember that computer programming is about manipulation of representations of information. there are infinitely many ways to represent any piece of information, some clearly more suited to your needs than others, some clearly with a number of strings attached, such as binary encodings, some clearly not suited to your needs, such as those controlled by Microsoft, and some that by virtue of a number of carefully deliberated conditions will win the case, such as SGML. to argue that you can't live without CONCUR is admission of intellectual defeat in the face of such choices. | What are the technical objections to using overlapping tags that | indicate the structure that they come from? I may be naive about this | but it seems that it is not difficult to select from and therefore | parse such annotations. it is much harder to manage than separate documents that point into the source document(s). I tried for the longest time to find ways to do overlapping elements, until I realized that the solution was trivial: put the data in neutral element or entity, and let your real elements point into it by character positions. since then, I have failed completely to win anybody over to this approach, but that doesn't make the wrong solutions they continue to cry for (has it been ten years, now?) any better. | I would prefer to avoid a proliferation of documents that have to be | kept track of, and the existence of which must be known before | documents can be reused in possibly unanticipated ways. what kind of reuse are you considering? the only kind that would require prior knowledge of other documents is the "reuse" that modifies the document. this is generally a very, very bad idea. hypertext linking to documents outside your control _requires_ that you store information in the link about the target to ascertain the integrity of the link and the target information. barring that, you get the world-wide mess that many praise. if all the documents that attempt to do something useful in applying structure to a source document do so from the outside, there is no "proliferation" to keep track of, provided you are careful about revising your source document. on the other hand, if your source document changes frequently, you need to update all your concurrent structures at the same time, instead of focusing on one of them and updating the rest later, or let them know that a change has occurred. (using GNU Emacs, it is near trivial to update a document of pointers into another. essentially, put a marker at the anchor of the pointer, change the other document, and replace the positions of the markers. there are even hooks in GNU Emacs to make insertion and deletion "active" with respect to other documents.) CONCUR is a red herring, and it's smelling real bad by now. it should not be used. alternatives are better, more easily implemented, and above all, do not burden SGML with past and unnecessary mistakes. #\ -- guvf vf abg n synzr Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 06 Jan 1995 23:34:03 UT From: Ralph Ferris \ Organization: Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. Message-ID: <3ekk1b$k5t@yucca.ossi.com> Keywords: SMSL SGML HyTime ANSI ISO Summary: An overview of the Standard Multimedia Scripting Language Subject: Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) ********************************************************************** The following is a brief overview of the proposed Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL). Participation in the ANSI X3V1 Task Group that will refine this proposal is invited! If you are interested, please contact me. Ralph E. Ferris Project Manager, Electronic Publications Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. (FOSSI), Engineering Services Phone: +1 408 456 7806 Fax: +1 408 456 7050 E-mail: ralph@ossi.com A Davenport Group sponsor. For information on the Davenport Group see ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/README.html or http://www.ora.com/davenport/README.html ********************************************************************** Brief Overview of the Proposed Standard Multimedia Scripting Language 1. Introduction The Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) is an open scripting environment primarily targeted toward SGML/HyTime applications. SMSL does not describe a single standardized scripting language, rather it describes the interfaces required to bring new and existing languages into the SGML/HyTime arena. The initial proposal for SMSL was developed by Brian Markey of Permanent Wave Productions. Brian will present a full draft of the proposal at the meeting of ISO SC18/WG8, Document Description and Processing Languages, in February. Refinement of the draft proposal will be carried out by a Task Group of the ANSI X3V1 committee, the National Body that represents the U.S. in ISO SC18/WG8. 2. Description The basic characteristics of the proposed SMSL standard are: o SMSL documents are created by adding SMSL architectural forms to HyTime documents. o SMSL will use architectural forms to define object classes from which element types can be derived. These classes could also be used to derive supporting constructs, for example, C++ header files. o For a given object class, default methods are defined as part of SMSL services; additional methods can be added, or existing methods can be overload. (This approach differs from the HyTime standard, which does not define methods as part of its architectural forms.) Note that the default "methods", which correspond to required SMSL services, only apply to classes which are derived from classes specified in the standard. Examples include "multimedia classes" and "user interface" classes. SMSL supports all of the criteria for object-oriented languages, such as encapsulation, inheritance (including multiple inheritance), and polymorphism. o Methods can be added or overloaded through the addition of scripts to a HyTime document. The content of the scripts could be in any defined notation, such as C++ or other programming language source code. The content of the scripts could even be binary code compiled for a given platform (although this approach is depreciated since its use runs counter to the application portability that SMSL is intended to support). o When the SMSL scripts are compiled and linked, the governing application invokes the proper processor on the script content, as identified by the notation specified for that content. o The output could be compiled files and an SGML ESIS file. In that case the combination of executables and SGML data files is the application. o Alternatively, instead of outputting binary code and an ESIS file, other approaches, such as creating an application that would be interpreted at runtime, could be used. o SMSL is intended to support "self-contained" applications, in which case, most of the processing is embedded in the scripts. o User interaction will take place through a variety of user interface objects, such as dialog boxes, movie players, sound players, text editors, windows, and graphics interpreters. o The SMSL services will rely on the operating system services to support the display of dialog boxes, as well as audio and video playback and any other system dependent services required by the application. o The SMSL services use an object (message passing) architecture. An overview of the SMSL application environment is provided in the following figure: _____________________________________ | | | SMSL Documents | | | | _____________ ________________ | | | Scripts | | HyTime | | | | | | Documents | | | |____________| |______________| | | ^ ^ | | | | | |______|___________________|_________| | | | | V V ____________ ________________________________ | User | | SMSL Services | | Interface|<--->| | |__________| |______________________________| ^ | | V ___________________________ | | | OS Services | | - Dialog Box | | - Audio Playback | | - Video Playback | | - Other | |_________________________| Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) Application Environment Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 07 Jan 1995 01:52:34 UT From: Peter Flynn \ Organization: University College Cork Message-ID: \ References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ <3ejfbe$78v@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Glenda Jeffrey] | Sorry to advertise my ignorance, but could someone indicate what these | seven formats actually are? I know (b) is TeX, and (f) looks like it | might be DVI -- beyond that, I'm lost. Being an SGML newbie, I'm not | even sure which one is SGML. Is it (c) or (e)? No need to be sorry :-) mock simple SGML c. \$E=mc\backslash 2\backslash \backslash$ dedicated typesetter d. #italm#10pt#sbs(E=mc)#shfv5#6pt(2)#shfv-5#10pt mock complex SGML e. \$\backslash \backslash E\backslash \backslash \backslash =\backslash \backslash m\backslash \backslash c\backslash 2\backslash \backslash \backslash \; dvi\; f.\; cmmi10\backslash \backslash 261E\backslash \backslash 221Z\backslash \backslash 245\backslash \backslash 363\; cmr10\backslash \backslash 253=\backslash \backslash 221\backslash \backslash 307\backslash \backslash 261mc\backslash \backslash 215\backslash \backslash 237\backslash \backslash 374^\backslash \backslash 377\backslash \backslash 363\backslash \backslash 331\backslash \backslash 223\backslash \backslash 240R\; cmr7\backslash \backslash 2562\backslash \backslash 216\backslash \backslash 216\backslash \backslash 216\backslash \backslash 237\; Postscript\; g.\; 1\; 0\; bop\; 89\; -177\; a\; Fc(E)14\; b\; Fb(=)d\; Fc(mc)231\; -193\; y\; Fa(2)971\; 2551\; y\; Fb(1)p\; eop\; I\; just\; pulled\; them\; out\; at\; random...\; ///Peter\; --\; Peter\; Flynn\; |\; pflynn@curia.ucc.ie\; |\; ...persuade\; users\; that\; spreading\; Computer\; Centre\; |\; +353\; 21\; 276871\; x2609\; |\; fonts\; across\; the\; page\; like\; peanut\; University\; College\; |\; +353\; 21\; 277194\; (fax)\; |\; butter\; across\; hot\; toast\; is\; not\; the\; Cork,\; Ireland\; |\; Opinions\; are\; my\; own.\; |\; route\; to\; typographic\; excellence...$ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 07 Jan 1995 12:40:18 UT From: Sean Mc Grath \ Organization: Digitome Ltd. Message-ID: <3em23i$r5r@joyce.iol.ie> Subject: Re: Recent Postings [Jeffrey McArthur] | So the next release of SGML should strive to improve the standard. | SGML should not be crucified on the cross of compatibility. Given that SGML compatible documents are inherently programmable it should be possible to *progamatically* move data from SGML to SGML mark 2 (SGML++ :-)) Perhaps this makes reworking of the standard a less traumatic prospect. Existing documents can be moved to the new standard using CPU power not keyboard/grey matter power. This compares favorably with the process of making global FOR loop variables local to conform with ISO Pascal as mentioned by Jeffrey. Does anyone know of aspects of SGML encoding that break the cosy generalization I have made here? It might be useful to know now what features/techniques are likely to prove difficult for any future "SGML to SGML-2" transformation. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 07 Jan 1995 21:49:12 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Erik Naggum | all very good, and explicitly the intent of making validation an | optional requirement to be a conforming SGML system. however, it is | not an optional requirement of SGML _documents_. that none of the | browsers out there have any _intent_ to be conforming is a major issue | with the SGML adherents. I believe that Arena reports on the validity of the document. I think if we calmly proposed that all of the browsers do this, then the Web might clean itself up a lot. Plus, users would "know" when their browsers were out of date (i.e. if HTML 2 is pervasive but their browser reports that it is invalid) | SGML is a success for those who ask such questions. SGML brings to | information a notion of correctness independent of the programs that | interpret it through validation and standards. this is being torn down | by the bozos who write browsers and focus solely on making the "user | interface" pretty -- the exact same problem we have with proprietary, | pretty, "user-friendly" and dysfunctional software in the PC market. It is easy to beat on the unsuspecting user, or HTML author who has never heard of SGML. It is also easy to criticize the browser vendor who is trying to make as much money as possible in accordance with his/her responsibility to his/her shareholders. A better solution would be to propose a better solution. It seems like a reasonable proposal is to approach some W3 committee and ask them to ask the browser vendors to report (in a reasonable fashion) which documents do not conform to the HTML DTD. Instead of complaining about the evil market, we should recognize that the market is a _force_, and that we too can manipulate it, instead of complaining about it. For instance: don't you think that it is in every other browser's benefit to flag NetScape extensions as wrong. They don't want NetScape going around extending HTML any more than you do. | I think comp.infosystems.www.html would be a good idea. it is quite | clear that the WWw crowd have abandoned every sensible option in favor | of more buttons to click on and more features to use. it would have | cost them nothing to do this in an orderly fashion, and they could have | achieved the exact same thing, had they spent a little time to think | things through up front. why invent broken extensions when you could | have achieved thins with good design? do they only hire morons to work | on these things, or do they have bright people who have no incentive to | do any better? I don't know who you are talking about here. The HTML authors are, by and large, "bright people" who do not know what SGML is. The HTML consumers are people who are even less knowledgeable. The browser vendors (and you seem to want to paint them with a very broad brush. It seems to me that only NetScape has tried to unilaterally extend HTML) are trying to increase their market share and create a better product for their customers. Since there are features that their customers want that HTML does not provide they are providing them. Another reasonable stance is they are "testing" and "demoing" tags that could be incorporated into a future version of HTML. Once standards are released that meet people's needs, even stupid people will use the standard versions of tags instead of the NetScape version. | I didn't see this nonsense before Microsoft, and neither did I see mass | markets for software. Microsoft didn't cause the problem and Microsoft is not the problem. They too are ruled by the market forces that encourage them to release "standards" like OLE while CORBA was still in its early stages. CORBA is still not as high level as OLE. In the end, if Microsoft did not release OLE when it did, Apple or IBM would have stepped into the breach with their "standards." Because Microsoft was first, IBM and Apple are beating their "openness drums." The truth is that none of those companies are in control: the market is. | is there hope? not if all people will ever see are broken browsers, | and the number and volume of legacy documents grow to such proportions | that browsers can't be fixed. the only argument against letting the | WWW crowd fiddle with HTML on their own is that they will very likely | destroy all that has been built up, and will bring the same stupid | anarchy to the Internet and the WWW that they have in their stupid PC | software world. \ Apocalyptic pronouncements become tiring quickly. In case you hadn't noticed, computers are used by more people today than they were 5 years ago. They average computer is easier to use than they were 5 years ago. Most software is better than it was 5 years ago. Software is more interoperable than it was 5 years ago. Most people are using multitasking OS today and they were not 5 years ago. More people are solving more real-world problems using computers than at any time in the history of computers.Despite many visible mistakes on the part of many large companies in both the PC market and the Unix market, we are _still_ moving ahead. And we will continue to even if every HTML user in the world develops their own HTML variant. The sky is _not_ falling, and cynicism is an easy way to absolve yourself of responsibility to: a) use the real systems that real users are using (like Windows) b) to find out what the real problems are. It will often be a surprise... more users have trouble with the concept of double clicking than with 8.3 file name conventions. c) attempt to correct them (like with DOS extendors) or encourage the market to correct them. (as in products like Chicago, OS/2 and NT) If we, the SGML community really wanted to fix the HTML problem, we would be developing and pushing HTML DTD enforcing editors as hard as we could. If we really wanted to solve the problem, we would get together and write a kick-butt, Windows based, quasi-WYSIWYG SGML editor that used a reasonably general purpose DTD and output HTML and Postscript. But of course that would require us to use technically inferior OSes, development tools and platforms. And there is _no_ way the HTML problem is _that_ important, right? Luckily, the market is already solving the problem. SGML vendors see the market for HTML editors and as soon as they make them of sufficient quality, HTML authors will migrate to them in droves. Really smart SGML vendors will see the opportunity to migrate the users from HTML to SGML. Once you are familiar with markup, the benefits (especially multiple output formats) of SGML speak for themselves. \ Watch: the vendors will _use_ the market instead of railing against it. And the technically correct solution will still win out. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 07 Jan 1995 23:29:36 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3en850$g17@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: <3ef0tb$tg@jazzmin.vnet.net> Subject: Re: RTF help needed [Steve Pope] | My company needs assistance with generating RTF output from our SGML | documents. We are interested in talking to people who have done this | before and can provide some information so that we can put together a | training class for some of our people. I know that we can get the RTF | spec from Microsoft. How useful is this information? We need to be | able to offer our information (in SGML) so it can be used by many | customers some of whom may use editors and viewers for RTF, IDF, or | WinHelp formats. Not to give you a hard time, but it very peculiar that an organization smart enough to get their data into SGML to begin with needs to ask how to get out to RTF or anything else for that matter. If you have anything at all reasonable in SGML it is nearly trivial using Omnimark/Louise/Balise/CoST -- it's what these programs do. (Or if your job is fairly simple (meaning, generally, a straightforward mapping between your SGML-encoded data and your presentation) you might try Perl.) By all means do get the RTF specification, even though you'll probably write fairly simple RTF you'll still need it. I picked up a copy from ftp.primate.wisc.edu, home of the RTFtools parser. Good luck! Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 08 Jan 1995 15:04:11 UT From: Luca Toldo \ Organization: European Molecular Biology Laboratory Message-ID: <1995Jan8.160411.171673@eros.embl-heidelberg.de> Subject: [Q]SGML tools: SGML-edit, ->TeX ->HTML Dear colleagues, In the place where I work, documentation had been so-far maintained as TeX 2.0 format. Since the need to present the information therein contained by WWW, after having considered the various TeX-> HTML, DVI-> HTML and PS-> HTML converter, (all failed in one way or another) then it had been decided to switch the current documentation management to the following: SGML as the input documentation language to use by the secretary, SGML->TeX automatic conversion in order then to obtain type-setting quality for the production of printed documentation, SGML -> HTML automatic conversion in order to then produce WWW format... In the Computer Group I had been directed toward the solution of this problem, and now I am looking for the most appropriate tools in order to exploit it. Do you have any URL that address the problem and could help me in identifying the most up-to-date tools ? best regards -- Luca Ida Giovanni TOLDO (Ph.D.) European Molecular Biology Laboratory Computer Group Heidelberg Germany http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/~toldo/ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 08 Jan 1995 16:22:03 UT From: Ellis Pratt \ Message-ID: <789582123snz@ellisp.demon.co.uk> Subject: Information Developers Wanted Apologies if you feel this is is the incorrect mailgroup to post this to.. TMS Computer Authors Ltd, based in Godalming, United Kingdom, have an urgent requirement for four Information Developers to work in Southern California for a period of at least 12 months. The requirements of the role are - SCRIPT or DCF or Bookmaster or Bookmanager - OS/2 Information Presentation facility - 3 years + epxerience, ideally in a software development company - Experience in writing end user material is mandatory Please contact Neil Williams, Director if you would like to apply. Fax: Int + (44) 1483 418083 Tel: Int + (44) 1483 414145 during UK office hours (GMT 0900-1800) -- Ellis Pratt TMS Computer Authors Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 08 Jan 1995 19:25:05 UT From: Bob Goldstein \ Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago, ADN Computer Center Message-ID: <95008.132506U09872@uicvm.uic.edu> References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | If we, the SGML community really wanted to fix the HTML problem, we | would be developing and pushing HTML DTD enforcing editors as hard as | we could. If we really wanted to solve the problem, we would get | together and write a kick-butt, Windows based, quasi-WSIWYG SGML editor | that used a reasonably general purpose DTD and output HTML and | Postscript. But of course that would require us to use technically | inferior OSes, development tools and platforms. And there is _no_ way | the HTML problem is _that_ important, right? Actually, if the SGML community *really* wants to fix this problem right, it would (and I suspect will) do the following: 1) Create SGML external viewers for all major platforms, for viewing native SGML documents on the web. Distribute these viewers widely and freely. This step includes: a) a "standard" style-sheet specification b) a way to obtain a DTD over the net on a per-document basis c) a way for the SGML browser to instruct the underlying web browser to fetch the next document clicked on. 2) Make a rich and extensive set of "must see" documents available over the web in native SGML, without translating to HTML. Given the possibilities that arbitrary stylesheets make possible, this should be easy. When this is done, anyone (including Netscape) can add whatever extensions they want to any version of HTML, including extensions that are incompatible with anything they don't like, and no one will be inconvenienced. Everyone will be able to read Netscape's pages instantly, and still be able to read all the incompatible pages with the same browser, because DTDs will exist on a per-document basis. If this scheme catches on, the vendors will build native SGML support into the browsers, instead of leaving it to external viewers. And if it doesn't catch on, the SGML crowd will have lost the web war. I've noticed that there already exist spawnable viewers for .dvi and .pdf files, and that the corresponding communities have introduced extensions to include hot links (i.e., \ tags) into the dvi and pdf files. I believe some versions of these extended viewers are now available. The SGML community is clearly not the only markup community that wishes its standards were more prevalent and useful to the web. I'm not sure the current relationship between SGML and HTML gives the SGML'ers much advantage, although it should give them some incentive. Bob Goldstein Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 01:18:19 UT From: Jim Endersby \ Organization: The University of New South Wales Message-ID: <1995Jan9.011819.14341@usage.csd.unsw.OZ.AU> Subject: now bundled with Ventura \: help please? I have recently acquired version 5 of Ventura Publisher (now owned by Canada's Corel Corp.). It comes bundled with Tagwrite, an SGML conversion utility, but the documentation is in PDF format only and seems very complicated. I think SGML would be very useful to the University (if only I could understand it...) Does anyone else use Tagwrite? If so can you suggest a good introductory course or something? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. -- Jim Endersby Publications Officer, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 11:17:53 UT From: Karl Eichwalder \ Organization: The Moon On Earth - Goettingen, FRG Message-ID: <1995Jan9.111753.21735@pertron.central.de> References: \ Subject: Re: Q: seeking a bibliographical DTD [Basile Starynkevitch] | I'm seeking for a bibliographical DTD, for storing bibliographies | (like the bibtex format) for instance. An advanced system provides TEI chapter 6.10 (Text Encoding Initiative); it takes some time to become familiar with the files (ftp.ifi.uio.no:/pub/TEI), but for me it is worth the efforts. -- | keichwa@gwdg.de | ____ _ o | karl@pertron.central.de | ___ _-\\_<, Karl Eichwalder | 2:2437/209 | (*)/'(*) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 13:28:37 UT From: Arjan Loeffen \ Organization: C\&L Message-ID: \ Keywords: Document information systems Subject: Document Information Systems Dear reader, I post this message here as the (wonderful) work on SGML is embedded into document information systems, and you may therefore be able to help. As now I am responsible for creating a course on document information systems I'd like to get my hands on a book about such systems. I am in fact interested in a book that covers (globally in in more detail) the whole process of scanning a document, storing it into the computer, and retrieving it later. I think am familiar with the most relevant publications in the field of full text databases, query languages and indexing languages. But something that covers degrees of representation, efficiency, financial implications, personnel, networking and other related topics has not come up yet. I have a good start but it's in Dutch and covers a lot of Dutch endeavours. I'd like a more international perspective on the topic. Thanks in advance. Arjan. -- Arjan Loeffen Achter de Dom 22-24 +31 30536417 voice work Faculty of Arts 3512JP Utrecht +31 206656463 voice home University of Utrecht The Netherlands +31 30539221 fax work Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 09 Jan 1995 16:14:35 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <95008.132506U09872@uicvm.uic.edu> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Bob Goldstein] | If this scheme catches on, the vendors will build native SGML support | into the browsers, instead of leaving it to external viewers. And if | it doesn't catch on, the SGML crowd will have lost the web war. The only problem is that there is no standard way for the external application to tell the browser to follow another URL. So the external application must become the browser. Which is a _lot_ of work to do for free. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 16:52:12 UT From: Jim Rambo \ Message-ID: <3erpjs$qrl@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Subject: PC/Windows-Based Equation Editors I am looking for information on PC/Windows based equation editors that can import and export TeX or SGML tagging. Does anyone know of any available products that can do this? Thank You. jrambo@rrddts.donnelley.com crink@rrddts.donnelley.com Newsgroups: misc.jobs.offered,ne.jobs,comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 19:52:34 UT From: Bob Corbin \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: \ Keywords: software engineers,mac,RI Summary: MAC/MS Windows Engineer Subject: US-RI-MAC/MS Windows Engineers-Electronic Book Tech. These positions are based PROVIDENCE,RI. We are not offering extensive relocation packages however will will move househole effects. Salary is competitive and we offer full benefits to include 401K. This engineer will design,develop,enhance, maintain and test Macintosh ( and MS Windows) User Interface components used in DynaText and other EBT products. The successful candidate will have development experience using the Mac toolkit and it's components, and have some familiarity with the MS WINDOWS SDK and it's components (or a desire to learn that system). Knowledge of other development platforms is a plus. Required Qualifications: * BS Computer Science * A working knowledge of C++ and object oriented design. * Eagerness to participate in a fast-paced high growth start-up environment. * Extensive experience with the Macintosh and MS Windows platforms. * Familiarity with elctronic publishing applications. * Extensive experience with the MS Windows, Macintosh or Motif GUI. Ideal Qualifications: * Experience developing internationalizated applications. *Experience with SGML. Resumes should be faxed to Bob Corbin, Electronic Book Technologies,401-421-9551, voice 401-421-9550. email rac@ebt.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 09 Jan 1995 23:12:00 UT From: Rucksapol Jiwungkul \ Organization: BASE project, Bellcore, Piscataway, NJ Message-ID: <3esfs0$1rm@athos.cc.bellcore.com> Subject: Oracle Browser Someone told me that Oracle has a new electronic browser. Does anyone know anything about it? Is it an SGML browser? RJ rj@ims.bellcore.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.providers Date: 10 Jan 1995 10:21:18 UT From: Stephan Olbrich \ Organization: RRZN Message-ID: <1995Jan10.102118.7314@newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de> References: <1995Jan3.161525.25081@chemabs.uucp> Subject: Re: SGML Graphics (CGM) and HTML/HTTP [Larry W. Virden] | Has anyone worked on the means to get CGM graphics displayed inline in | HTML pages? We have thought about it. A tool we have developed, which would be helpful to integrate, is called "cgm2ppm", a CGM rasterizer. This tool supports binary and cleartext encoding of CGM, window-viewport transformation, and several further features. Probably it would be interesting to discuss a way to integrate scalable, device independant, vector-oriented graphics into WWW. I think we have the experience to work on this issue, since our converter in in use in an lpr-based, automatic video-recording service since 1990 (user manual in german language on the web: http://www.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/Umdrucke/GDV.ALL.2/gdvall2.html) Here is the "usage" message of "cgm2ppm": cgm2ppm/RRZN (24.10.1994 13:20:00 1.07) Die Programme "RRZN-CGM-Tools" (cgm2ppm, file33tocgm, rletocgm, fidap_cgm) sind eine Entwicklung des RRZN/Universitaet Hannover. Regionales Rechenzentrum fuer Niedersachsen (RRZN) Universitaet Hannover Schlosswender Str. 5 D 30159 Hannover Germany Copyright (C) RRZN/Universitaet Hannover, 1994 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Keine Gewaehr. Nutzungslizenzen nur schriftlich vom RRZN. Usage: ./bin/cgm2ppm [options] cgm_file(s) options: -s xsize,ysize PPM width,height default: 640,480 -x xsize PPM width -y ysize PPM height -b backpix_filename background image file (PPM) -e clear viewport with background color default: if backpix then don't clear viewport else clear viewport -f draw frame around viewport -a aspect_pixel aspect ratio of the pixel default: 1.0 -l min_linewidth minimal linewidth [pixels] default: 1 -p picture_number(s) CGM picture number [>=0] nr | from-to default: 0 -r rotation_angle 0 | 90 | 180 | 270 default: 0 -n disable isotropic transformation -w window x0,y0,x1,y1[,win_vdc] win_vdc=0: normalized coordinates [0..1] win_vdc=1: virtual device coordinates (VDC) default: 0,0,1,1,0 -v viewport x0,y0,x1,y1[,view_rc] view_rc=0: normalized coordinates [0..1] view_rc=1: raster coordinates [0..xsize-1], [0..ysize-1] default: 0,0,1,1,0 -i clip_rectangle x0,y0,x1,y1[,clip_rc] clip_rc=0: normalized coordinates [0..1] clip_rc=1: raster coordinates [0..xsize-1], [0..ysize-1] default: 0,0,1,1,0 -c colortable_entry 'nr,red,green,blue' | w | s | b nr==-1: background setting nr==-2: foreground preset nr==-3: background preset nr>=0: color number red,green,blue: [0..255] w: white background, black foreground s: black background, white foreground (default) b: blue background, white foreground -g gamma gamma correction (default: 1.0) -A anti_alias_flag anti-aliasing flag (default: 0) -S sub_sampling_flag sub-sampling flag (default: 0) -V YUV output, includes -l2 -g1.3 -A1 -S1 -a1.0667 -s720x576 -v40,32,679,543,1 -i40,32,679,543,1 Example (video-preview): cgm2ppm -V CGMBIN.bin|yuvtoppm 720 576 |\\ xv -visual truecolor -4x3 - -o output_file_or_pipe eg.: 'PPM.%04d' or '|xv -' (default: standard output) -C enable CGM cleartext encoding default: CGM binary encoding -H enable HAPS format default: CGM binary encoding -G enable GROUT format default: CGM binary encoding -d enable debug mode -- Stephan Olbrich email: olbrich@rrzn.uni-hannover.de ------------------------------------------------------------------ Regionales Rechenzentrum fuer __ __ ___ Niedersachsen (RRZN) | ) | ) / |\\ | / | | |\\ | | Universitaet Hannover |< |< / | \\ | / | | | \\ | | Schlosswender Str. 5 | \\ | \\ /__ | \\| / \\_/ | \\| | D-30159 Hannover voice: 0511 762-3078 (fax: -3003) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 13:32:33 UT From: Norm Smith \ Message-ID: <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) Paul Prescod wrote a long discourse and rant (both interesting) on what HTML browsers should do to encouraging HTML providers to produce "good" HTML documents. He also discussed the new tags recognized by Netscape. As someone who set up a large Web Server which houses several home pages including the DOE Home Page (http://www.doe.gov) and the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) Home Page (http://apollo.osti.gov/osti/ostipg.html) as well as several others, one of the first problems I had was selecting an HTML DTD to use. At the time, a little over a year ago, Mosaic appeared to support the original HTML DTD plus portions of HTML+. HTML+ has evolved into HTML 2.0 and HTML 3.0. Every release of Mosaic brought about a few new tags from HTML 2.0. HoTMetaL came with a modified version of HTML 2.0 and HoTMetaL HTML files caused early versions of Windows Mosaic to lock up frequently because it inserts end tags for empty elements. (Easily taken care of by a dozen line AWK program, but a pain none-the-less.) Now Netscape adds some unique ones and I believe, some parts of HTML 3.0 are now supported by Mosaic 2.5. I believe that most people who wanted to parse documents gave up in frustration after trying to select a DTD. And I don't see things getting any better!!! I contend that there is no one HTML DTD; there are several similar ones that are mostly compatible at the core. My approach was to start with the original HTML DTD and add pieces from HTML+/2.0 as we used them in documents. It seems that the tweaking has been endless. It would make my job easier if browsers would support fully one of the HTML DTDS rather than part of 2.0 plus part of 3.0 plus a few random tags thrown in for good measure. The reality is that this will probably never happen. TO ALL HTML BROWSER WRITERS: INCLUDING A DTD THAT REFLECTS WHAT YOUR BROWSER ACTUALLY SUPPORTS IN YOUR DISTRIBUTION WOULD HELP SGMLIZATION OF HTML DOCUMENTS A GREAT DEAL!! Norm Smith smithn@orvb.saic.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 13:55:31 UT From: Matt Timmermans/MSL \ Message-ID: <9501101757.AA1647@notes.microstar.com> References: \ <3da9n4$qg8@imagine.convex.com> \ <19950105.762EAD0.12F51@contessa.phone.net> \ Subject: Re: Big characters in html [Paul Prescod] | Then what you need is a user level way to extend the | meaning->formatting mapping. NOT a way to circumvent it. : | Again, I don't understand why they should _ever_ type subscript when | they could, instead, DEFINE chemical and choose a formatting mapping | for it. Ahh... Now this, suggested by several other people as well, is a discussion on a completely different level. This is also something I agree with -- with a few important caveats. I have been arguing in accordance with the commonly accepted point of view that authors aren't permitted to change the DTD. We can create SGML systems and methodologies that do not imply that restriction, in which case the sort of thing you're suggesting above can, in fact, be done. Such systems and methodologies, however, are just not an option in most SGML environments. I would ask you to consider, SGML-ontologically, just what this sort of approach means. \ -- Matt Timmermans | Phone: +1 613 727-5696 Microstar Software Ltd. | Fax: +1 613 727-9491 34 Colonnade Rd. North | BBS: +1 613 727-5272 Nepean Ontario CANADA K2E-7J6 | E-mail: mtimmerm@microstar.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 15:23:25 UT From: "Dr. Karl Aberer" \ Message-ID: <199501101523.QAA10020@sonne.darmstadt.gmd.de> Subject: PostDoc-Positions Available GMD, the German Research Institute for Information Science, offers several postDoc-positions for the duration of two years starting April 1st. In one project, we are currently conducting research work in the field of SGML databases. In more detail, issues are at the one hand to reflect document-type-specific characteristics to raise performance, on the other hand to exploit hypermedia-element-type semantics for, say, information retrieval. -- Qualified applicants with both an outstanding scientific record and a practical background who are generally interested should contact us for further information. Knowledge of German is not required. More information on the project is is available under http://este.darmstadt.gmd.de:5000/persons/kboehm/hyperstorm.html. Best regards, Karl Aberer -- Dr. Karl Aberer, http://este.darmstadt.gmd.de:5000/persons/aberer/home.html GMD-IPSI, Dolivostrasse 15, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany Phone: +49-6151-869-935, Fax: +49-6151-869-966, aberer@darmstadt.gmd.de Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 10 Jan 1995 17:26:13 UT From: Rick Silterra \ Organization: NAS, Northern Telecom. Message-ID: \ References: \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <95008.132506U09872@uicvm.uic.edu> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) There is no well-known way for an external application to tell the browser to follow another URL. However, the CCI (common client interface) is the NCSA proposed interface between browser and external application. OTOH, I have seen very little discussion of this protocol. Is anyone else using it other than NCSA Mosaic for X 2.5? Is it implemented in any Windows or Mac browsers? What is its status? Thanks! rs -- Rick Silterra Usenet: rs@cci.com Mail: Rick Silterra "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B. Shaw Northern Telecom Network Applications Systems Group 97 Humboldt St. Rochester NY 14609-7493 Any opinions expressed above are my own, and not those of any group with which I am associated. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 19:18:13 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan10.191813.18858@ast.saic.com> References: <3erpjs$qrl@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Subject: Re: PC/Windows-Based Equation Editors [Jim Rambo] | I am looking for information on PC/Windows based equation editors that | can import and export TeX or SGML tagging. | | Does anyone know of any available products that can do this? Well, yes. Arbortext SGML Editor for windows can do this. Write to \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 19:50:54 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan10.195054.25385@ast.saic.com> References: \ Subject: Re: DTD inheritance model [Steve Willcox] | I'm starting to design DTDs for documents of several different types | where all of the document types share some common elements - such as an | Author and Title. | | I'm not aware of any explicit construct in SGML that allows DTD | inheritance as there is in object oriented languages like C++. | | I guess that one approach would be to put the common element | definitions in one file and include it in all the types (DTDs) that | share these common defintions. As you have noted, there is no direct support for this. One technique that has been used is evident in the MIL-M-87269 DTDs for IETMs. This same method was used, but not as explicitly, in the MIL-M-38784 DTD. It combines the above idea of including a core of "generic" definitions along with the capability afforded by SGML's parameter entities. These entities may be overridden in the DOCTYPE statement much as C++ functions are overridden when inheriting from a base class. This technique relies on the stated behavior that the first mention of an entity is the only one which is used and all subsequent ones are ignored. The parameter entities in the DOCTYPE statement are substituted before the referenced DTD is accessed, thus overriding the generic definitions. E.g. Appendix B of MIL-M-87269 is an "instance" of the generic template provided in Appendix A of 87269. Similarly, appendix D is an instantiation of Appendix C. Writing such useful generic wrappers is about as easy as writing a good general purpose, reusable C++ class. (Read DIFFICULT). Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 19:58:13 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan10.195813.26889@ast.saic.com> References: <9501032222.AA23699@source.asset.com> <3eioel$qep@news1.delphi.com> Subject: Re: Recent Postings [Jeffrey McArthur] | NTSC was an "ok" standard. It works. A lot of people use it every | day. But we have learned a lot since the standard was designed. The | same is true of SGML (though a lot more people use NTSC than use SGML). | But SGML is far from a perfect standard. As a standard it has some | serious problems (most of which have been discussed at length here). Now if SGML was as regular and easy to understand as NTSC we'd be in very good shape indeed. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 22:13:21 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501102213.AA26631@source.asset.com> Subject: Request for DSSSL Examples I am studying in the DSSSL draft standard. I have examples of tree formatting specifications created for DSSSL Lite. Can someone help me get concrete examples of: o Association Specifications o DSSSL queries o Tree Transformation expressions I realize that an AS implies a query. Examples that demonstrate adding content, reordering and assignment of source content to new generic identifiers would be best, but any examples will be helpful for understanding the entire DSSSL processing model as realized in a DSSSL specification. Len Bullard Unisys Corporation PS: Thanks Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 10 Jan 1995 22:18:57 UT From: Nancy Hoft \ Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Message-ID: <3ev14h$hti@walters.East.Sun.COM> Subject: HTML: Associating clickable images I am creating an online library using MOSAIC and HTML. I want the user interface of the first page (sort of a "home page" for the online library) to be as graphical as possible. I want it to work much like a dialogue. The user clicks on an image representing the type of documentation he/she wants to read (reference doc or user doc). Then the user clicks on the an image representing the object he/she wants to read about (database, operating system, whatever...). This dialogue would choose a "mode" for the user: technically or task-oriented. The user could change the mode at any time (no forced information paths). My question is: Is this sort of thing possible to code with HTML? If not, is it possible at all? Do I need to write a PERL script or something to do it? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Nancy Hoft Consulting Technical Writer Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.graphics,comp.compression Date: 11 Jan 1995 00:33:29 UT From: Michael Dillon \ Organization: Memra Software Inc., Armstrong, B.C., Canada Message-ID: \ References: <1995Jan3.161525.25081@chemabs.uucp> <1995Jan10.102118.7314@newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de> Subject: Re: SGML Graphics (CGM) and HTML/HTTP [Larry W. Virden] | Has anyone worked on the means to get CGM graphics displayed inline in | HTML pages? [Stephan Olbrich] | We have thought about it. A tool we have developed, which would be | helpful to integrate, is called "cgm2ppm", a CGM rasterizer. This tool | supports binary and cleartext encoding of CGM, window-viewport | transformation, and several further features. | | Probably it would be interesting to discuss a way to integrate | scalable, device independant, vector-oriented graphics into WWW. I | think we have the experience to work on this issue, since our converter | in in use in an lpr-based, automatic video-recording service since 1990 | (user manual in german language on the web: | http://www.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/Umdrucke/GDV.ALL.2/gdvall2.html) This is definitely on the right track, but the WWW presents some special issues in the use of CGM. Firstly, with exponential growth happening bandwidth is precious and even the binary encoding of CGM (which should be the only one used for actual delivery of images) can still be compressed and SHOULD be compressed. This requires some work with testing different algorithms over a range of images. The next issue is text. Since CGM files can contain text, it is conceivable that HTML could be contained entirely within a CGM file including anchors. This reverses the usual container relationship but it does offer the possibility of page-layout features so that one could change the background color, draw a frame and then place text within that frame. SGML/HTML markup is a great idea for text but I don't think any of it's advantages would be lost by inclusion within a CGM image file. In fact, a CGM image file containing only text would require only minor changes to existing SGML tools. -- Cool cats, brick bats, bad boys wearin' big hats Surf's up, my cup, floating, flying, rising up. Michael Dillon mpdillon@halcyon.com C-4 Powerhouse, RR #2 michael@junction.net Armstrong, BC V0E 1B0 Fido: 1:353/350 Canada BBS: +1 604 546 2705 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 01:37:14 UT From: Craig Willis \ Organization: Mincom Pty. Ltd. Message-ID: \ Subject: Information on Dynaweb Looking for information on Dynawed or products similar, that allow automatic parsing of robust SGML into HTML on the fly for viewing on the WWB. OR Products that convert SGML to HTML to be viewed on WWB and List of best viewers for WWB. Any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks. -- ___________________________________________________________________________ Craig Willis craigw@mincom.oz.au Phone: +61 7 303-3333 | | | | | | Fax : +61 7 303-3232 | | | | | | Mincom Pty Ltd. | | | | | | Wyandra St, Teneriffe, Queensland, Australia 4005 |M |I |N |C |O |M Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 03:27:26 UT From: "Charles F. Goldfarb" \ Organization: Information Management Consulting Message-ID: <3evj6u$hs4@www.interramp.com> References: <3ejq3q$i82@oclc.org> Subject: Re: Is THE SGML HANDBOOK under revision? [Chet Cady] | Recently I tried to order Goldfarb's THE SGML HANDBOOK, and it was out | of stock at the bookstore (which normally carries it) and at the | bookstore's supplier. The clerks had the opinion that it could be | under revision, and that the publisher had either recalled the current | edition or just wasn't replenishing them. No, the Handbook is not under revision. However, the publisher's handling of computer books is. I was just advised that they are moving responsibility for their computer titles to the U.S. from the U.K., and that this should result in better availability. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 09:48:09 UT From: Michael Casey \ Organization: Kluwer Academic Publishers Message-ID: \ Subject: Proposed Journal on Electronic Documents The research so far is positive, but I have doubts about one aspect, namely the likelihood of getting a sufficient flow of papers to keep the journal going. As SGML is likely to be a central theme of the journal, I would welcome any response from this newsgroup about this. Particularly in response to the following: 1. Would you personally be willing to submit papers to the journal? 2. Who in industry would be likely to contribute papers? Tool vendors? Consultants? Users? 3. Would you see case studies as being suitable for inclusion? Who could write them? The journal will be published in both paper and electronic form with access via the WWW. I hope you will find time to answer and support this effort. The aims and scope of the journal are given below. Thanks in advance. Mike Casey Kluwer Academic Publishers PO Box 17 email mckluwer@world.std.com 3300 AA Dordrecht OR casey@wkap.nl The Netherlands tel: +31-78-334219 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS: Applications and Techniques Aims and Scope The journal will report on innovations in electronic document technology, encompassing, but not limited to, those facilitating the creation, production, exchange and manipulation of electronic documents. Specific topics that will be addressed include: - managing document processing workflow - document design and analysis - optical character and document recognition - electronic dissemination - collaborative authoring and other forms of shared access to documents - document databases and document database query languages - document and document component retrieval based on information content - hypertext and multimedia documents - multilingual document representation and authoring - organizational and social issues surrounding the adoption of new technologies. The journal will give the reader an accurate assessment of trends in research and the state of the art in practice, as well as new solutions implemented by recent products and systems. The journal will enable the rapid and broad dissemination of authors ideas, with a lively response by critical readers through electronic mail, bulletin boards and the World-Wide Web (WWW). Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 10:34:07 UT From: Paul Pearson \ Organization: Folio Corporation Message-ID: \ Keywords: html parser Subject: Looking for a generic HTML parser (source too?) Does anyone know about a generic parser for HTML documents? I'm looking for something that is freeware or shareware that ideally includes source code. Also, I don't want something that validates against the HTML DTD -- most of the HTML docs on WWW aren't valid anyway. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. --Paul Pearson ppearson@folio.com "Please Wait... Brain booting from floppy." Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 14:04:44 UT From: Mike Torrence \ Message-ID: <3f0ohs$b7l@newsbf02.news.aol.com> References: <3erpjs$qrl@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Subject: Re: PC/Windows-Based Equation Editors [Jim Rambo] | I am looking for information on PC/Windows based equation editors that | can import and export TeX or SGML tagging. | | Does anyone know of any available products that can do this? The best product for accomplishing this would be Math Type from Design Science Corp. It allows visual setup of equations with export to clipboard as TeX code. Good luck! -- Mike Torrence Technical Director Electronic Publishing Services Epsgroup@aol.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 14:19:06 UT From: Lou Burnard \ Message-ID: <0098A4E6.C235781C.11@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: WordPerfect Intellitag A couple of people have mentioned the Intellitag product here recently. When it first came out, about a year ago, this was fairly comprehensively slated by most readers of this list, largely because of various artificial limitations built into the beta test versions and even the released product. (No support for marked sections, no way of expanding various quantities in the SGML declaration beyond fixed limits, that sort of thing) However, as one who has to convert a pile of TEI-conformant texts into Word Perfect for a still-benighted publisher, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Here's the bad news: version 1.0 (the most recent version I could find) won't compile even a slimmed down version of the TEI DTD. The stumbling block at which I gave up was the complaint from dtd2lgc (the DTD compiler-sort-of-thing) that a content model group contained more than 32 tokens. This limit seems to be hardwired -- changing the SGML declaration had no effect at all (not even on the error message). So -- (1) is anyone from Word Perfect reading this list still? (2) is there a newer version of Intellitag than 1.0? Lou Burnard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 18:07:35 UT From: Gerry Murray \ Organization: ACM Network Services Message-ID: <3f16p9$evb@hopper.acm.org> References: <3ev14h$hti@walters.East.Sun.COM> Subject: Re: HTML: Associating clickable images [Nancy Hoft] | I am creating an online library using MOSAIC and HTML. I want the user | interface of the first page (sort of a "home page" for the online | library) to be as graphical as possible. I want it to work much like a | dialogue. The user clicks on an image representing the type of | documentation he/she wants to read (reference doc or user doc). Then | the user clicks on the an image representing the object he/she wants to | read about (database, operating system, whatever...). | | This dialogue would choose a "mode" for the user: technically or | task-oriented. The user could change the mode at any time (no forced | information paths). | | My question is: Is this sort of thing possible to code with HTML? If | not, is it possible at all? Do I need to write a PERL script or | something to do it? | | Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, You realize that you're hosing anyone who doesn't have a browser capable of rendering graphics. Gerry Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 18:41:57 UT From: Murata Trane Makoto \ Organization: Fuji Xerox System Technology and Communications Lab Message-ID: \ Subject: Paper on CONCUR extension In SGML'94 I presented a paper "File Format for Documents Containing Both Logical Structures and Layout Structures". Michael Leventhal mentioned this paper in a recent article and kindly gave a very favorable comment. To submit this paper to a journal, I revised it thoroughly. I would like to electronically distribute the paper to experts in this group before I lose the copyright. If you are interested, please let me know your email address. I will send you a Postscript file as soon as I get permission for publication. Murata, Makoto Systems and Communications Lab Fuji Xerox Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 18:44:56 UT From: "Mar. van der Heide" \ Organization: Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, NL Message-ID: \ Subject: Need HyQuery testers Hello, I have made an implementation of the HyQ query language. It is not completely finished yet, but I would like it if some people would test and comment on what is finished so far. The files can be found at: ftp://ftp.let.rug.nl/pub/Bert/hyqe-0.2.tar.gz ftp://ftp.let.rug.nl/pub/Bert/hyqe.LICENCE ftp://ftp.let.rug.nl/pub/Bert/hyqe.README ftp://ftp.let.rug.nl/pub/Bert/hyqe.struct.ps The readme file says where to send replies Thanks in advance, Gert-Jan Braas Graaf Adolfstr 21a 9717 EB Groningen ( _NOT_ using my own account) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 20:02:43 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <3ev14h$hti@walters.east.sun.com> Subject: Re: HTML: Associating clickable images [Nancy Hoft] | I am creating an online library using MOSAIC and HTML. I want the user | interface of the first page (sort of a "home page" for the online | library) to be as graphical as possible. I want it to work much like a | dialogue. The user clicks on an image representing the type of | documentation he/she wants to read (reference doc or user doc). Then | the user clicks on the an image representing the object he/she wants to | read about (database, operating system, whatever...). | | This dialogue would choose a "mode" for the user: technically or | task-oriented. The user could change the mode at any time (no forced | information paths). | | My question is: Is this sort of thing possible to code with HTML? If | not, is it possible at all? Do I need to write a PERL script or | something to do it? HTML is not a programming language. You need to use CGI and Perl. I would suggest you become familiar with CGI and then ask in the comp.infosystems.www.providers if you need help. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 23:24:51 UT From: Ginger Stack \ Message-ID: \ Subject: FOSI teaching material? Does anyone have or know of any course material available for teaching FOSI? Thanks, -- Ginger Stack Jouve Data Management Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 11 Jan 1995 23:31:37 UT From: Ginger Stack \ Message-ID: \ Subject: So. Cal SGML Users Group Meeting The Southern California SGML Users Group is scheduled to meet on Wednesday, February 2 at Trident Data Systems in Los Angeles. Registration is $25. Please contact Al Hayashi at +1 310 348 6371 or myself at +1 714 435 7725. -- Ginger Stack VP of Membership Southern California SGML Users Group Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 01:20:53 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan12.012053.5071@ast.saic.com> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Glenda Jeffrey] | I once heard someone mention that SGML does not work all that well for | complex equations. Does anyone out there know why? Are there some | serious limitations? NO -- Not true at all! | While I'm on the subject, has anyone used an SGML editor to create | documents that are equation-heavy? If so, was it difficult? Do you | feel that some editors are better than others for this task? It's my | understanding that most SGML equation editors are WYSIWYG and easy to | use. Agree? Disagree? I've done many very heavy math texts and papers with several systems including Framemaker, Interleave, Troff, TeX, and Arbortext. By far, the original Arbortext Publisher (not SGML publisher) is the best and easiest equation editor ever made. The SGML version needs work in that the last DTD and FOSI I used it with was the one Arbortext provided and this did not do autonumbering of equations and symbollic (IDREF) references to equations. This is relatively easy to implement. Since Arbortext has TeX running underneath, there is never a problem with upper case script Hebrew or German characters for Algebras or a dearth of bayonets and vector symbols that other systems have. Just an opinion. I'll really get flamed for this one. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 01:50:40 UT From: "W. Eliot Kimber" \ Organization: Passage Systems, Inc. Message-ID: \ Subject: Grammar Checkers That Work With SGML I recently ran into the need to do grammar checking (e.g., Readable, Flesch, Kindaid) on SGML where the current practice is to use the grammar checker in Word. As far as I know, neither Author/Editor nor Adept Edit provide a built-in grammar checker. Does anyone know of any grammar checkers that would work reasonably well on SGML, ideally with either of these editors? I pride myself on knowing about all the SGML products, but this is one I've never had a need for. I realize I can always save or filter the SGML to plain text and then use Word or Grammatick, but that would be less efficient than something integrated with an editor. Thanks. -- \

W. Eliot Kimber (kimber@passage.com) Systems Analyst and HyTime Consultant Passage Systems, Inc., 9971 Quail Blvd., Suite 903, Austin TX 78758 +1 512 339 1400 465 Fairchild Dr., Suite 201, Mountain View, CA 94043, +1 415 390 0911 \

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 12:16:05 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3f36i5INN7s@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <0098A4E6.C235781C.11@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: WordPerfect Intellitag [Lou Burnard] | A couple of people have mentioned the Intellitag product here recently. | | (2) is there a newer version of Intellitag than 1.0? I don't think there is a newer version of Intellitag. However, Word Perfect is supposed to release a copy of an SGML authoring product based on the Windows version of Word Perfect this month. I have seen a couple of demonstrations and I think it looks pretty good. I can't really tell how good until I get an opportunity to 'play' with it. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 14:20:11 UT From: Robert J Pappas \ Organization: University of Minnesota Message-ID: \ Subject: SGML Classes/Components I'm looking for components that will help me build an SGML reader. VBX's, frameworks, DLL's, classes, etc. Is there anything like this out there? Thanks, bobp Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 14:49:06 UT From: Lori Snyder \ Message-ID: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> Subject: Help with possible Thesis I am a student attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville, UAH. I would like to start an SGML editor as a project for a class I am taking this semester. I even thought about extending this project into thesis. However, when I presented the idea for the thesis, the instructor said that a thesis should be something that has never been done before. That sort of kills the SGML editor as a thesis idea. There was a possible alternative. If I could implement a feature not found in any available SGML editor, then this would be a valid thesis. This is where I need your help. First of all, the computer science professors at UAH do not know SGML. Therefore, I can expect no guidance from them. Is there anybody that can offer guidance or share their experiences? Second of all, I am not sure I know how to go about implementing an SGML editor. Where do I start? Are there any papers on this subject? What feature is not implemented in other SGML editors that you would like to see done? Third, is there any thesis on any topic in SGML available? What might be some other possible ideas for a thesis? For those who you that responded to my first post, if this project ever gets off the ground, I will keep you informed of my progress. However, I am going to need some help getting started. Thanks in advance, Lori Snyder Bolen lsnyder@cs.uah.edu Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 14:56:09 UT From: Gerry Grenier <71031.2122@compuserve.com> Organization: John Wiley & Sons Message-ID: <3f3fua$rk5$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com> Subject: Re: WordPerfect Intellitag Intellitag is up to version 1.2. 1.2's default Declaration handling is much improved over 1.0, maximum group count was changed from 32 to 256. The WordPerfect Intellitag order telephone is +1 800 451 5151. Intellitag support number is +1 801 228 9925. -- Gerry Grenier John Wiley & Sons ggrenier@jwiley.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 15:53:12 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501121553.AA65884@source.asset.com> References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Norm Smith] | My approach was to start with the original HTML DTD and add pieces from | HTML+/2.0 as we used them in documents. It seems that the tweaking has | been endless. I agree that with Norm that this will help and can be common practice. It is for this reason that SGMLer's insist on a standard SGML system environment. Standardization based on a DTD has historically not proved to be effective across organizations and even then, requires a sender and a receiver with humans at both ends in possession of contracts which cite the type declaration and version. Given contractual authority, the situation can improve, but given the varieties of contractual tailoring available to projects, even this is not free of significant variance which is why human experts stay in the loop. After a decade of CALS experience, this situation is irrefutable. For this reason, standards such as HyTime have the concept of architectural forms which are a superclass. There is little to learn from debating whether this is just SGML cast in a new role; what is important is the authority of the standards source to provide a set whose rate of change relations to all of the other system components ensure that the tweaking is not necessary often. If there is no change at all, the standards cannot absorb the changes in technology and will become useless. If the change is too rapid, chaos erupts in the applications. However, as many of you will be quick to point out, for a standard set of declared types to be effective, they must also be complete with respect to the needed functionality. That is difficult to achieve in a single comprehensive standard of application as Bob Agnew points out in <1995Jan10.195054.25385@ast.saic.com>. Our work on the MID for the US Navy attempts to make this easier to do for MIL-D-87269 developers by separating the presentation components from the database components. While it is still possible to build a MIL-D-87269-only system, without this separation, typically only the default Organization Level DTD is supported and the system may not process the other applications that can be derived from the "269" generic layer which was based on the early concepts of HyTime architectural forms. What should be anticipated by the SGML hypermedia application developers is a set of standards (at this time, SGML/HyTime/SMSL/DSSSL/other_stds) each of which provides components for the application developer whose evolution is only loosely coupled to the others. For this reason, a single MIME content type will be inadequate. Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 18:25:52 UT From: Kerry Burton \ Message-ID: \ References: <0098A4E6.C235781C.11@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: WordPerfect Intellitag [Lou Burnard] | Here's the bad news: version 1.0 (the most recent version I could find) | won't compile even a slimmed down version of the TEI DTD. The | stumbling block at which I gave up was the complaint from dtd2lgc (the | DTD compiler-sort-of-thing) that a content model group contained more | than 32 tokens. | | This limit seems to be hardwired -- changing the SGML declaration had | no effect at all (not even on the error message). | | So -- (1) is anyone from Word Perfect reading this list still? | (2) is there a newer version of Intellitag than 1.0? WordPerfect Intellitag is currently at version 1.2 for both DOS and Unix. While the DTD2LGC utility handles marked sections in the DTD (except for a bug disallowing nesting within an IGNORED marked section), Intellitag itself still does not handle marked sections. The limit of 32 for the GRPCNT quantity was an Intellitag limitation which DTD2LGC enforced to prevent trying to handle too-large content models at runtime. In version 1.2 the method for handling content models was made more dynamic, with a larger maximum. If you're interested, the Intellitag 1.2 system maximums for the various quantities are: ATTCNT 80 ATTSPLEN 2048 BSEQLEN 960 -- UNUSED -- DTAGLEN 40 -- UNUSED -- DTEMPLEN 40 -- UNUSED -- ENTLVL 20 -- Used by DTD2LGC only -- GRPCNT 256 -- In Intellitag, used only to check -- -- tokens in IDREF(S) and ENTITY(IES) -- -- attribute values -- GRPGTCNT 512 -- Used by DTD2LGC only -- GRPLVL 16 -- Used by DTD2LGC only -- LITLEN 2048 NAMELEN 32 NORMSEP 2 PILEN 1024 -- UNUSED -- TAGLEN 2048 -- Used by Intellitag only -- TAGLVL 80 I would feel delinquent if I didn't mention the upcoming SGML edition of WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, although I assume it has been talked up here already. DTD2LGC will live on, but will have a Windows interface. (Yay!) If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. -- Kerry Burton ("Mr. DTD2LGC") WordPerfect - Novell Applications Group kerry@wordperfect.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 18:26:05 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan12.182605.24941@ast.saic.com> References: \ Subject: Re: FOSI teaching material? [Ginger Stack] | Does anyone have or know of any course material available for teaching | FOSI? 1. Arbortext has put together some rather good material that they use in their courses. Perhaps a call to Arbortext at +1 313 996 3566 would determine whether or not they are available to the public. 2. A complete copy of MIL-M-28001B and all appendices is absolutely necessary as a reference to any FOSI student and should be issued to each student. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 18:35:30 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan12.183530.26885@ast.saic.com> References: <9501102213.AA26631@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: Request for DSSSL Examples [Claude L. Bullard] | I am studying in the DSSSL draft standard. I have examples of tree | formatting specifications created for DSSSL Lite. Can someone help me | get concrete examples of: | | o Association Specifications | o DSSSL queries | o Tree Transformation expressions | | I realize that an AS implies a query. Isn't this like asking for some powder from the horn of a Unicorn? Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 18:48:34 UT From: Robert A Peters \ Organization: Control Data Systems Message-ID: \ Subject: CALS Specifications Anyone know where I can get a document on the CALS specification? I am interested in the whole thing but specific need is for the type 1 and type 2 raster formats. A www server would be great! Thanks in advance Rob rpeters@cdc.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 19:59:49 UT From: "William B. Bradley" \ Organization: AT\&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ Message-ID: <1995Jan12.195949.3907@allegra.att.com> Subject: SGML Class Libraries Hi, I am looking for class libraries commerical or otherwise which offer an object-oriented API to SGML documents and their constructs. There was a product call MarkMinder by a company called TechnoTeacher which seemed to fill this slot but they seemed to have gone out of business or something. Any pointers would be most appreciated. thankX, Bill B. -- William B. Bradley bradley@allegra.att.com AT\&T Bell Labs w/ +1 908 582 4831 600 Mountain Avenue h/ +1 201 377 2137 Murray Hill, NJ 07940 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 22:34:44 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ Subject: Re: Grammar Checkers That Work With SGML [Eliot Kimber] | ... work reasonably well on SGML, ideally with either of these editors? | I pride myself on knowing about all the SGML products, but this is one | I've never had a need for. InContext is an SGML editor that has a grammar checker built in. I don't know of "addons" for the editors you have, tho. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 12 Jan 1995 23:10:52 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> Subject: DSSSL inquiries Since my posting asking for examples of DSSSL, I have received a number of inquiries. I think it best to answer here on the CTS as I can't answer all of the mail. (A lotta interest in this one, folks..) o Where can one get the DIS? I don't know for sure. My copy was hand-delivered to me by someone who wanted me to analyze it. Perhaps Erik Naggum or James Clark can answer that. My reply is, buy one from ISO. I apologize for not being more help. o Is DSSSL real? Very. From what I've managed to understand of it so far, this is a well-thought through piece of work that can provide several missing pieces of the SGML application puzzle. The two things that leap to my mind immediately that an app developer has to resolve are the substantial overlap with ISO 10744-HyTime location models and the use of a dialect of Scheme which is a dialect of Lisp. Some won't care about hytime and others don't mind the Lispishness. For others, it appears that where they prefer to use HyTime to strengthen the internal definitions in the DTD for a standards-based location and addressing model, they can still use DSSSL for formatting and transforms. One particularly attractive feature of DSSSL is that a transform can be associated with the query. Someone with a deeper understanding than I have at this moment should provide public examples. I don't want to start or participate in the HyTime Bad-DSSSL Good! debate. There are reasons for both and I think the app designers must work out these options without rhetorical firebombs. Cool discussion of the technical comparisons is always welcome. As to the Lispishness, there is a substantial investment in proprietary stylesheets and C, C++, et al. Outside the AI community, Lisp and its dialects for all of the years they have existed, have not been popular. No criticism intended, just noting a challenge for commercial marketing here. DSSSL wraps a dialect of Scheme and so, a NOTATION. The DSSSL spec provides an interface to other NOTATIONS. The DIS says that proprietary stylesheets can use DSSSL. While formatting and transformations are its too major applications, fundamentally, DSSSL provides set of formatting characteristics to associate with classes of flow objects, and a language for general processing tasks. While the standard clearly states that the DSSSL dialect is not a fully-featured programming language, it is Scheme without side-effects, and therefore, a programming language for SGML processing. The DIS states that the DIS has been structured to allow futher additions for other processing areas of SGML such as data management. There are clear ambitions here and it will be interesting to see how they develop. o Are there any implementations? Not that I am aware of personally although I have heard rumors that James Clark is working on something. One must ask and even then, he is under no obligation to reveal his plans. Looking at the substantial amount of traffic on DSSSL-Lite, I assume that systems supporting this will appear shortly. My question about these is, will a DSSSL-Lite system only support HTML, or will they support any SGML app that can use DSSSL-Lite specifications? In other words, is DSSSL-Lite only a spec for a particular application, HTML? All in all, DSSSL represents substantive work. Many thanks to its creators. Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 02:33:14 UT From: Alan Williams \ Organization: Bradley University Message-ID: <3f4opa$l2u@camelot.bradley.edu> Subject: Character entity inquiry A question came up at work today, so I thought I'd ask it here: Do character entities exist for the "squared" and "cubed" superscript numbers? In other words, is there a declared superscript 2 so you don't have to write E=mc\2 and a subscript so you don't have to write H\2O? Just wondering. . . . -- ____ Alan Williams \\ "To Aristotle's famous apothogem \\ / vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu \\ `Moderation in All Things,' the Marxes \\/ awilliam@heartland.bradley.edu\\ have an antidote: `Go to Pieces.'" \\ --Joe Adamson Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 13 Jan 1995 06:02:30 UT From: Steve Champeon \ Organization: Medaphis Development Message-ID: \ References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? [Erik Naggum] | [ a bunch of good points, which I deleted ] | if you care about your information, make the browser vendors require | that local documents be conforming, and complain about remote documents | if they aren't. all other data format interpreters give warnings if | you give them rotten data. the WWW browsers don't. you have to start | with this. but you have to act quickly. the momentum of the masses is | growing at a speed that will make improving the browsers harder every | day. Hear, hear. I am in the process of reviewing the suggested protocols for running a CFD and CFV for comp.text.sgml.html. I believe that this is the proper place for such a newsgroup, as the readers of c.t.s must play an important advisory role in Saving the Web (tm). I have had email conversations with many of the members (?) of c.t.s and c.infosys.www, and the response (as you will have seen) has been overwhelmingly in favor of such a group. Also in the works is the North Carolina SGML Users Group Home Page, which will soon be announced. I have to clear a few things with my admin people and make sure that the URL is stable before officially announcing the page (my company was recently sold, so the addresses are likely to change soon). Our intentions are to provide the Net (and Web) with a central area in which all SGML/HyTime/HTML resources and pointers to such resources are gathered. If you have a URL which you would like to see on this site, please email me with the URL and a brief description of what it contains. Thanks for your contribution to such an important and timely project. Steve -- Steve Champeon | Archivist, NC SGML Users Group schampeo@gateway.bsis.com | sgmlug@redstone.interpath.net Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 12:13:45 UT From: James Clark \ Organization: None, London, England Message-ID: \ References: <9501102213.AA26631@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: Request for DSSSL Examples A collection of examples of transformations using DSSSL is available as: http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/examples/sttp/ I've also just made available a more complex formatting example (http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/examples/stfp/san-pedro.scm) and a corresponding example input SGML document (http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/examples/stfp/san-pedro.sgm.txt). This specifies some more complex kinds of formatting, such as footnotes, figures and multiple columns, which are not handled by DSSSL Lite. James Clark jjc@jclark.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 13:16:26 UT From: Wolfgang Rieger \ Organization: MUC.DE e.v -- private Internet access Message-ID: <3f5ufa$3v2@marvin.muc.de> References: <1995Jan12.195949.3907@allegra.att.com> Subject: Re: SGML Class Libraries [William B. Bradley] | I am looking for class libraries commerical or otherwise which offer an | object-oriented API to SGML documents and their constructs. There was | a product call MarkMinder by a company called TechnoTeacher which | seemed to fill this slot but they seemed to have gone out of business | or something. As far as I know, TechnoTeacher is not out of business. Contact: TechnoTeacher, Inc. P.O.Box 23795, Rochester,New York 14692-3795 USA Tel.: + +1 716 389 0961 Fax: + +1 716 389 0960 Email: hyminder@techno.com However, the new SGML parser SP by James Clark is written in C++ and provides a API. You may contact him via: http://www.jclark.com/. Hope this helps. Wolfgang Rieger -- Wolfgang Rieger Email: rieger@colin.muc.de c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung WWW : http://www.muc.de/~rieger/ Frankfurter Ring 193a 80807 Munich Germany Tel.: +49 89 323 19 93 Fax: +49 89 323 19 93 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 13:48:19 UT From: Brian Carty \ Organization: Northern Telecom Message-ID: \ Subject: Please explain terminal definitions I have been thrust into the wonderfull world of SGML, and as such, have read several books on the subject in order to get up to speed. I am using a modelling package to create DTDs, but one area that remains unclear to me is that of terminal types. From my reading I see that there are five terminal types, PCDATA, RCDATA, CDATA, ANY, and EMPTY. But the definitions for some of these are unclear. For example, the definition for RCDATA says, "text in which only substitutions will be recognized". What the heck does that mean? Substitutions of what? An example would surely help. Also, for CDATA, the definition is "content consisting of text only. No markup or substitutions will be recognized within it." Again, substitutions of what? And, couldn't a paragraph be considered text only, making it CDATA instead of PCDATA? If anyone could enlighten me, and provide some concrete examples or better definitions, I would be very greatfull. Please email or post to this group. Thanks, Brian Carty bcarty@bnr.ca (BNR400) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 14:46:52 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3f63osINN32p@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> <1995Jan12.012053.5071@ast.saic.com> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Glenda Jeffrey] | While I'm on the subject, has anyone used an SGML editor to create | documents that are equation-heavy? If so, was it difficult? Do you | feel that some editors are better than others for this task? It's my | understanding that most SGML equation editors are WYSIWYG and easy to | use. Agree? Disagree? | [Bob Agnew] | I've done many very heavy math texts and papers with several systems | including Framemaker, Interleave, Troff, TeX, and Arbortext. By far, | the original Arbortext Publisher (not SGML publisher) is the best and | easiest equation editor ever made. The SGML version needs work in that | the last DTD and FOSI I used it with was the one Arbortext provided and | this did not do autonumbering of equations and symbollic (IDREF) | references to equations. This is relatively easy to implement. Just precaution. Yes you can do math in SGML, but before you decide to do math in SGML you need to know if the composition system will understand how to compose the SGML math tags. Case in point, MIL-M-28001B specifies MATHPACK (ISO/TR 9573) for tagging mathematic equations. There is no composition system (paper or electronic) that incorporates the MATHPACK tags. Unfortunately, math is one of the nuances of SGML that are not handled easily. Before marching off blindly in an SGML project some variables should be known, such as will the composition system handle math tagging, table tagging. If these variables are unknown, you should hope for the best and expect the worst. For instance, create graphics from math if you are not sure what type of composition system will be used. You are right Arbortext does a very nice job of equations. Their equation editor is based on the AAP (ISO 12083). -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 15:36:00 UT From: Dwight Agner \ Organization: Graphic Composition, Inc. Message-ID: \ References: <0098A4E6.C235781C.11@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: WordPerfect Intellitag [Lou Burnard] | However, as one who has to convert a pile of TEI-conformant texts into | Word Perfect for a still-benighted publisher, I thought I'd give it a | whirl. Here's the bad news: version 1.0 (the most recent version I | could find) won't compile even a slimmed down version of the TEI DTD. | The stumbling block at which I gave up was the complaint from dtd2lgc | (the DTD compiler-sort-of-thing) that a content model group contained | more than 32 tokens. | This limit seems to be hardwired -- changing the SGML declaration had | no effect at all (not even on the error message). | So -- (1) is anyone from Word Perfect reading this list still? | (2) is there a newer version of Intellitag than 1.0? I don't have Intellitag now, but did have a trial copy of a version 1.2 about 6 months ago. I think it was brand new at that time. I am a novice at SGML, so can't give you any specifics about the problems you referred to. -- GRAPHIC COMPOSITION, INC., Athens, Georgia gci@atlanta.com Book Typesetting and Pre-press Services +1 706 546 8688 voice +1 706 543 9655 fax Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 16:08:43 UT From: Christian Saucier \ Reply-To: chsaucie@qc.bell.ca (Christian Saucier) Organization: Bell Sygma Product Documentation Message-ID: \ References: \ Subject: Re: Grammar Checkers That Work With SGML [W. Eliot Kimber] | Does anyone know of any grammar checkers that would work reasonably | well on SGML, ideally with either of these editors? I pride myself on | knowing about all the SGML products, but this is one I've never had a | need for. | | I realize I can always save or filter the SGML to plain text and then | use Word or Grammatick, but that would be less efficient than something | integrated with an editor. I had the same problem myself and I haven't found a solution either. Over here (Montreal, Canada), we have a few companies that produce bilingual (french/english) spell checkers. They all support Word, WP, AMIPRO, RTF but I haven't find anything for TeX or SGML. I've sent a letter to the company explaining the potential market there is in SGML but haven't got an answer yet. I think more people/companies will have to push on Grammatick and others so that they include SGML support in their products. Christian. -- sygmadoc@qc.bell.ca | Home of the Zarquon SGML DTD Analyser Bell Sygma | Product Documentation Team | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 16:11:10 UT From: Wiedmer Hans Ulrich \ Organization: IWF ETHZ, Zuerich Switzerland Message-ID: <3f68mu$mvn@elna.ethz.ch> Subject: Integration of DynaText (/ DynaBase) with RDB or OODB Dear all, I've got some questions regarding the integration of DynaText with a database (relational or object-oriented). I want to present the content of the database in a table (which can be embedded in a text, but this is not the main point). The basic question is how to accomplish that using DynaText (if at all). I can imagine two possibilities (apart from the trivial case of querying the database and converting the result to an SGML tagged text, which is then used when pressing a book): (1) the structure, i.e., the number of rows and cols of the table is fixed (at bookpressing time), but the content is drawn from the database dynamically (much like a spreadsheet). (2) the structure of the table is also dynamic, i.e., the user can enter a query and then gets the resulting set displayed in a table, with varying number of rows and cols. Questions: - Are (1) and (2) feasible with DynaText? I assume (1) yes, (2) no. Is (2) feasible using DynaBase? (I.e., feed a stream of SGML data, which origins from some RDB or OODB, from DynaBase to DynaText) - did anybody do such (or similar) things so far? What was the experience? - which table DTD should be used? - which database could be used (RDB is good, OODB is better)? - is there another Browser/Viewer than DynaText that supports such a scheme? Any thoughts / hints / whatever are welcome. Kind regards John -- Hans Ulrich (John) Wiedmer, CAD/CAM Group, Phone : +41 1 632 4819 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Fax: +41 1 632 1159 Laboratory of Machine Tools and Manufacturing (IWF), Leonhardstr. 27 CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: wiedmer@iwf.bepr.ethz.ch Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 19:35:11 UT From: Jeroen Ritmeijer \ Organization: XS4ALL, networking for the masses Message-ID: <3f6klf$f1s@news.xs4all.nl> Subject: SGML Job Openings in The Netherlands ***************************** *** !!!SGML'ers WANTED!!! *** ***************************** If you are living in the Netherlands (or if you are prepared to travel a few thousand miles a day :-) ) and have experience in: - Text markup in Softquad Author Editor 3.1 - Writing DTD's - Writing Text converters in Word 2 or 6 - General SGML knowledge Email jarit@xs4all.nl or write a letter to: ASTIN Presentation Graphics, Att. J. Ritmeijer, Anna Paulownastraat 103 2518 BC Den Haag The Netherlands Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 20:11:10 UT From: "Mar. van der Heide" \ Organization: Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, NL Message-ID: \ Subject: HyQengine update Hello, The implementation of relloc() had a bug. On big documents (like xmas) it took to much memory (among other things) I have pathed it and it should work correctly now. I am sory if I caused any inconveniance. It's the first time I have writen such a large program, and it's also the first time I have produced "public" software. So I'm not up to very high standards yet. Anyway, the need of critical comments is obvious. Regards, Gert-Jan Braas Graaf Adolfstr. 21a 9717 EB Groningen _NOT_ using my own account Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 13 Jan 1995 22:35:00 UT From: Richard Barber \ Organization: Metro Information Services Message-ID: <3f6v6k$e5f@everest.pinn.net> Subject: SGML/IETM developers wanted in Virginia Consulting firm in Virginia looking for SGML and IETM developers and programmers to work in Newport News (near cities of Norfolk and Va. Beach). Must have more than 2 years of experience. Call +1 800 486 5283 and ask for Richard Barber, Marianne Mele, or Linda Wright. Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 14 Jan 1995 05:21:16 UT From: "Paul E. Hedges" \ Organization: State Historical Society of Wisconsin Message-ID: <3f7n0c$qs8@news.doit.wisc.edu> References: <3eh8o6$c58@gateway.dircsa.org.au> \ Subject: Re: Word Perfect -- HTML/SGML conversion? [Peter da Silva] | Anyone got tools (commercial or otherwise) to convertWord Perfect | documents into something like HTML or some other SGML document type? | | How does WordPerfect Intellitag fit in with all this? According to WordPerfect, Intellitag v. 1.2 has an HTML DTD. Upgrade from previous version is about $10. Not having used Intellitag I cannot vouch for the product or its capabilities. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 14 Jan 1995 13:06:22 UT From: Jan Grootenhuis \ Message-ID: <3f8i8e$a3j@news.xs4all.nl> References: <0098A4E6.C235781C.11@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Re: WordPerfect Intellitag [Lou Burnard] | So -- (1) is anyone from Word Perfect reading this list still? Or try to mail \ | (2) is there a newer version of Intellitag than 1.0? There's a 1.2, but I found very little extras, apart from ID/IDREF checking. Cheers, -- Jan Grootenhuis Kralenbeek 1873 1104 KJ AMSTERDAM The Netherlands Tel/fax +31 20 699 89 66 Internet jang@xs4all.nl Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 14 Jan 1995 13:58:38 UT From: August Zupka \ Message-ID: <5G54Je2.azupka@delphi.com> References: <1995Jan9.011819.14341@usage.csd.unsw.OZ.AU> Subject: Re: Tagwrite (now bundled with Ventura): help please? Jim I also just recieved version 5, but have not had the opportunity to take it out of the box. If you should find any additional information could you pass it along? Perhapes we both can figure it out. Thanks Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 14 Jan 1995 18:12:04 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950114T181204Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | o Where can one get the DIS? | | I don't know for sure. My copy was hand-delivered to me by someone who | wanted me to analyze it. Perhaps Erik Naggum or James Clark can answer | that. My reply is, buy one from ISO. I apologize for not being more | help. you will find a PostScript version of the committee copy of the DIS in my SGML archive at ftp.ifi.uio.no:/pub/SGML/DSSSL. the main distribution point is infosrv1.ctd.ornl.gov:/pub/sgml/WG8/DSSSL, run by Jim Mason, convenor of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 18/WG 8. these documents are the official documents. it is inevitable (and about time) that standards developed by a technical community should be available to that technical community through cost-free channels as well as through the standard, approved channels for those who require it. the existence of a publicly, freely available copy of DSSSL should allow interested practitioners in the field to pick it up and familiarize themselves with it without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for a paper document, i.e., having to obtain funding and/or approval for wanton expenditures. I salute Jim for his efforts in making this material available from an official source. would that SGML and HyTime were similarly available. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 14 Jan 1995 23:41:46 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950114T234146Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | The two things that leap to my mind immediately that an application | developer has to resolve are the substantial overlap with ISO 10744 | HyTime location models and the use of a dialect of Scheme which is a | dialect of Lisp. to address the two points in order: (1) the overlap between HyTime and DSSSL is subject to some scrutiny in the committee in order to better understand them, and hopefully to unify them. to understand why there is an overlap and why they differ, we must look at the reasons behind the location models. HyTime had no application and no strong focus while being defined, so was allowed to develop unchecked by computer scientists who could have told which concepts a computer can readily represent, and which take much effort. (true also of SGML, which has escaped the attention of programmers for a decade.) DSSSL had a focused application in mind, and much experience trying to solve the problems of this application. DSSSL is not ground-breaking except in the way it solves the problems. HyTime, on the contrary, is ground-breaking in the problems it tries to solve. (2) the DSSSL expression language is Scheme for the same reason that HyTime is SGML, and Scheme is a true language. Scheme is an IEEE standard, 1178-1990, and also an ANSI standard. new languages in the lisp family have been called "dialects" while new languages in the Algol family have been called "languages", mostly because new languages in the lisp family retain the clean and simple syntax, while new languages in the Algol family retain the messy exploitation of the entire ASCII alphabet for operators, and gratuitously differ from other languages in the same family, the ultimate example of which is C++, or perhaps perl. SGML is in the lisp family of languages, which may account for its lack of appeal to those who like to bludgeon computers into obedience. | I don't want to start or participate in the HyTime Bad-DSSSL Good! | debate. There are reasons for both and I think the application | designers must work out these options without rhetorical firebombs. | Cool discussion of the technical comparisons is always welcome. they can't be compared on technical grounds -- there are differing design philosophies involved. one of the differences is that one of them is designed to be implementable and the other not. another difference is that one of them is designed to be understood and used, the other to befuddle the political opposition, and to delay any real improvements to SGML. | As to the Lispishness, there is a substantial investment in proprietary | stylesheets and C, C++, et al. Outside the AI community, Lisp and its | dialects for all of the years they have existed, have not been popular. the perpetuation of this myth will not come as a surprise to workers in the field. popularity is not restricted to the result of extravagant lies and misrepresentation that is so common in the personal computer business. there has been _very_ little of that in the more academically inclined circles where members of the lisp family have been popular. calling all of them "AI" is useful mainly to associate them with the perceived failure of this field in the public eye, despite enormous successes for real-world projects and for people who rely in computers to keep them alive. large, demanding applications are routinely being built in Lisp, and they just work. miniscule undertakings in the C++ world are foreshadowed by reams of articles in the popular press, and later hailed as successes of the language, despite regular delays and losses, when the reality is that any successes are restricted to marketing techniques. | No criticism intended, just noting a challenge for commercial marketing | here. for mass marketing, yes. for getting the job done, no. SGML isn't going to hit the mainstream of popularity any way we work it. it's too good for that. look at HTML and be honest: does its popularity tell you that the long-term values of SGML has won any converts, let alone respect? the buyers of popular tools don't want their data to live long, don't want to use them for any other purposes than they are currently using them, and don't have enough data to think twice about it, anyway. can we change that? no. we can try, but only by catering to the immediacy and the narrow-mindedness of the popular tools. hitting the mainstream of popularity involves such enormous sacrifices and such rampant nihilism with respect to quality that merely wanting it is destructive. why should people who don't know what they want, don't care what they get, and don't consider it bad that the software they buy crash their machines, choose to use SGML? no argument you could ever conjure up would have any _relevance_ to those people -- they're happy to have vendors dictate when their data is to rot, to wait for and buy new releases while knowing that they pay a high price to be allowed to test them, knowing that they will pay when hit by bugs (customer support), and pay again to have them fixed. do you seriously want to sell anything to those people? do you want to be the unethical bastard who will accept that this is still legal, and therefore OK to do? (OK, that's a rhetorical question.) there's always good money in professional tools for serious professionals. I know the odds of making money in the presence of vendors who routinely lie to their customers' faces about the availability of features is slim. I know the odds of making money when your competitors are competing mainly in the cheating and defrauding business is hard. I sometimes wonder if money can be made in certain sectors of the software business at all if you have _any_ standard of ethics, or feel any sort of remorse if you lie and take people's money just because they're stupid or naive enough to believe you. I still believe there are areas left where honest, hard-working, conscientious people will succeed. I don't believe these areas overlap with the personal computer business and its corrupt mass market. if SGML is to succeed in that mass market, it has to be destroyed first, like HTML is being destroyed. I don't think mass marketing SGML is a desirable goal. SGML is the BETA of text formats. let the common public use their VHS. it is sufficient that all the TV stations and the serious video producers use BETA. it should be sufficient that the serious information professional uses SGML. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml,misc.jobs.misc,alt.hypertext Date: 14 Jan 1995 23:57:00 UT From: Kevin Jackson <76566.2033@CompuServe.COM> Organization: Tera Research Inc Message-ID: <3f9occ$efe$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com> Subject: HTML Consulting A small business in Northern Virginia (Vienna) is interested in developing HTML publishing expertise. We are interested in discussing a consulting arrangement. Two years experience and reference necessary. Please send email to jackson@tera-research.com or contact via voice mail at +1 703 761 0771. Thank you. -- \\ | Kevin L. Jackson \\ | jackson@tera-research.com \\| 76566,2033 TERA RESEARCH +1 703 761 0771 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 15 Jan 1995 01:14:29 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950115T011429Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | Instead of complaining about the evil market, we should recognize that | the market is a _force_, and that we too can manipulate it, instead of | complaining about it. the market is not a force, it is a momentum resulting from a multitude of forces strong and weak. the strongest force influencing the market is marketing. a strong force that counters the effect of marketing, but which is unlikely to have any other positive effect in the personal computer business, is honesty. exposing the bastards is certainly affecting sales. you can call this "complaining about the evil market" if you want. I suggest that you adopt a more intellectual approach to your observations. you might observe that the market is outside of morality, and that the actors in the market (i.e., the forces applied to it) are good or bad. | For instance: don't you think that it is in every other brower's | benefit to flag Netscape extensions as wrong. They don't want Netscape | going around extending HTML any more than you do. you said that companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to make money. if they think that they can make more money mimicking Netscape than by being good people, they will, according to your model, mimic Netscape. | The browser vendors (...) are trying to increase their market share and | create a better product for their customers. Since there are features | that their customers want that HTML does not provide they are providing | them. Another reasonable stance is they are "testing" and "demoing" | tags that could be incorporated into a future version of HTML. I just hope you don't lose a lot of money believing things like this. | Microsoft didn't cause the problem and Microsoft is not the problem. | They too are ruled by the market forces that encourage them to release | "standards" like OLE while CORBA was still in its early stages. could you explain that piece about "ruled by the market forces"? the way I see this is that a few companies engage in business practices that would have landed them behind bars in any other industry where proof were less elusive, and their actions create a momentum that they are desperately trying not to get run over by. nobody "encourages" you to lie, steal, cheat and defraud your customers. that's a choice you make, and it's a choice of ethics. if you think it's somebody else's fault that you have to (or "encourages" you to) lie and defraud your customers, may I suggest a psychiatrist? the first step on the way to get better is to realize that you have the power to change, yourself. and, no, I don't care what smart explanations you can come up with for making it somebody else's fault. | The truth is that none of those companies [Microsoft, Apple, IBM] are | in control: the market is. and who exactly is this supposed market of yours? the customers? you have previously argued that if you have a better product, the customers will come to you. is that the "market" controlling you, or you controlling the buying habits? but now you argue that the "market" is controlling the companies, and that they have to be "first" because otherwise they will lose the "market". well, OK, _either_ the one who is "first" is getting all the business and you have to elbow your way to the front of the line, _or_ he who has the better product wins, right? if both of these are true, I'd like to see how you can argue for only one of them at a time when that is most convenient. | The sky is _not_ falling, and cynicism is an easy way to absolve | yourself of responsibility to: | | a) use the real systems that real users are using (like Windows) look, Paul, it doesn't help your case that you are blind to the fact that Windoze is _not_ used by the entire population of planet earth. if you had said "use the terminals that consumers are using" I wouldn't have objected. the _real_ systems these days are the servers, Paul. they aren't as high in the sales figures, because you can support three dozen fancy terminals with a single server. beneath the gooey veneer is a program that needs to function, not just look good. you find the "real programmers" at work with problems that require theoretical knowledge and skills that can't be learned playing with buttons and colors. | b) to find out what the real problems are. It will often be a | surprise...more users have trouble with the concept of double | clicking than with 8.3 file name conventions. if you think those are real problems, I think you have a bright future as a used computer salesman. _real_ problems, Paul, are those that try to figure out how to make 40 billions bits of data get across a cable in "real time" when the cable only takes 100 millions bits per second and you can easily waste 95 million of those bits if you don't know the right theory. _real_ problems, Paul, concern getting a telephone network that generates a million dollars worth of money every second to continue to work when a hub switch (central office) melts in blue flames. _real_ problems, Paul, involve getting a couple thousand pages of heavily cross-indexed material with lots of pictures that won't fit ready for the offset printer by Monday morning. I don't care one _bit_ about your 8.3 filename conventions or how many times you must click on that stupid rodent. I care, however, about such problems as getting the next version of the Internet Protocol deployed so you can continue to waste bandwidth without causing a disaster for those of use who have real problems to solve. I care about the freedom of the press and how the Internet is being a prime censorship target because it allows me to reach an audience that the powers that be doesn't want me to reach. soon we'll have Microsoft Network, America Online already owns part, if it not all, of Advanced Networks & Services, Inc, which runs the Internet T3-backbone in the U.S., and the commercial online services have amassed 6 million users, ready to spend their cash. Netscape and Mastercard have made a deal to base commercial services on a proprietary protocol. Microsoft and VISA work on a deal wherein which you will have to run Windoze to be an online customer. is this what the customers want? how many times was it that I should click to solve these problems? | c) attempt to correct them (like with DOS extendors) or encourage the | market to correct them. (as in products like Chicago, OS/2 and NT) the "market" isn't correcting anything, Paul. _people_ are, and they do it for a number of reasons, the _least_ of which is sales. or have you failed to notice the amount of shareware and public domain code for these systems? | Luckily, the market is already solving the problem. SGML vendors see | the market for HTML editors and as soon as they make them of sufficient | quality, HTML authors will migrate to them in droves. what the hell makes you think they will? let's try again, Paul. why did Microsoft have to get the OLE and CORBA crap out the door before it could walk to beat IBM and Apple to the starting line if "sufficient quality" is a winning argument for SGML vendors? something is very seriously botched in your argumentation. | Watch: the vendors will _use_ the market instead of railing against it. | And the technically correct solution will still win out. even vendors that are true believers in your marketology have consistently failed to get the _technically_ superior solutions out to the public, much less _win_. to quote from an article in Fortune (1995-01-16): Microsoft's ability to dominate most sectors of the PC software business is rich in irony and a tribute to Bill Gates' abilities as a businessman. Why? Because from its beginnings, Microsoft has been notorious for producing inelegant products that are frequently inferior to the competition and for bringing them to market way behind schedule. Some see in Microsoft's tardiness a conscious effort to freeze the opposition with uncertainty. There's even a term for it -- _foilware_. But Gates would like to believe -- and have everyone else believe -- that the upcoming launch of several new products will put that reputation behind Microsoft. yeah, right! I don't know what you're basing your rosy assumptions and naive beliefs on, Paul, but I sure don't want to be there when you realize that you're wrong, that the entire business world knows you're wrong and that you're the prime target for the marketing campaigns that have made the unethical bastards able to elbow their way into your wallet and your career. I for one think it's sufficiently disgusting that I have looked around for sources of income where I can still know that honesty and integrity won't be a serious liability. write me in ten years and tell me whether you're still an honest, optimistic guy, Paul. you owe me a beer if you lie to me. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 03:54:20 UT From: Arthur Smith \ Organization: University of Washington Message-ID: <3fa69c$d1m@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Subject: Hy-Time I'm looking for details on non-HTML hypertext in SGML - could somebody point me to either a summary or details of the specifications and capabilities? Thanks, Arthur Smith (asmith@mammoth.chem.washington.edu) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 04:35:41 UT From: Marc Spitzer \ Organization: Cosmic Communications, Long Island, NY Message-ID: <3fa8mt$tva@whoa.cosmic.com> Subject: how do you start Well how do I start using SMGL? I have yasp.zip and no idea what to do. What I would like is a FTP-able or online absolute beginners tutorial if it exists. And any thing else that might be useful would be a help. Thanks marc Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 08:33:05 UT From: Hugh Lindley \ Organization: EXOCOM Systems Ltd. Message-ID: \ Subject: Can anyone point me to shareware SGML products for MAC The subject line says it all. I'm looking for SGML shareware for macintosh. Demo versions of shipping products are fine. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks HL Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 15 Jan 1995 12:15:39 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950115T011429Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) Let me preface this message with my eventual conclusion for brevity: \ The fundamental problem with "the computer market" is the inability of those in "the know" to convince "those who buy" that technical superiority is important. Or, more important: to explain to those who buy what technical superiority _is_. Insulting those who buy (as you have here and in email) is a sure route to perpetuating the system you despise. Because Microsoft cares about usability and solving real-world problems that customers have, they are perceived as being "on the customer's side." \ Does anyone have a suggestion as to where we should direct followups? This has strayed from SGML and HTML. [Erik Naggum] | the market is not a force, it is a momentum resulting from a multitude | of forces strong and weak. the strongest force influencing the market | is marketing. a strong force that counters the effect of marketing, | but which is unlikely to have any other positive effect in the personal | computer business, is honesty. exposing the bastards is certainly | affecting sales. Exposing them is great. But the language that you use in your exposition is as important as the exposition itself. You are wasting your breath and your opportunity to change anything by howling at the users and calling them names or seperating yourself from them: i.e. "the WWW crowd" instead of "we, the WWW users." It may serve to release your tensions but it works against your cause. | you said that companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to make | money. if they think that they can make more money mimicking Netscape than | by being good people, they will, according to your model, mimic Netscape. Not if it puts them in a position of perpetually playing catch-up! That is a _bad_ position to be in. The smaller vendors can help themselves by working together and being precise in their support of a particular DTD. We can help them to understand the issue (and one gentleman here _did_ that). | if you think it's somebody else's fault that you have to (or | "encourages" you to) lie and defraud your customers, may I suggest a | psychiatrist? the first step on the way to get better is to realize | that you have the power to change, yourself. and, no, I don't care | what smart explanations you can come up with for making it somebody | else's fault. It is not an issue of defrauding. Microsoft does not "defraud" its customers. Microsoft believes that certain things are important: recently they have been banging their drum for usability and object embedding. They do not believe that technical correctness is important. That does not make them frauds, it makes them technically incorrect. There is a difference between immorality and negligence. Neither is pretty, but there _is_ a difference. | and who exactly is this supposed market of yours? the customers? you | have previously argued that if you have a better product, the customers | will come to you. is that the "market" controlling you, or you | controlling the buying habits? but now you argue that the "market" is | controlling the companies, and that they have to be "first" because | otherwise they will lose the "market". well, OK, _either_ the one who | is "first" is getting all the business and you have to elbow your way | to the front of the line, _or_ he who has the better product wins, | right? if both of these are true, I'd like to see how you can argue | for only one of them at a time when that is most convenient. Rereading my post I see nowhere that I outlined a single strategy for winning over the market. I certainly did not mean to imply that any one factor (technical correctness, usability, "firstness" etc.) will necessarily win the day. A study of the software industry will indicate that that is certainly not the case. You must be perceived to have a better product. That can be because the product is technically better, or more usable, or because you are good at marketing. Being first with a feature is useful because in the time where the competitors do not have the feature, you are perceived to have the better product. Having the most features is useful. Having the best marketing department is useful. Having an established base is useful. There are many, many factors involved. | look, Paul, it doesn't help your case that you are blind to the fact | that Windoze is _not_ used by the entire population of planet earth. I am not blind to that fact. In fact I do not use Windows myself. I use OS/2 to get a feel for a popular user OS and Unix for programming. Note the spelling: "Windows." Even though I seldom use Windows myself, I recognize that over half of the Web using community uses Windows, and if I want to encourage real changes in the Web it does not help to ostrasize them. | if you had said "use the terminals that consumers are using" I wouldn't | have objected. the _real_ systems these days are the servers, Paul. I do not think either of us has adequately defined "real". Most systems are _still_ not connected to any kind of server, and most servers are still only file servers. So most computers are not "terminals" yet. | if you think those are real problems, I think you have a bright future | as a used computer salesman. _real_ problems, Paul, are those that try | to figure out how to make 40 billions bits of data get across a cable | in "real time" when the cable only takes 100 millions bits per second | and you can easily waste 95 million of those bits if you don't know the | right theory. ... I do not deny that these are real problems. It disturbs me that you do not believe that usability is a "real problem." It is, however, typical of the schism that has occurred in our industry between those who understand tecnhical issues and those who understand user needs. Is it any wonder customers keep getting bad advice? Is it any wonder bad standards continue to win out? Is it any wonder that major software companies are populated by people who are technical idiots? If the technically competent people would take the time to consider usability their technically superior products would have a chance of winning. | the "market" isn't correcting anything, Paul. _people_ are, and they | do it for a number of reasons, the _least_ of which is sales. or have | you failed to notice the amount of shareware and public domain code for | these systems? You cannot include shareware in your list of stuff people do from the goodness of your heart. It is just another marketing mechanism. I do not see public domain software as the saviour of the computer industry. It would be great if it was, but I would be surprised. When push comes to shove, few people are willing to expend the personal energy to fight the problem instead of complaining about it. And in the end they invariably ignore usability, destroying their chance of success. [Paul Prescod] | Luckily, the market is already solving the problem. SGML vendors | see the market for HTML editors and as soon as they make them of | sufficient quality, HTML authors will migrate to them in droves. [Erik Naggum] | what the hell makes you think they will? Because using an SGML editor to edit HTML is easier than editing HTML by hand. Usability can be the "trojan horse" for technical correctness. And editing structured SGML is also easier (if the document is not "throwaway") than is editing straight HTML. | let's try again, Paul. why did Microsoft have to get the OLE and CORBA | crap out the door before it could walk to beat IBM and Apple to the | starting line if "sufficient quality" is a winning argument for SGML | vendors? something is very seriously botched in your argumentation. Sufficient quality, in this context, means sufficient usability. Also: Microsoft had nothing to do with CORBA. They had to get OLE out the door because otherwise they would have to work twice as hard to differentiate their product on usability grounds. Getting OLE out the door was not a bad thing. Not supporting CORBA _is_. | I don't know what you're basing your rosy assumptions and naive beliefs | on, Paul, but I sure don't want to be there when you realize that | you're wrong, that the entire business world knows you're wrong and | that you're the prime target for the marketing campaigns that have made | the unethical bastards able to elbow their way into your wallet and | your career. No, I am not the prime target. My customers are. By treating them with respect and acknowldging that technology is not their strong point I can point them towards the technically correct solution. Or I could rant at them and call them stupid users and get nowhere. \ Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml,misc.jobs.misc,alt.hypertext Date: 15 Jan 1995 15:14:27 UT From: Ed Thomson \ Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Message-ID: <3fbe4j$bo0@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> References: <3f9occ$efe$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com> Subject: Re: HTML Consulting [Kevin Jackson] | A small business in Northern Virginia (Vienna) is interested in | developing HTML publishing expertise. We are interested in discussing | a consulting arrangement. Two years experience and reference | necessary. Please send email to jackson@tera-research.com or contact | via voice mail at +1 703 761 0771. Thank you. 2 years experience? The web was *dead* two years ago. The only people you're going to find with 2 years experience are the people that worked on the HTML specs. And I really doubt they'll do consulting for you. -- Ed - ethomson@uiuc.edu - http://ux1.cso.uiuc.edu/~ethomson/home.html Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 15:15:16 UT From: R A Milowski \ Organization: University of Minnesota Message-ID: \ References: <3f68mu$mvn@elna.ethz.ch> Subject: Re: Integration of DynaText (/ DynaBase) with RDB or OODB [Wiedmer Hans Ulrich | (1) the STRUCTURE, i.e. the number of rows and cols of the table is | FIXED (at bookpressing time), but the CONTENT is drawn from the | database DYNAMICALLY (much like a spreadsheet). The penalty here is that if your table structures change (which can happen frequently :( ) you have to re-program your SGML systems. | (2) the STRUCTURE of the table is also DYNAMIC, i.e. the user can enter | a query and then gets the resulting set displayed in a table, with | varying number of rows and cols. This, of course, is the best solution. I do not know of any product that will read the table layout information from a database, create a dtd fragement for use in a dtd, and extract the information according to that fragment. It is relativly easy code to write (I have done it before) but as for a product... The most complex part is that you have to setup dynamic means for the entity manager to "query" the database for both the dtd fragment and the content of the table. This could be done using an extention to POEM(?) like: ENTITY dynamic_table_dtd DATABASE my_database OBJECT my_table ENTITY dynamic_table_content DATABASE my_database SQL "select * from my_table" But, of course, this does not exist. Also, I posted a more detailed how-to answer some months ago. You might try to dig that one up out of the c.t.s archive. | QUESTIONS: | | - Are (1) and (2) feasible with DynaText? I assume (1) yes, (2) no. | Is (2) feasible using DynaBase? (I.e. feed a stream of SGML data, | which origins from some RDB or OODB, from DynaBase to DynaText) A pre-processor? | - did anybody do such (or similar) things so far? What was the experience? I wrote some code once... but I haven't done much with it. | - which table DTD should be used? I would think you would want to customize the dtd fragment for the type of information you are extracting from the database. IMHO, I prefer to use a content based approach. | - which database could be used (RDB is good, OODB is better)? Here's the problem with an OODBMS: what does an object translate to in SGML? Relational databases are easy since you can just use the column names as the element structure. OODBMS would need a standard translation first (COBRA anyone?) into SGML. Not to knock an OODBMS, I prefer to use them for application development. It is just that SQL, right now, is more open. | - is there another Browser/Viewer than DynaText that supports such a | scheme? Can't help you on that one. -- R. Alexander Milowski, SGML Operations Manager milor001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Microcom Inc. +1 612 825 4132 "An SGML Solutions Company" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 15 Jan 1995 15:16:50 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950115T011429Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | The fundamental problem with "the computer market" is the inability of | those in "the know" to convince "those who buy" that technical | superiority is important. I think I have actually argued that the fundamental problem with the _personal_ computer market is that of marketing provable technical inferiority as superior, selling known deficient products, and creating an atmosphere of unethical conduct and incessant lies from vendors to the consumers. what is fraud, if not taking people's money when they would not have departed with them had they known what you know? | Or, more important: to explain to those who buy what technical | superiority _is_. standards of quality in software are harder to specify than in other industries, but it is a minimum requirement that outright lies are penalized, and that one can trust the descriptions of the software. it is of no consequence that you and others muddy the water by asking irrelevant questions. pointing out deficiencies, i.e., inferiority, is what this is all about. superiority is in this case merely absence of functional flaws. I take it that you think it is perfectly legitimate to sell broken products because they can be used for something other than their stated purpose. the problem with software is that poor workmanship and quality is not readily visible. in all other industries, standard, published test procedures is the rule. with software, the real tester is the customer. I continue to be amazed that the customers accept this. they scream bloody murder if their car breaks down for no apparent reason on the highway, but when their spreadsheets and reports are lost in system crashes that are at least as obviously caused by poor quality products, they have been lulled into believing it's their own fault, that they have to call the customer service hotline and willingly pay for it, or they just resign to having to do it over again. why do people accept this? hint: because they have been told that this is the only way it can be done, by the lying, cheating, defrauding computer salesmen. | Insulting those who buy (as you have here and in email) is a sure route | to perpetuating the system you despise. Because Microsoft cares about | usability and solving real-world problems that customers have, they are | perceived as being "on the customer's side." Bill Gates cares about making money. to this end, he has managed to dupe you into believing that he cares about usability and solving "real-world" problems. but those "real-world" problems are of his own making. getting paid to fix problems in his own products is generating a lot of money for him, but what happens in other industries? products are recalled if broken, right? multi-billion-dollar class-action suits are instigated against producers of goods that they knew were deficient, or were negligent in not testing sufficiently, right? other industries have responsible players, or are forced to be responsible if they aren't. what about Microsoft? their irresponsible behavior is hailed as a "success". read his license agreements and limited warranty when you have time. ask yourself: is this an honest man protecting himself from an increasingly litigious society, or is it a cheat and a fraud trying to get away with products so damn inferior that he doesn't even dare to stand by his own claims to what it can do? what I want is honesty in the industry and you continue to evade the issue by essentially claiming that you can't know that anything really exists in the first place, so it's all a business of pretending hard enough that beliefs come true. I'm beginning to repeat myself, so I'll just note that you think it's perfectly legitimate to sell crap as long as the customer doesn't know it's crap until it's too late. I want the commonly accepted responsibility for producers and vendors to apply to the software industry, too. it's really no worse than that, but I realize that merely asking for responsibility among software vendors is perceived as a death sentence to the industry, and I _do_ expect a lot of immoral bastards to oppose such measures. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 16:35:38 UT From: Bob Corbin \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: \ Subject: Do you know SGML or HTML? Electronic Book Technologies has many openings Electronic Book Technologies , based in providence RI has immediate openings for experienced software developers. Currently we are recruiting for both our Providence RI office and our Portland Oregon office. Our ideal candidates will have experience in SGML or HTML . Must be willing to work in Providence or Portland. There is some relocation assistance available but we do generally limit it to the moving of household goods. MS WINDOWS ENGINEERS- We will always have openings for outstanding developers with these skills. Please feel free to call me directly if in fact you meet this skill set. Skills: Design, develoip and maintain Windows User Interface components used in DynaText and other EBT products. Experience using the Windows SDK, it's API and components is preferred. Knowledge of other platforms,windowing environments and OLE are considered a plus. Must have 2 years of window development experience outside of an academic environment. EBT is a dynamic company that is experiencing rapid growth, is privately held (SO STOCK OPTIONS REALLY MEAN SOMETHING) and our culture offers the flexibility for bright , self-directed individuals to enjoy an atmosphere that makes life at work fun and enjoyable. Resumes may be faxed to: Bob Corbin Human Resources Consultant EBT +1 401 421 9551 (fax) +1 401 421 9550 (voice) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml,misc.jobs.misc,alt.hypertext Date: 15 Jan 1995 18:44:23 UT From: Dimitri Vulis \ Organization: Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y. Message-ID: \ References: <3fbe4j$bo0@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> Subject: Re: HTML Consulting [Kevin Jackson] | A small business in Northern Virginia (Vienna) is interested in | developing HTML publishing expertise. We are interested in discussing | a consulting arrangement. Two years experience and reference | necessary. Please send email to jackson@tera-research.com or contact | via voice mail at +1 703 761 0771. Thank you. [Ed Thomson] | 2 years experience? The web was *dead* two years ago. The only people | you'r going to find with 2 years experience are the people that worked | on the HTML specs. And I really doubt they'll do consulting for you. Then again, if Kevin Jackson had a clue, he wouldn't cross-post his ad to misc.jobs.misc, a discussion group. -- dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dimitri Vulis) Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1 718 261 2013, 14.4Kbps Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 19:45:49 UT From: Jeffrey McArthur \ Organization: ATLIS Publishing Message-ID: <3fccih$8jf@news1.delphi.com> Subject: Monthly Unofficial FAQ for comp.text.sgml The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Compiled by: Jeffrey McArthur j_mcarthur@bix.com 1. About This Release 1.1. Q: Why does this version look so different? A: This is the first attempt at using a tagged version of the FAQ. The document is now tagged in SGML using a DTD originally developed by Jeffrey C. Ollie with a few changes. 1.2. Q: If the FAQ was done in SGML why does this look like ASCII? A: This version will be released in ASCII format only. The tagged version was composed using TeX (and a monospaced font) and then converted back into ASCII. This process is not fully polished. Hopefully next month the FAQ will be released in two additional formats: SGML and Postscript. I also plan on releasing the TeX macros used to typeset this FAQ. 1.3. Q: When is the next release? A: I propose releasing this the 2nd Monday of each month. That gives me the weekend before to finish. 1.4. Q: What other changes are there besides the tagging and formatting? A: Unfortunately it took me longer to convert the data and to create the typesetting spec. So there have been no changes in content. I applogize for this, but now that I finally have some time to work on this project I will address all the corrections and suggesions numerous people have made. I also hope to finish a lot more. 2. General Information 2.1. Q: Notes about the FAQ A: There is no officially maintained FAQ for comp.text.sgml. This is an attempt to solve the most frequently asked question on this newsgroup, "where is the FAQ?". Rather than start an rwar about who is right or wrong or if there should be a FAQ at all I decided that it would be in my best interest to provide a skeleton structure to a non-official FAQ. This is only the rough outline of what is to follow, hopefully. Ideally, the FAQ should be organized as an SGML document. But to start with, this is just an ASCII text file. But looking to the future, what DTD should the FAQ use? If you to help with this FAQ, please send any updates or comments to j_mcarthur@bix.com. The only way this FAQ will be developed is with help from others. The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 1  One word of warning, since I am starting this FAQ, it will reflect my opinions. 2.2. Q: What is Markup? A: Using a highlighter pen to emphasize passages in a book is "marking up" the book. The highlights show passages that are important to the reading. Underlining is another form of markup. It is not possible to use a highlighter on an electronic document. To implement electronic markup a variety of ideas have been developed. 2.3. Q: What is Tagging? A: ASCII has become the most commonly used form of information exchange. Almost every word processor has the ability to import and export an ASCII text file. The problem with ASCII text files the 95 printing characters of the 7-bit ASCII definition do not provide any information about the structure or the format of the document. Several methods have been developed to specify additional information in an ASCII text file. FORTRAN used a "C" in the first column of a punched card to specify a comment. This was one of the simplest forms of tagging. All the comment lines were tagged with a "C" in the first column. Pascal allowed comments to be placed almost anywhere. This was done by introducing a start comment sequence, "(*", and an end comment sequence, "*)". The basic idea is to use a recognizable sequence of characters to define parts of a document. Each special sequence of characters is called a "tag". Below is a list of tags used in some computer languages: Language Start Tag End Tag FORTRAN C in first column column 72 Pascal (* *) C /* */ Basic REM in first column end of line The process of adding special sequences of characters to an electronic document is call tagging. Tagging is a method of "marking up" an electronic document. Over time, comments in computer languages have changed. One of the more interresting changes is the ability to nest comments. Most of the newer Algol family of languages allow comments to nest. This included Modula-2, Oberon, and Oberon-2. The ability to nest is important in tagging. This allows using the same notation over and over again. The meaning of a tag become context dependant. In Modula-2 the first "(*" starts the comment. Following "(*" not only continue the comment but add the requirement of an additional "*)" to end the comment. For each start comment tag, there is an end comment tag. The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 2 2.4. Q: What is SGML? A: One of the problems with tagging is determining what tags to use. SGML takes the concept of tagging one step further. It creates a method for defining a set of tags. This is why some people refer to SGML as a meta-language. SGML does not define a set of tags. It is a tool to define a set of tags. But SGML does a more than just define the tags. There are tools that will take a tagged electronic document and compare it to the set of defined tags and see if the document follows the definition. The process of doing this validation is called "parsing". With SGML you can define a "tag grammar", and you check see whether a text conforms to that grammar. 2.5. Q: History of SGML A: Erik Naggum \ wrote a short history in the officially sanctioned FAQ. If I get his permission I will include it here. Or if anyone would care to write one I will post it here. 2.6. Q: Why go to all the trouble of using SGML? A: SGML is not as easy to use as Word Perfect or Microsoft Word. Most word processor programs are very easy to use. You just type. Little thought is given to the structure of what is written. Style sheets provide some outline capabilities, but they do not force the document to match the style. SGML can be tyrannical in its enforcement of structure. The major advantage of SGML is the enforced consistency. Documents must follow the defined structure, or they will not parse. One major advantage of enforcement of structure is consistancy. The data must follow a predefined set of rules reguarding its structure. Another possible advantage is separating the "form" of the document from the "content" of the document. With a word processor, you are always aware of the form. Style sheets do help; but the layout of the document is bound to the data. SGML may help separate the content. One common misconception is that SGML tags can only define the structure of a document. It is possible to create a SGML document where the tags only describe the form. An example of this is in tables. Many table models only describe the formatting of the table. There is no attempt to represent any structure on the data other than the format. If SGML is used to separate the form from the content of a document, then it is much easier to create new "forms" from the same data. For example, if a document is written using a word processor it may be very difficult to change all the bold italic listings in the The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 3  document to bold san-serif. If the form is completely separate from the content, then the actual format of the document is specified outside of the document itself. This is the answer of why to use SGML. If the document is to be used only one time, for example a letter to a friend, there is no reason to use SGML. On the other hand, if the letter is to be placed into a system that is searched and/or printed many times in many different ways, then SGML is a major advantage. 2.7. Q: What is ISO 8879? A: SGML is an ISO standard. ISO 8879 is the definition of SGML. The definitive document is: The SGML Handbook; Oxford University Press, 1990; ISBN 0-19-853737-9; by Charles F. Goldfarb. If you are serious about SGML, this book is a must. It is a very hard to read document. Also for a book that wants to show off the power of SGML the typesetting is awful. The indexes are almost useless because there is no distinction between a simple reference and a full description (to see a much better computer generated index look at the index to The TeX Book, ISBN 0-201-13447-0 (hard) and ISBN 0-201-13448-9 (soft)). 2.8. Q: What is a DTD? A: A Document Type Definition (DTD) is an electronic document that defines a tagging structure. A DTD specifies where each tag is allowed. For example, a novel is made up of a set of chapters. Each chapter is made up of one or more sections. Each section is made up of one or more paragraphs. A DTD contains statements that define this relationship. DTD is the name for a tag grammar. 2.9. Q: What is a parsing? A: Webster's defines parsing as: to break (a sentence) down into parts, explaining the grammatical form, function, and interrelation of each part. This is not exactly what we mean by parsing in SGML. Parsing in SGML is done via a parser. A parser is a computer program that breaks down an electronic document into its parts and compares the form of the document based on the SGML tags to the form described in the DTD. Parsing is a check of conformance of a text to the grammar described in the DTD. Parsing is what separates SGML and other word processing formats. For example, in the case of a novel, this would mean that paragraphs only occur inside of sections, and sections only occur inside chapter. A word processor does not enforce those requirements. 2.10. Q: What is legacy data? The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 4  A: Legacy data is a term used by some to refer to data that has not been converted to SGML. The choice of terms is rather unfortunate. It gives the impression that nothing good could have been done prior to SGML. There are two issues options in converting legacy data. Change the existing data to match the DTD, or change the DTD to allow the structures in the existing data. The question is simple: what should define the DTD: the idealized model for new data, or the real-world existing data. As anyone who has done any work in physics realizes, working with real-world data can be a very difficult task. SGML enforces the structure defined by the DTD. But it is relatively easy to create a DTD that is totally unsuitable for a set of data. It is also possible to create a DTD that is so loose that no structure at all is enforced. Converting existing data generally requires a lot of compromise. If you have more than a couple of meg of unstructured data and want to convert it to SGML you will end up making massive changes to both the data and the DTD; unless you are very, very lucky. 3. SGML Language Features The syntax used to define a document tag definition. This section is used to provide a quick overview of of SGML and is not a complete description. Also the following is not exactly correct. There are predefined names for all the parts of each SGML statement. Although needed, the names build a wall to understanding for the novice. One aim of this FAQ is to make SGML easy to understand. So the following discussion will not use the proper names. This section has a few endnotes. They will be represented by parens around a roman numeral. This section was very hard to write. Is anyone willing to take this section over? It is hard to explain in simple terms the intricacies of SGML declarations. 3.1. Q: Elements A: Element are the basic building blocks of an SGML document. Each element defines at least one tag. One of the most common tags is one to define a paragraph. Below is a simple paragraph definition: \ There are 5 pieces to the tag. The first piece is "\. The end tags looks like this: \. The third piece controls when the start and end tags are required. There are four values this piece can have. Below is a table showing what the values are and what they mean: - - Both tags required. - O Start tag required. End tag optional. O - Start tag optional. End tag required. O O Both tags are optional. The "O" can be either upper or lowercase. The next piece defines the content of the tag. In the case of the paragraph tag only PCDATA is allowed. PCDATA means parsable character data. The meaning is somewhat complex. But in general this is used to specify that a paragraph can have text (and a few other things) inside it. But no other tag can occur inside a paragraph. The content of a tag is actually a regular expression. below is a table showing the regular expression operators supported in SGML: Letter Meaning Notes ? Zero or one occurrence * Zero or more occurrences + One or more occurrences _ or & and both in any order , and both in specified order The definition of section can be defined as: \ The final piece of a element declaration is the end or the ">". Now that all the parts of the element declaration have been defined the paragraph tag can be used. Below is a set of paragraphs showing how the tag is used: \Alex felt the melancholy stealing over him again. Nostalgia? For that germ-infested ball of mud? Not possible. He could barely remember it. Snapshots from childhood; a chaotic montage of memories. He had fallen down the cellar steps once in a childhood home he scarcely recalled. Tumbling, arms flailing, head thumping hard against the concrete floor. He hadn't been hurt; not really. He'd been too small to mass up enough kinetic energy. But he recalled the terror vividly. Now he was a lot bigger, and he would fall a lot farther.\ The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 6 3.2. Q: Attributes A: Each tag can have a set of attributes. Attributes allow additional information to be attached to the tag. The paragraph example above works fine for simple paragraphs. But what about lists? Lists are little more that a sequence of special paragraphs. Defining a simple list is relatively easy: \ \ This works fine for simple lists. But there is no way to specify if the list is to be numbered, or bulletted, or whatever. Attributes provide the way to specify the type of list easily. \ There are six parts to the attribute list. The first part is the "\" ends the attribute list. Attributes are specified as part of the tag. \ would define a bullet list because the type of the list is not specified and the default is bullet. \ would specify a numbered list. \ would specify a dashed list. There are a wide variety in the types of attributes. The example above is only to give an idea of some of the uses of attributes. A full description would be longer than the entire FAQ. 3.3. Q: Entities A: Entities are one of the most complex topics in SGML. This is only a very brief overview of what they are. There are two general catagories of entities: external and parameter. External entities refer to something outside the current document. Parameter entities are macros used inside of a dtd. SGML uses parameter entities to define macro replacements in a dtd. For example in the list example above, the list of types is far from complete. The list of types can get quite long. Also the list may be different from document to document. A parameter entity would make it easier to change the list of types. Below is the example of the same list using a parameter entity. \ The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 7  \ Parameter entities are similar to tags in that they have a start character and an end character. "%" is used as the start character. ";" is used as the end character. In the attribute list for the list tag the list of possible types is a macro. In the entity declaration notice the space between the "%" and "listtypes". This space is mandatory for parameter entities. Entity definitions are somewhat unusual. It is not an error to define an entity several different ways. But only the first definition is used. This is counter to most macro processing computer languages. It is important to remember that the first definition is what counts. External entities are more complex that the simple macro replacements of parameter entities. The idea is similar. What external entities do is allow a document to refer to an external file or definition. \ The Un-Official, Non-Sanctioned Frequently Asked Questions List Page 8 ---- Jeffrey M\\kern-.05em\\raise.5ex\\hbox{\\b c}\\kern-.05emArthur a.k.a. Jeffrey McArthur email: j_mcarthur@bix.com work: (301) 306-5188 home: (410) 290-6935 The opinions express are mine. They do not reflect the opinions of my employer. My access to the Internet is not paid for by my employer. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 15 Jan 1995 19:57:57 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3fbuo5$rjh@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> Subject: Re: Help with possible Thesis [Lori Snyder Bolen] | I am a student attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville, UAH. : | ... There was a possible alternative. If I could implement a feature | not found in any available SGML editor, then this would be a valid | thesis. This is where I need your help. This sounds like fun. I haven't written an SGML editor (if I had I probably wouldn't be giving away my ideas for my next generation product) but I have used more than one (possibly a disadvantage in trying to come up with innovative ideas). Here are a few stabs at it: 1. The most common wished for feature that I hear again and again is _no cost_. I'm sure you can find a Professor to sign off on your thesis if you can find one that happens to need an SGML editor for some project. It much easier to have a grad student put 1000 hours of work into something than to get 500 bucks out of the department for something nobody's ever heard of. [That was intended to be humorous, of course. The following suggestions are _serious_, or at least more helpful to Lori.] [Actually, there is one free SGML editor - emacs. I haven't tried a recent incarnation of sgml-mode so I don't know if it really qualifies as an SGML editor. Opinion, anyone? I do think that emacs could be a good basis for my next suggestion.] 2. To be honest, I seldom use an SGML editor. Here is why: I find it distracting to interrupt the flow of entering text with menus and dialogs for selecting an element and filling in attributes. For me it is also slower. I don't think I'm unusual in being able to write fairly correct SGML for a DTD I know well, at least to the extent that it is a much quicker process to write it in a fast text editor and to run my document through sgmls. It may then be useful refine it in an SGML editor. My suggestion is for a more ergonomically sound SGML editor. I would not force the user to constantly go to an element menu but do this like Chinese language editors: put the element, attribute, or attribute value choices in a footer bar and let the user accelerate selection either by entering a numeric value for the selection or by completing enough text to make the selection unambiguous. Another technique for acceleration is to try to anticipate what the user _wants_ to enter. I could think of a number of ways to do this; for example, let the user write rules which would assign weights to possible selections or do a statistical analysis on a set of existing documents. 3. I feel there is a lot more potential for synthesis between SGML and the WYSIWYG approach. At the risk of blowing my own horn, again, the paper Rebecca Benfield and I distributed at SGML '94 on Word 6 and SGML presented at the SGML '94 poster session contained some suggestions I haven't seen elsewhere. Since that portion was text (as opposed to poster artwork) I quote us below: ... The third argument is that improvements to the structured information capture abilities of WYSIWYG editors will make them viable tools for authoring into information architectures. It is to this third point that we'd like to throw out a few ideas on some things that Microsoft could do with Word and also some things we could do with SGML to make it more WYSIWYG-friendly. + Nesting, style wizards. Allow styles to be defined as nested and preserve context information in conversion. Optionally validate nesting. Style wizards could provide context- sensitive editing assistance. We envision a Word implementation of these features as a kind of 'lite SGML': more lenient than SGML editors but providing structure-derived assistance to authors where it is particularly useful. + Style Annotation. Allow styles to be 'annotated' to provide the equivalent of attributes in SGML. Combined with Word fields for generating or prompting for data could be a means of capturing attribute information which is at least equal to anything found in SGML editors today. + Hypertext and multimedia features accessible. Word has many of the features of sophisticated hypertext, hypermedia viewers like media and application object-embedding, links, bookmarks, index generation, cross-referencing, dialogs, notes, TOC generation, forms, and dynamic fields. SGML is particularly important to applications employing these kinds of features because it gives an independent way of expressing the relationships within textual data. There has not been, however, any consensus on how to author data employing such features, and we are mostly constrained to working directly with tags which translate into the appropriate concept. Word, on the other hand, has good facilities for hypertext and multimedia authoring, but it is difficult (not impossible) to extract this information for conversion to SGML. The ability to directly map between these features in Word and SGML could make Word the most accessible hypertext, hypermedia authoring tool available today. + Authoring for document-independent repositories. In many cases it may be an unnecessary complication to force an entire document into the structure of a single DTD. Different parts of a document may belong to different parts of the information architecture. Some sections may be unstructured. Here it may be SGML which is more at fault since it demands that the document conforms to a complete description of it and deals poorly with multiple and/or concurrent data descriptions (poorly because it does make an effort through SUBDOC and CONCUR options). From the authoring end, this kind of application could be addressed by allowing the mapping of document elements to individual destinations in the information repositories, i.e., specifying the DTD and perhaps an actual location by some criteria within the repository. We may also wish the authoring tools to generate the DTD from a document constructed out of styles with DTD fragment mappings. This is a means both to prototype document structures and to transmit models of documents to other applications so that they can process them. + Inheritance. Word styles support inheritance, that is, properties of a style are inherited from the style it is based-on unless overridden by that style. Although SGML currently lacks any definitional support for this behavior, it is being used more and more often in SGML markup schemes. Making this information accessible when mapping the Word document to SGML could be useful in two ways: inheritance information could be imported directly into SGML markup which supports this, and, parentage could be used to actually determine what should be done in the conversion. We are very heartened by the appearance of SGML Author and we hope that it will spur creative thinking and debate on the topic of WYSIWYG editing and SGML. 4. I'd like to expand on a point made above with reference to DTD fragments. If we treat SGML in object-oriented terms, we would benefit by an editor which edits objects (drawn from a library, perhaps implemented in a database) and class definitions. One neat feature of such an editor would be inheritance of the stylesheet properties for display. Such an editor might largely toss out the document paradigm, so you develop different efficient way to navigate among fragments, and to associate them. I would imagine very interesting things being down with the management of links (hypertext/media). An editor on these principles will be essential for implementing HyTime systems and IETMs. 5. Markup is such a pain, obviously anything we can do to automate it will be of great benefit. Here I am thinking of _content_ markup, as opposed to markup which may be derived from analyzing formatting information in legacy documents. Since automated markup is never perfect, such features should be built into an editor to combine man and machine intelligence. An SGML editor would also be able to ensure that inserted markup conformed to the DTD of the target document. This is, by the way, closer to reality than most people realize. I have seen linguistic parsers which do a pretty good job of marking parts of speech. A layer over this could implement domain rules for inserting application specific markup. Oracle ConText does a pretty good job of identifying themes and can mark key words, sentences, and phrases. 6. To expand on another point which I made about WYSIWYG - it is perhaps a limitation of SGML editors that they require a DTD to exist before you can edit a structured document. It may be more natural to construct a DTD by example, perhaps using a component library like that described in (4) above. This addresses the very common problem with SGML editors that no matter how carefully I construct my DTD user X comes up with a variation which doesn't work within 5 minutes. Our structure-inferring editor would have the ability to automatically create a new DTD which takes user X's innovation into account. | First of all, the computer science professors at UAH do not know SGML. Hmmm. SGML was not a product of Universities or computer science types, and it is a bit uncongenial to them. Perhaps Lori will be among those making it less so. | Second of all, I am not sure I know how to go about implementing an | SGML editor. Where do I start? Are there any papers on this subject? I haven't seen any papers either - people trying to make a buck seldom have time to write papers, and they usually aren't so good at covering over the ugly realities with florid academic prose (there also aren't a lot of venues for real-world papers, and the lead times are so long as to make render such a paper useless). And, as observed, above, there aren't any academic projects in the area of SGML editors. There was an article about designing word processors in Doctor Dobb's Journal about a year or so ago. That author made the observation that there is an absolute dearth of papers and books on this subject despite the fact that the word processor is the most common computer application. There was an article in Computer (IEEE) perhaps two years ago by (I think) Darell Raymond on Lector, which is a viewer. | Third, is there any thesis on any topic in SGML available? What might | be some other possible ideas for a thesis? Stop thinking in terms of _thesis topics_ and start thinking about the hundreds of new applications for text data that are possible now with SGML and a score of related technologies. If you do this you will come up with more than enough problems to be solved by your research efforts. | For those who you that responded to my first post, if this project ever | gets off the ground, I will keep you informed of my progress. However, | I am going to need some help getting started. Your first post is a very good one. You've raised an interesting question. I hope some others will rise to the challenge. Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606-1244 http://www.textscience.com/homets michael@textscience.com Voice: +1 510 444 2962 Fax: +1 510 444 1672 Newsgroups: biz.jobs.offered,misc.jobs.offered,chi.jobs,sw.jobs,comp.text.sgml,il.jobs.misc Date: 15 Jan 1995 23:52:06 UT From: Pat Benjamin \ Organization: The Prescott Group Message-ID: <2999302773.2.p01292@psilink.com> Subject: Group Manager-Systems Integration Responsibilities: Line management of a 12 to 15 person group working with systems integration, document analysis, structured analysis and SGML. Communicate with client, upper management, and technical personnel. Experience Required: - Minimum 3 years project/middle management experience. - Minimum 5 years systems experience including quality assurance and document focus. - Client interface experience. - Knowledge of systems integration, document analysis, and SGML. Personality Traits: - Comfortable in corporate environment. - High initiative. - Self-starter. - Excellent communicator. Location: Midwest Salary: $65,000 PLUS ... depending on experience. Contact: Pat Benjamin +1 609 354 7651 or Fax Resume to +1 609 354 8274 Permanent, full time position, with benefits. All Correspondence held in strictest confidence! Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 02:49:24 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3fcmrkINNcsu@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: \ Subject: Re: CALS Specifications [Robert A Peters] | Anyone know where I can get a document on the CALS specification? | I am interested in the whole thing but specific need is for the | type 1 and type 2 raster formats. A www server would be great! You can find information about CALS standards from the Navy DTD/FOSI Repository. The specific URL for CALS is: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/cals.html. The Air Force also has most of the CALS Standards on-line through "anonymous ftp" at wpaftb1.wpafb.af.mil in the directory standards. Hope this helps. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 03:31:31 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3fcpajINNdtn@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Norm Smith] | Paul Prescod wrote a long discourse and rant (both interesting) on what | HTML browsers should do to encouraging HTML providers to produce "good" | HTML documents. He also discussed the new tags recoginzed by Netscape. | | As someone who set up a large Web Server which houses several home | pages I believe that most people who wanted to parse documents gave up | in frustration after trying to select a DTD. And I don't see things | getting any better!!! I contend that there is no one HTML DTD; there | are several similar ones that are mostly compatible at the core. Your frustration happens also in the SGML world as a whole. Because DTD's are ASCII data they can be tweaked and modified along the road to applications. If comments are not added to the DTD detailing changes to the DTD the person or application receiving the DTD does not have any idea it is not the original. This is what happened to HTML. Trying to find the definitive HTML.DTD a year ago was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You could find many versions of the DTD and not one was same. | It would make my job easier if browsers would support fully one of the | HTML DTDS rather than part of 2.0 plus part of 3.0 plus a few random | tags thrown in for good measure. The reality is that this will | probably never happen. | | TO ALL HTML BROWSER WRITERS: INCLUDING A DTD THAT REFLECTS WHAT YOUR | BROWSER ACTUALLY SUPPORTS IN YOUR DISTRIBUTION WOULD HELP SGMLIZATION | OF HTML DOCUMENTS A GREAT DEAL!! This is a tough problem without a solution at the moment. Only when HTML 3.0 becomes an approved DTD and all browsers adhere to the HTML 3.0 tags, would I author information for world-wide consumption to the DTD. If you know your audience will have an HTML 3.0 compliant browser, then authoring to the 3.0 would be useful. I understand the argument on both sides of the HTML compliancy argument and quite honestly I am straddling the line (I might get drummed out of c.t.s for saying this). Why should the onus of bad documents fall on the laps of the poor net user trying to find information. It is not his/her fault or responsibility that the document wasn't authored correctly. The responsibility lies with the author of the document. How can you assure that only valid/parsed documents get put on servers? Good question with no answers at the moment. A start is education, education, education. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 05:28:07 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> <3fcpajINNdtn@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Betty Harvey] | I understand the argument on both sides of the HTML compliancy argument | and quite honestly I am straddling the line (I might get drummed out of | c.t.s for saying this). Why should the onus of bad documents fall on | the laps of the poor net user trying to find information. It is not | his/her fault or responsibility that the document wasn't authored | correctly. The responsiblity lies with the author of the document. How | can you assure that only valid/parsed documents get put on servers? | Good question with no answers at the moment. A start is education, | education, education. We can also encourage people to use validating editors and true descriptive markup. Perhaps we should publicize the freely available SGML DTDs that have formatting software that produces HTML. One example is LinuxDoc. Is there a list anywhere? By reducing the number of "HTML producers" to a few vendors of tools, we reduce the number of people we have to "convince" about the benefits of standardization. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 05:38:08 UT From: Joe English \ Organization: Helpless people on subway trains Message-ID: <3fd0o0$jp8@crl2.crl.com> References: \ Subject: Re: Please explain terminal definitions [Brian Carty] | From my reading I see that there are five terminal types, PCDATA, | RCDATA, CDATA, ANY, and EMPTY. But the definitions for some of these | are unclear. RCDATA, CDATA, ANY, and EMPTY (but not PCDATA) may be used as the "declared content" in an \ declaration. The semantics are: EMPTY: the element has no content or end-tag, only a start-tag. It may have attributes though. ANY: the element may contain any other elements declared in the DTD and character data, in any order (unconstrained content). RCDATA, CDATA: the element may contain only character data, no subelements. In addition, these two change the "delimiter recognition mode" used by the parser when an element of this type is active (see below). ANY, CDATA, and RCDATA declared content are _not_ recommended. #PCDATA (which stands for "parsed character data") is slightly different. An element's declared content can be any of the four keywords above or a "model group" which defines what subelements may appear and in what order. #PCDATA can appear as a token *in* a model group; it means that character data may appear at that point. If #PCDATA appears anywhere in a content model, the associated element has "mixed content". | For example, the definition for RCDATA says, "text in which only | substitutions will be recognized". What the heck does that mean? | Substitutions of what? Entity references (\&foo;) and character references (\"). RCDATA stands for "replaceable character data". In replaceable character data, references are recognized and expanded, but the parser does _not_ recognize start-tags or markup declarations (comments, marked sections, etc.) | Also, for CDATA, the definition is "content consisting of text only. | No markup or substitutions will be recognized within it." Again, | substitutions of what? (I wonder where these definitions came from... I assume that by "substitutions" it means "references" -- entity and character references.) Some examples: \ \ \ \ \ (Note that the declared content for PCDATAEL is a model group, not a keyword.) CDATAEL, RCDATAEL, and PCDATAEL can only contain character data [*]. The only difference between the three is the delimiter recognition mode that the parser uses when the element is active: \ \ This: \&foo; is an entity reference. This: \ is a start-tag (but since FOOs aren't allowed here it's an error. Oops.) \ \ \ This: \&foo; is an entity reference. This: \ looks like a start-tag but it isn't. \ \ \ This: \&foo; looks like an entity reference, but it isn't. This: \ looks like a start-tag but it isn't. \ Elements with CDATA and RCDATA declared content are terminated by the "end-tag-open delimiter-in-context", " This: \ looks like a start-tag but it isn't. This: \ is, in fact, an end-tag, but since the current element was a CDATAEL, not a FOO, it's an error. Oops. | And, couldn't a paragraph be considered text only, making it CDATA | instead of PCDATA? It could be, but that's usually not the best approach. Given: \ \ both P1 and P2 can only contain character data [*], but P2 elements *automatically change the parsing mode*. This can lead to problems. The parser will ensure that P1s only contain text by the usual content model validation. P2s can only contain text because the parser simply ignores anything that looks like markup, treating it as data instead. If you *want* to suppress delimiter recognition, it's better to use a an explicit marked section in the document: \\s and \&reference;s aren't recognized, and neither are \s. This is preferable to using an element with CDATA declared content like \, since the parser mode switch is explicitly specified in the document. \]]>\ [*] There is one other difference: An element with (#PCDATA) declared content can contain elements specified as "inclusion exceptions". Elements with CDATA and RCDATA declared content cannot, because the parser won't recognize the included element's start-tag. * * * To further confuse you, the CDATA keyword can also used as an attribute's declared value, but there it has a slightly different meaning: \ Attribute values are *always* parsed as *replaceable* character data: \ RCDATA and PCDATA are not legal attribute declared values. Hope this helps, --Joe English jenglish@crl.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 16 Jan 1995 06:23:38 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19950115T011429Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Erik Naggum] | I think I have actually argued that the fundamental problem with the | _personal_ computer market What about Unix and C, the Virii? Did Bill Gates invent those too? | is that of marketing provable technical inferiority as superior, | selling known deficient products, and creating an atmosphere of | unethical conduct and incessant lies from vendors to the consumers. We agree that the "selling of known deficient products" can only occur in an environment of ignorance on the part of the customers. My solution is to educate. Yours is to insult the customers. That is where we differ. | standards of quality in software are harder to specify than in other | industries, but it is a minimum requirement that outright lies are | penalized, and that one can trust the descriptions of the software. it | is of no consequence that you and others muddy the water by asking | irrelevant questions. pointing out deficiencies, i.e., inferiority, is | what this is all about. superiority is in this case merely absence of | functional flaws. I take it that you think it is perfectly legitimate | to sell broken products because they can be used for something other | than their stated purpose. I certainly do not support or condone the selling of "broken" software. But I also do not presume to be the industry-wide dictator of that which is broken. Many consider emacs broken because of its keystrokes. Others consider Word broken because it does not support generalized markup. Brokenness is not a binary condition that smart people will always agree on. Like anything else it is a messy qualititative judgement that must be made individually. Obviously where software does not meet its specifications, it is broken. | the problem with software is that poor workmanship and quality is not | readily visible. in all other industries, standard, published test | procedures is the rule. with software, the real tester is the | customer. I continue to be amazed that the customers accept this. | they scream bloody murder if their car breaks down for no apparent | reason on the highway, Does Ralph Nader drive a car yet? How about those Chrysler transmissions? Doesn't the fact that every owner of a particular Chrysler van has to get its transmission fixed a few yars into its lifespan count as a "knwon" problem? And how long did it take the auto industry (pushing 100) to arrive at a set of standard parts so that their customer's could pick and choose? Shoddy products are everywhere, Eric. Our industry is no better nor worse than others. You just _know_ it better. To someone not in the know, we are a bunch of white knights improving computers year after year. | but when their spreadsheets and reports are lost in system crashes that | are at least as obviously caused by poor quality products, they have | been lulled into believing it's their own fault, that they have to call | the customer service hotline and willingly pay for it, or they just | resign to having to do it over again. why do people accept this? | hint: because they have been told that this is the only way it can be | done, by the lying, cheating, defrauding computer salesmen. Then we agree: the problem is with the mislead consumer. I still do not understand how attacking the consumer helps solve anything. Please elucidate. | read his license agreements and limited warranty when you have time. | ask yourself: is this an honest man protecting himself from an | increasingly litigious society, or is it a cheat and a fraud trying to | get away with products so damn inferior that he doesn't even dare to | stand by his own claims to what it can do? My guess is that Bill Gates is a man who believes his products to be better than the competitors (and they often are, judged on usability) and believes usability to be both more profitable and more important than technical correctness. Or maybe he's just a greedy, napoleanic bastard. The truth is, I don't care either way. It doesn't matter. You can't stop him by calling him names (Bill the Goat), or calling his customers names (the stupid PC world), or calling his products names (Windoze). We can stop him by offering reasonable, usable, technically correct alternatives. | what I want is honesty in the industry and you continue to evade the | issue by essentially claiming that you can't know that anything really | exists in the first place, so it's all a business of pretending hard | enough that beliefs come true. I am not evading anything! Many in the industry are corrupt! Gates manufactures standards for his own benefit. We would be better off if Microsoft did not exist. People should not sell products they cannot stand behind. I agree that these are all problems. I disagree with your solutions to the problems. Calling customers (or operating systems, or platforms, or ...) names, solves nothing. | I'm beginning to repeat myself, so I'll just note that you think it's | perfectly legitimate to sell crap as long as the customer doesn't know | it's crap until it's too late. Of course, Eric. In the end, that's all that is important, isn't it. Figuring out who is on the good guy's side and the bad guy's side. PC users (perhaps all users) are on the bad guy's side. You (and I assume you count _somone_ else on your side) and your clan are on the good guy's side. And every so often you can have a shoot-em-out in comp.text.sgml or comp.text.html. But the real question of how to solve these problems, the idea of _discussing_ solutions to these problems, is lower on your list...far, far below flaming Bill Gates. I, for one, am following the development of DSSSL Lite and am hoping it will be a better solution than is HTML. When it is ready and I am confident in my understanding and support of it it, I will evangelize it to the best of my ability to the entire Web community. It is, after all _my_ community and _my_ responsibility to help it advance. And if Bill Gates destroys it with proprietary standards, it will be to a large extent _my_ problem, and to a smaller extent _my_ fault for letting it happen. And in the meantime, I am writing to vendors. I am explaining to providers why they should not use Netscape extensions. I am promoting SGML to anyone who will listen. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 07:06:51 UT From: "Erik E. Graversen" \ Organization: who - me Message-ID: \ References: \ Subject: Re: CALS Specifications [Robert A Peters] | Anyone know where I can get a document on the CALS specification? I am | interested in the whole thing but specific need is for the type 1 and | type 2 raster formats. A www server would be great! You will want to take a look at : MIL-SPEC-28002 - Raster Graphics' and MIL-STD-1840 - Automated Interchange of Technical Information Both will be available on the CALS BBS WWW server: try \ | Thanks in advance | Rob | rpeters@cdc.com Good luck, happy reading... Erik E. Graversen \\\\|||// ( 0 0 ) _________________________________o00_(~)_00o_____________________ Erik E. Graversen crieeg@halcyon.com (h) eeg@criinc.com (w) Kirkland WA - USA +1 206 820 5448 (h) +1 206 865 4735 (w) URL: http://www.halcyon.com/crieeg/ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 07:12:30 UT From: Rick Jelliffe \ Message-ID: \ References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude Bullard] | Outside the AI community, Lisp and its dialects for all of the years | they have existed, have not been popular. That will raise the eyebrows of people using Interleaf, Emacs and AutoCad. I believe OmniMark was originally developed in LISP too: it certainly is very LISPy in feel still. In any case, while use of LISP as LISP is not exploding, use of LISP constructs and ideas inside other languages is ubiquitous: use of lists, of functions as first class objects (i.e., ones you can name, assign and reference), iterating over a data structure without an index, transparent memory management and garbage collection, dynamic tagged data, etc. It seems that one thing that makes people pick LISP as LISP rather than LISP in C++ (e.g.) is when there needs to be a command language: this is the case with DSSSL. -ricko -- Rick Jelliffe email: ricko@allette.com.au Allette Systems phone: +61 2 262 4777 Sydney, Australia fax: +61 2 262 4774 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 09:08:54 UT From: Jacques Teller \ Organization: LEMA-ULg Message-ID: <19950117.050850.010310.NETNEWS@VM1.ULG.AC.BE> Subject: Lisp Parser? Is there a free Lisp parser or anybody working at this? Jacques Teller # University of Liege, Belgique # teller@lema.ulg.ac.be Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 15:20:11 UT From: R A Milowski \ Organization: University of Minnesota Message-ID: \ References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> Subject: Re: Help with possible Thesis [Lori Snyder] | Third, is there any thesis on any topic in SGML available? What might | be some other possible ideas for a thesis? Well, if you really want to do something that has *never* been done before... ...implement a DSSSL processor! Seriously, I think this would be an excellent project. You could even follow the DSSSL Lite spec. if the whole DSSSL specification is too much. -- R. Alexander Milowski, SGML Operations Manager milor001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Microcom Inc. +1 612 825 4132 "An SGML Solutions Company" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 18:54:04 UT From: Karl Eichwalder \ Organization: The Moon On Earth - Goettingen, FRG Message-ID: <1995Jan16.185404.13275@pertron.central.de> References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> <3fbuo5$rjh@aimnet.aimnet.com> Subject: Re: Help with possible Thesis [Michael Leventhal] | I haven't written an SGML editor (if I had I | probably wouldn't be giving away my ideas for my next generation | product) I am wondering why GNU software provides TODO files ... | [Actually, there is one free SGML editor - emacs. I haven't | tried a recent incarnation of sgml-mode so I don't know if | it really qualifies as an SGML editor. Opinion, anyone? Works great -- there were some problems to get it start, but now I am nearly happy with it. Don't use plain sgml-mode, look for: Lennart Staflin's PSGML: Emacs Major Mode for editing SGML files. %f ftp.lysator.liu.se:/pub/sgml %t psgml-1a5.tar.gz | 2) To be honest, I seldom use an SGML editor. Here is why: I | find it distracting to interrupt the flow of entering text with | menus and dialogs for selecting an element and filling in attributes. As usual, Emacs and eval local mode provide funny short cuts: You mark some text with the keyboard and tag this region: C-SPACE ;; set-mark M-x f ;; forward-word C-c C-r ;; sgml-tag-region Attributes you fill in with C-c C-a ... and so on. And the goal of it: psgml has a "tiny" built-in parser, which controls your input :-) | [...] or by completing enough text to make the selection unambiguous. Emacs (and psgml) already provides this :-) And for inheritance and so have a look at TEI2.DTD (Text Encoding Initiative). pub/TEI at Eric's archive. Since there are font-lock.el and friends, there is really no need for WYSIWYG for me (Please consider that I see a *screen*, 16" at home :-( and 20" at the university :-) and *not* the paper version of my document. I don't like to be fooled by something which pretends to be WYSIWYG. -- | keichwa@gwdg.de | ____ _ o | karl@pertron.central.de | ___ _-\\_<, Karl Eichwalder | 2:2437/209 | (*)/'(*) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 20:02:29 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: ElectriCiti Message-ID: <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | o Are there any implementations? | | Not that I am aware of personally although I have heard rumors that | James Clark is working on something. One must ask and even then, he is | under no obligation to reveal his plans. Looking at the substantial | amount of traffic on DSSSL-Lite, I assume that systems supporting this | will appear shortly. My question about these is, will a DSSSL-Lite | system only support HTML, or will they support any SGML app that can | use DSSSL-Lite specifications? In other words, is DSSSL-Lite only a | spec for a particular application, HTML? | | All in all, DSSSL represents substantive work. Many thanks to its | creators. This is a fine example of what committees and government organizations can do to a standard. Instead of mandating one existing implementation (FOSIs), propose two incompatible standards, one of which doesn't exist yet, and let the community use the non-availability of one to as a reason not to implement or comply with the other. In my opinion, DSSSL has done more to impede the progress of SGML than any other single factor. We should all take a lesson from the way DARPA conducted their business of implementing the internet so successfully: If an RFC did not provide a working implementation of the standard within 9 months, the RFC track was DROPPED. -- FOSIs work. DSSSL isn't Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 20:34:08 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501162034.AA35885@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <19950114T234146Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Bob Agnew] | Isn't this like asking for some powder from the horn of a Unicorn? No. I don't think we need the magic of mythical beasts. We need each other. That is simple, naive, and hopelessly optimistic, but in the words of the man of the hour in America, Dr Martin Luther King, a "dream" to which much is owed. The largest debt is the freedom with which we think, speak, and act. Call me unsophisticated, but among *us hillbillies*, it's just common sense. [James Clark] | A collection of examples of transformations using DSSSL is available... Thank you very much. [Erik Naggum] | you will find a PostScript version of the committee copy of the DIS... Thank you very much. | I salute Jim for his efforts in making this material available from an | official source. would that SGML and HyTime were similarly available. Yes, it would be constructive. My thanks go to Jim Mason, as well. Bob, Q.E.D. [Erik Naggum] | (1) the overlap between HyTime and DSSSL is subject to some scrutiny in | the committee in order to better understand them, and hopefully to | unify them. This is good news. Please, post the results as they become available. | (2) the DSSSL expression language is Scheme for the same reason that | HyTime is SGML, and Scheme is a true language.... Yes. Thank you very much for the material you forwarded me on Lisp and Scheme. It will be applied to the issues at hand as promised. Given facts, I shall refrain from further myth-making on this subject. | they can't be compared on technical grounds -- there are differing | design philosophies involved. Because I am an application designer, not a standards maker, I have no other grounds for comparison, just bitter experience. This brings me to the point I have been stressing in several posts which also bears on the issues of *marketing*. If a commercial application damages its environment, and one has not waived ones rights, one can sue. Not a neat solution, but it generally works. It is an important concept of rule of law: *culpability*. However, if public domain freeware *goes south*, all one has is a readme.txt file that absolves the originator of any *responsibility*, the fraternal twin of culpability. As one who has had to go to the Big_One's office and inform him/her/ whatever that the applications are *frozen* and will not be upgraded because one of the myriad vendors has decided to take *control*, there is cold comfort in that. But, never attribute to maliciousness that which may be stupidity. Vendors may be merely *stupid* in some cases. So, I read the contract and use the marketing brochures to light fires with the junk mail. When we are doing standards-based development, who is responsible if the originators of the standards, whether through ambition, technical bias, incompetence, etc., recommend expensive, non-implementable or overlapping ideas in their work? ISO or ANSI? Can I sue them? I don't know. Can culpability be shown? I don't know. Whether or not they are grounds for litigation, at least ISO and ANSI have defined review and approval processes. One of these processes is to examine existing standards to ensure that no overlaps exist, or that sufficient technical grounds exist to justify overlapping effort. This should be done prior to writing new ones. If sufficient grounds are found, they should be published. Else, the standard as a legal document is of little benefit other than to be *yet another free design*. If I implement based on these, and sign a contract attesting that I have, then I am culpable and responsible. Given my own *stupidities*, I ask questions, pose hypotheses... and pray. When my pet *stupid* manifests, I post and someone always *teaches* me. One might say, "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove it," but, IMO, that is a recipe for preserving fools from teachers. Market pressures are inadequate. As a control, they are a wheel made of wax attached to a steering column made of rubber: a little unresponsive for making precision turns. As a force in the environment, market pressures are real and cannot be ignored just as one should not ignore traffic flowing at seventy (MPH/Km/whatever) when the signs say "55". One can obey the rules and still be the fool who caused the accident. Market pressures aside, some of us are providing services to customers based on existing requirements, standards, and specifications. There is no choice but to comply because they carry legal force. While we resist foolishness, explain the case for waivers, and plead in hideous detail and significant risk for the *high road*, we are at the mercy of the writers of the *laws* to provide good ones regardless of pressure, ambitions, incompetence, and so on. This situation is pervasive in a free market society, and Erik, as you champion the membership of Norway in the ECC, is there a choice other than becoming Eggles the Mean and Thorfin the SkullSplitter raiding the English monasteries and throwing the monks into the sea? _We_Can_Do_that_, but we will end up as they did: crotchety old Vikings pleading favors from the milkmaids when we no longer have the strength to wield axes. |-) What is law? That which is just. Where is justice? It is in the hearts of the humans else it is not found in the world. SFW? So we have each other... and the parser... which has to be tested by standard tests. "I'm stuck in the middle with you". - Stealer's Wheel - Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 20:55:16 UT From: Jann VanOver \ Organization: Boeing Computer Services Message-ID: \ Subject: What IS Canon? I'm having a discussion with a co-worker about what is "canonized" SGML. Is there a list somewhere of the qualities that make an instance "canonized"? Can someone please help me with this definition? A spec reference? A book section? Thanks! Jann -- VanOver@atc.boeing.com "Why don't y'all go home?" Bette Davis in The Little Foxes Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 22:16:37 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: ElectriCiti Message-ID: <3fer86$1sv@arc.electriciti.com> References: \ Subject: Re: Please explain terminal definitions [Brian Carty] | From my reading I see that there are five terminal types, PCDATA, | RCDATA, CDATA, ANY, and EMPTY. But the definitions for some of these | are unclear. | | For example, the definition for RCDATA says, "text in which only | substitutions will be recognized". What the heck does that mean? | Substitutions of what? An example would surely help. | | Also, for CDATA, the definition is "content consisting of text only. | No markup or substitutions will be recognized within it." Again, | substitutions of what? And, couldn't a paragraph be considered text | only, making it CDATA instead of PCDATA? Substitution refers to entity expansion. This is like a #INCLUDE in a C program. In CDATA (Character Data), entities are not expanded and the only markup recognized is the end tag opening dellimiter "" > \ \ \ \ \ ]> \ \Example of CDATA \&markup \ \Example of RCDATA \&markup \ \Example of PCDATA \&markup \ \ (DATATYPE (TEXT1 -Example of CDATA \&markup )TEXT1 (TEXT2 -Example of RCDATA This is entity 2 \ )TEXT2 (TEXT3 -Example of PCDATA This is entity 2 sgmls: SGMLS error at datatype.sgm, line 13 at "p": Undefined A start-tag GI ignored; not used in DTD )TEXT3 )DATATYPE Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 22:30:41 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: ElectriCiti Message-ID: <3fes2h$1sv@arc.electriciti.com> References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> Subject: Re: Help with possible Thesis [Lori Snyder] | I even thought about extending this project into thesis. However, when | I presented the idea for the thesis, the instructor said that a thesis | should be something that has never been done before. That sort of | kills the SGML editor as a thesis idea. There was a possible | alternative. Well, you could implement an SGML editor with a DSSSL screen and print formatter. ;-) Just kidding! Both are way beyond the scope of a thesis topic. It is hard to conceive of a suitable project which has not been done. One thought was to indentify a subset of SGML parseable by LALR1 and implementing such a parser, but TEI has already done that (I think). Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 16 Jan 1995 22:48:49 UT From: Dan Connolly \ Organization: HaL Software Systems, Inc. Message-ID: \ References: <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> <3fcpajINNdtn@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Subject: Browser vendors _should_ give a DTD [was: comp.lang.html?] [Norm Smith] | TO ALL HTML BROWSER WRITERS: INCLUDING A DTD THAT REFLECTS WHAT YOUR | BROWSER ACTUALLY SUPPORTS IN YOUR DISTRIBUTION WOULD HELP SGMLIZATION | OF HTML DOCUMENTS A GREAT DEAL!! [Betty Harvey] | This is a tough problem without a solution at the moment. Only when | HTML 3.0 becomes an approved DTD and all browsers adhere to the HTML | 3.0 tags, would I author information for world-wide consumption to the | DTD. If you know your audience will have an HTML 3.0 compliant | browser, then authoring to the 3.0 would be useful. While I agree with most of the sentiments in this article, I can't let this one go uncontested. Mr. Smith suggested that HTML browser writers include, as a form of documentation, a DTD that reflects what the browser actually implements. Yeah verily! I don't see how you can say that this is "a tough problem without a solution at the problem." All they have to do is write up a DTD, release it, and support it! I had a client of mine call me on the phone just this morning. The conversation went like: Mr. P: Dan, I stuck some netscape tags in my document, and your validation service flagged it as an error. Me: Sure enough. Mr. P: So how can I validate documents with Netscape extensions? Me: You can't. Netscape hasn't released a DTD for its extensions. Mr. P: So I have to tell my clients that they can have SGML conformance, or they can use Netscape features, but not both, right? Me: Yup. That is, unless and until NetScape releases a DTD. That the Netscape extensions are not "standard" is one problem (for some folks. It's not a problem at all for lots of other folks!) That they are not precisely documented is quite another. I called on NCSA to draft a DTD for the table extensions that they support in their 2.5 release of Mosaic. No luck. The fact is: there _do_ exist general SGML composition tools. If a body bought an ArborText or SoftQuad SGML editor, they could plug in any DTD -- even a proprietary NetScape DTD -- and use it to compose conforming documents. Without a released, supported DTD, they can't do this. Dan -- Daniel W. Connolly "We believe in the interconnectedness of all things" Software Engineer, Hal Software Systems, OLIAS project +1 512 834 9962 x5010 \ http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 17 Jan 1995 01:08:59 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950117T010859Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ <19950115T011429Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | We agree that the "selling of known deficient products" can only occur in | an environment of ignorance on the part of the customers. My solution is | to educate. Yours is to insult the customers. That is where we differ. you continue to try to make it so that I "insult" the customers. letting people know they have been defrauded can be interpreted two ways: either they're stupid (your view), or they have been mistreated and have had their confidence abused (my view). of course, you will disagree that they have been defrauded, even though you seem to agree that the products are deficient and the users ignorant (defraudable). you appear to think that Microsoft's products are actually _good_ just because they're there and appear to be useful (until they crash and burn), and that only the first interpretation is possible. | I certainly do not support or condone the selling of "broken" software. | But I also do not presume to be the industry-wide dictator of that | which is broken. don't evade the issue! I have been eminently clear that I want products _not_ to fail randomly (which is perhaps the only software patent I would grant Microsoft). I want products to behave well no matter what happens in their environment. with all other products, there are well-defined measure for what is considered "broken". | Obviously where software does not meet its specifications, it is | broken. so let's start with the obvious, and work our way towards the less obvious. | And how long did it take the auto industry (pushing 100) to arrive at a | set of standard parts so that their customer's could pick and choose? the computer industry has "matured" at about 10 times the speed of any other industry we know. it is already well beyond the point where manufacturers should have been held responsible for their shoddy products. | Shoddy products are everywhere, Eric. Our industry is no better nor | worse than others. You just _know_ it better. To someone not in the | know, we are a bunch of white knights improving computers year after | year. true, I know it better. but white knights? my ass! I don't know which of us is more insulting to users, I who tell them they have been defrauded, and by implication may have been naive and/or stupid, or you who take this incredibly arrogant view that they don't even know enough to know that you must be solving problems you weren't even smart enough to know you were creating last time you "solved" a problem. look, I do software consulting (fire-fighting) for a living, and I get to listen to a _lot_ of creative stories from Windoze programmers who try to tell me why things should have worked. I walk through their code (on paper), and mainly ask questions about assumptions in the code. call it a language lawyer or code auditor. a dozen projects like this, and I think I can tell you that your "white knights" should see some "white nights" (Siberia) as reward for their costing their employers and users enormous amounts of money over the years. (and let's not forget managers who don't know diddlysquat about programming who do all they can to make successful project completion impossible.) | Then we agree: the problem is with the mislead consumer. I still do | not understand how attacking the consumer helps solve anything. Please | elucidate. you can't get ignorant customers to boycott or react against something they don't even know is hurting them, and especially not something they have been told, over and over again for a decade and half, is their fault. the root problem with any criminal conduct is not the criminal acts themselves, but that there are buyers of the loot, or "proceeds", from such acts. it is, in my view, a much worse crime to buy or accept stolen goods than it is to steal them, because he who buys stolen goods is creating the market for the thieves. | We can stop him by offering reasonable, usable, technically correct | alternatives. stop him? are you serious? you don't "stop" a multi-billion-dollar momentum with a technically superior product. you need to get it out there, and that means marketing. have you taken a look at how much Bill spent on marketing in 1994? now, tell me: better products are going to attract customer all by themselves, like Truth attracts believers without effort, huh? you're unbelievably naive, Paul. | It is, after all _my_ community and _my_ responsibility to help it | advance. And if Bill Gates destroys it with proprietary standards, it | will be to a large extent _my_ problem, and to a smaller extent _my_ | fault for letting it happen. "for letting it happen"? really? what other kinds of guilt by omission do you buy wholesale? the key to stopping Microsoft is this: do not buy his products, expose problems with them, and point out that there are _already_ far superior solutions available. since starting this tirade, I have received an interesting mail message informing me that a manager and his consultants were fired for buying Microsoft products, because they didn't even _try_ to find alternatives, which had been able to fulfill their requirements when they started the development project, and continued to do so even as they cancelled the project two years and a million dollars later. I think it would be good if this could go public, but I'm probably being too daring just by mentioning this. today's prediction: Microsoft is reduced to half their current size by the end of the century, and will be gone by the year 2005. you read it here first. | And in the meantime, I am writing to vendors. I am explaining to | providers why they should not use Netscape extensions. I am promoting | SGML to anyone who will listen. as if I'm not. geez. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 04:08:43 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950117T040843Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Bob Agnew] | This is a fine example of what committees and government organizations | can do to a standard. Instead of mandating one existing implementation | (FOSIs), propose two incompatible standards, one of which doesn't exist | yet, and let the community use the non-availability of one to as a | reason not to implement or comply with the other. In my opinion, DSSSL | has done more to impede the progress of SGML than any other single | factor. this view is held by a small but vocal minority. they appear to think that either HyTime or FOSI is an acceptable alternative. the onus of proof is as always upon he who asserts the positive. please remember that a couple non-interoperable implementations do not a standard make. thus, FOSI does not exist as a viable alternative, unless we wish to have a committee or government organization mandate one among two competitors. I don't now much about politics, and what I know I generally despise, but I think you're setting yourself up to lose big time if you make a serious proposal out of this one. this is also a good time to remind people what standards really do. they don't tell you that you have to do things certain ways. _if_ you adopt them, and _if_ you plan to claim that you conform to them, and _if_ you don't intend to lie to your customers, _then_ they tell you what to do. if you're happy with FOSI, and if I catch your drift, you are, you will have an argument against those who wish you to drop it and do something else that you don't believe in. fine. but please keep it at that level. knowing what I do about politics, I know that some of you will fight more dirty than presidential races to create a hostile environment between FOSI and DSSSL. this didn't start with the publication of the DIS. there are some companies out there who try to destroy DSSSL because they have products to "protect" (and they aren't even in the FOSI business!). now, if we're talking about "impeding progress", the best way to do it is to kill any newcomer before he can even make his presence known, right? let's all fight to kill eachother for a handful of dollars, right? NOT! I have yet to see anybody make a complete list of all uses to which SGML should or could be put. I have yet to see any list of things people are actually using SGML for, to be honest, but from what I hear from people, there are about twice as many uses as there are users. most of these uses will never see the light of day without a powerful programming language that talks about things meaningful to programmers, in convenient ways. we have seen what C looks like in those terms. SGMLS was a success because it made the internal representation of the parsing process available to the outside world, where such languages lived. seeing the kind of intense experimentation that goes on in SGML development, it is becoming more obvious that static programming languages don't stand a chance at success. we can then create ad-hoc language, like perl-scripts to handle SGMLS, or FOSI, or we can build upon well-known dynamic languages, like Scheme. in any case, a starting point has been made in DSSSL for getting jobs done that were previously so hard to do they were irrelevant, and some new uses that we didn't think of before are possible with this syntactically simple, adaptable and pleasant language. if all you ever want to do is what FOSI can do for you, great. nobody will block your way. if SGML has been out of the question because it required too much effort to get it done, DSSSL (and Scheme) may give you the necessary breaks. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 04:53:09 UT From: Dave Peterson \ Organization: ACM Network Services Message-ID: <3ffifl$6t8@hopper.acm.org> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> <1995Jan12.012053.5071@ast.saic.com> <3f63osINN32p@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Betty Harvey] | Just precaution. Yes you can do math in SGML but before you decide to | do math in SGML you need to know if the composition system will | understand how to compose the SGML math tags. | | Case in point, MIL-M-28001B specifies MATHPACK (ISO/TR 9573) for | tagging mathematic equations. There is no composition system (paper or | electronic) that incorporates the MATHPACK tags. Unfortunately, math | is one of the nuances of SGML that are not handled easily. | | Before marching off blindly in an SGML project some variables should be | known, such as will the composition system handle math tagging, table | tagging. If these variables are unknown, you should hope for the best | and expect the worst. For instance, create graphics from math if you | are not sure what type of composition system will be used. Any composition system that handles arbitrary DTD composition has some form of associated-style mechanism, either via FOSI or translation-to- proprietary-markup or something similar. So the question is not really "can your composition system handle the ISO MATHPACK" directly, but rather (1) can your composition system do the quality of math composition you require, and (2) is that capbility accessible via your FOSI or translator or whatever. I have seen math marked up the ISO mathpack successfully composed using Xyvision software, so there's one example. I suspect it could also be done using Omnimark to go from SGML to TeX or RTF (or...), and then using TeX or MS Word or some other system that can compose math reasonably well. Admittedly, this does not give you WYSIWYG math editing. That's a different problem. A few SGML editors (e.g., ArborText's) provide WSYWYG equation editing, but only support a single DTD for it. It never ceases to amaze me that users refused to accept locked-in DTDs for generala editing (IMHO quite rightly so), but roll over and accept being locked in to a not-widely-supported single DTD for math (and tables) without a whimper. Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 08:31:34 UT From: Steinar Bang \ Organization: Falch Infotek, Oslo, Norway Message-ID: \ References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> \ Subject: DSSSL implementation (Was: Help with possible Thesis) [Lori Snyder] | Third, is there any thesis on any topic in SGML available? What might | be some other possible ideas for a thesis? [R A Milowski] | Well, if you really want to do something that has *never* been done | before... | | ...implement a DSSSL processor! What an excellent idea. | Seriously, I think this would be an excellent project. You could even | follow the DSSSL Lite spec. if the whole DSSSL specification is too | much. Well. DSSSL Lite is pretty much directed towards formatting, and we will (hopefully) see a lot of different DSSSL Lite implementation in connection with existing formatters. A more interesting (I think) project, would be to create the starter framework for a complete DSSSL implementation. Start reading the DSSSL DIS (Draft International standard), look into the discussions surrounding DSSSL Lite [4] The basis for any such framework would be an SGML parser, and a Scheme interpreter. What I would do in a situation like this, is start with integrating James Clark's new SP parser [1] and an embeddable Scheme interpreter like STk [2] or libscheme [3]. Personally, I would prefer libscheme, because of its extremly simple and easy to use API. - Steinar [1] http://www.jclark.com/sp.html [2] ftp://kaolin.unice.fr/pub/STk-2.1.tar.gz [3] ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/imp/ [4] http://www.falch.no/~pepper/DSSSL-Lite/ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 09:47:38 UT From: "W.D. Lindsey" \ Organization: NLnet Message-ID: \ References: <3f4opa$l2u@camelot.bradley.edu> Subject: Re: Character entity inquiry [Alan Williams] | Do character entities exist for the "squared" and "cubed" superscript | numbers? In other words, is there a declared superscript 2 so you | don't have to write E=mc\2 and a subscript so you don't | have to write H\2O? The public entity set "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Numeric and Special Graphic//EN" defines, among others - \ \ \ I found this in Appendix D of "The SGML Handbook", pages 513 - 514. regards, Bill Lindsey lindsey@inter.nl.net -- William D. Lindsey Prinses Irenelaan 13 2341 TP Oegstgeest lindsey@inter.NL.NET the Netherlands Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 10:19:36 UT From: Basile Starynkevitch \ Organization: Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique - France Message-ID: \ References: \ \ Subject: SUMMARY: SGML formatters, non-document SGML use, bibliography In message-id \ and \ (same message, with corrections) I asked about SGML formatters for PostScript printers, DSSSL+SGML software, and usage of SGML for non-documents (data or knowledge bases information exchange) ======================================================================== 1) SGML Formatters ------------------ No publicly available SGML formatter producing PostScript output exist yet. *** sverre.stoltenberg@sum.uio.no and Tom Gordon \ told me about qwertz/FORMAT An SGML to LaTeX and nroff/troff translator produced by the Qwertz Project at the German National Centre for Computer Science. ftp to ftp.gmd.de under the directory /gmd/sgml. *** I (Basile) also found that the Linux Slackware distribution contains a html2latex utility. *** Debby Young (young@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil) mentionned FOSI; FOSI is Format Output Specification Instance. In the United States military standard application of SGML, MIL-M-28001, there is an output spec which defines how to print on paper from an SGML instance. *** No publicly available software for DSSSL+SGML exist yet. I understand or hope that some people are working on such a thing. *** Pertti.Makitalo@hut.fi mentionned GRIF, a commerical text processing package (made by a french compagny) using SGML. *** karl@Pertron.Central.DE (Karl Eichwalder) mentioned psgml (an emacs sgml mode) ftp to ftp.gwdg.de: /pub/sgml/ifi.uio.no/Emacs-LISP/psgml-1a5.tar.gz *** Harry Gaylord \ and "Berend J. Dijk" \ also suggested looking into TEI: In case you have never heard of TEI: the abbreviation stands for the Text Encoding Initiative, a long-term international project that involves the development of standards sets of SGML tags for _all_ types of text (at least all they could think of). It (TEI?) is available at ftp.ifi.uio.no and sgml1.ex.ac.uk *** there are some ISO 12083 standard DTDs for books and articles. ======================================================================== 2) non-document SGML usage -------------------------- About non-document SGML usage (for knowledge or data bases), some people are working on it, but don't want to be cited yet. *** James Clark (jjc@jclark.com) mentionned that ISO 9541-2, uses SGML for font information interchange. *** "Claude L. Bullard" \ mentionned that <\> *** I (Basile) am considering developping a specific SGML DTD for literate programming of a reflexive AI tool (i'm designing). I'm just beginning to think about it. ======================================================================== 3) bibliographical DTDs ----------------------- In message-ID: \ I asked about bibliographical DTDs. *** Harry Gaylord \ suggested examining the TEI dtd. The relevant portions are listBibl, biblFull, bibl, and biblStruct. "Berend J. Dijk" \ also suggested looking into TEI: You really should have a look at the entry on bibliographical references in the TEI P3 Guidelines, part 2, chapter 6, section 10, page 193 through 209. Section 6.10.4 should be of special interest to you: it compares all the fields in the bibtex format to the tags in TEI. *** Wolfgang Rieger (rieger@colin.muc.de) sent me a bibliographical DTD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I hope I summarized correctly. I cited several answers in this summary (I emailed the authors saying my intent to summarize their answer, unless they specifically forbid it). I hope I didn't forgot anyone. Thanks for all replies. -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH ---- Commissariat a l Energie Atomique DRN/DMT/SERMA * C.E. Saclay bat.470 * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France fax: (33) 1- 69.08.23.81; phone: (33) 1- 69.08.40.66 email: basile.starynkevitch@cea.fr; homephone: (33) 1- 46.65.45.53 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 11:56:20 UT From: Basile Starynkevitch \ Organization: Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique - France Message-ID: \ References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> \ \ Subject: Re: DSSSL implementation (Was: Help with possible Thesis) [R A Milowski] | Well, if you really want to do something that has *never* | been done before... | ...implement a DSSSL processor! [Steinar Bang] | What an excellent idea. I fully agree. | A more interesting (I think) project, would be to create the starter | framework for a complete DSSSL implementation. | | Start reading the DSSSL DIS (Draft International standard), look into | the discussions surrounding DSSSL Lite [4] | | The basis for any such framework would be an SGML parser, and a Scheme | interpreter. What I would do in a situation like this, is start with | integrating James Clark's new SP parser [1] and an embeddable Scheme | interpreter like STk [2] or libscheme [3]. Personally, I would prefer | libscheme, because of its extremly simple and easy to use API. I agree with the idea. But I want to point out that libscheme is slow. This is not a critic of it, libscheme was designed to be embeddable, and for small scripting (similar to Tcl's goals). A full DSSSL should in my naive opinion have thousands of line of Scheme. This entails a better interpreter. On a naive benchmark such as a Fibonacci and a factorial scm takes 6 seconds while libscheme takes 68 seconds. I didn't test STk. I would suggest using STk, or even scm (although not an embeddable Scheme interpreter, this interpreter is rather easy to extend). I hope that someday something will come out in these lines. -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH ---- Commissariat a l Energie Atomique DRN/DMT/SERMA * C.E. Saclay bat.470 * 91191 GIF/YVETTE CEDEX * France fax: (33) 1- 69.08.23.81; phone: (33) 1- 69.08.40.66 email: basile.starynkevitch@cea.fr; homephone: (33) 1- 46.65.45.53 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 12:01:04 UT From: Kurt Ziegenbein \ Organization: Computational Linguistics Dept., U Saarbruecken Message-ID: <3fgbi0$7o1@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de> Subject: SGML with DTD to TeX/PostScript Hello, Does anyone know how I can convert a in SGML formated document to TeX / LaTeX or PostScript? (the document uses DTD - files) I have got a parser called sgmls, which formates the document in one file, but I don't know what I can do with the output. Thanks in advance for your help Kurt -- Kurt Ziegenbein EMAIL: kuzi@stud.uni-sb.de for more informations : mail to 'kzgb@med-in.uni-sb.de', with Subject : INFO Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 12:26:51 UT From: Wolfgang Rieger \ Organization: MUC.DE e.v -- private Internet access Message-ID: <3fgd2b$m12@marvin.muc.de> References: <19941213T162802Z.enag@naggum.no> \ \ Subject: Re: Browser vendors _should_ give a DTD [was: comp.lang.html?] [Dan Connolly] | Mr. Smith suggested that HTML browser writers include, as a form of | documentation, a DTD that reflects what the browser actually | implements. | | Yeah verily! \ \ \ ]> \\ | The fact is: there _do_ exist general SGML composition tools. If a | body bought an ArborText or SoftQuad SGML editor, they could plug in | any DTD -- even a proprietary NetScape DTD -- and use it to compose | conforming documents. | | Without a released, supported DTD, they can't do this. Some weeks ago, I posted an article with just that suggestion (namely that the authors of WWW browser should supply a DTD for the HTML tags handled by their browser) on comp.infosystems.www. To my surprise, there was no reaction, but many postings to threads on how to make characters blink under NetScape. This told me something about the average mindset in the WWW scene. However, if there is a way to press/encourage the WWW software developers to supply a DTD, we should do it. Wolfgang -- Wolfgang Rieger Email: rieger@colin.muc.de c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung WWW : http://www.muc.de/~rieger/ Frankfurter Ring 193a 80807 Munich Germany Tel.: +49 89 323 19 93 Fax: +49 89 323 19 93 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 14:56:01 UT From: Steinar Bang \ Organization: Falch Infotek, Oslo, Norway Message-ID: \ References: <19950117.050850.010310.NETNEWS@VM1.ULG.AC.BE> Subject: Re: Lisp Parser? [Jacques Teller] | Is there a free Lisp parser or anybody working at this? There are many free Lisp parsers for several different dialects of Lisp. What does this have to do with the newsgroup comp.text.sgml? If you are looking for ways to implement DSSSL, then you have to look for free implementations of the Lisp dialect called Scheme. And yes, there are several such free implementation available. I suggest you get hold of the comp.lang.scheme FAQ list, and start reading. - Steinar -- -------------------http://www.falch.no/~steinarb/dod/----------------- Home (page) of the Norway Denizens Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 15:02:00 UT From: Sue Kientz \ Organization: University of California, Los Angeles Message-ID: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Reflow Problems with .mif Files I apologize if this is a thread you have rehashed over and over, as I suspect it might be. WHile I've been registered for this group for months, I have not had time to be a regular reader, but before my office spends $16,000 on Macs, I wanted to see if you _wonderful_, understanding people could help :-) Our office is totally IBM yet our service bureaus seem 98% Mac-based. Our problem is we had a typesetter create several publications in Frame 4.0 on a Mac and now that we are getting our files back (in .mif format) we are having terrible reflow problems, not to mention the font mapping that's causing additional problems. My questions are: (1) When you transfer platforms, MUST you use the .mif interchange way of saving? We have ascertained that this is what is causing reflow. (2) If you must use the .mif waystation, can you prevent this reflow? (3) Is there a way to "lock in" fonts from one platform so if you create Mac, transfer it to work on on an IBM, and then return it to a Mac for linotronic output, you'll get those original fonts first encoded in the paragraph designer? I worry that once on the IBM, and remapped (like Helvetica Neue to Times, of all things), once you save the document on My superiors here are throwing up their hands and figuring Mac is the only solution, expensive as it will be for three people. Thanks for any thoughts you can offer on this dilemma. -- Sue Kientz \\\\ <\> UCLA Registrar's Office \\\\ phone: +1 310 206 4055 skientz@saonet.ucla.edu \\\\ fax: +1 310 206 0397 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 15:16:36 UT From: Tan Hock Guan \ Organization: Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore Message-ID: <3fgn0k$bj9@nova.np.ac.sg> Subject: Distributor of Softquad's Product Is anyone out there knows who are the distributors for Softquad's product or the contact for the developer for Softquad Explorer etc... I would be much appreciated if anyone out there could direct me to some other sgml products that are available. Thanks -- Hock Guan TAN | Computer Based Training Centre thg@np.ac.sg | Ngee Ann Polytechnic Tel : 65-460-6522 | 535 Clementi Road Fax : 65-462-0040 | Singapore 2159 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 15:21:50 UT From: Rick Jelliffe \ Message-ID: \ References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ <9501171655.AA07898@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries I think it is fair to say that LISP is quite good for many symbolic processing applications: two of which are AI and text processing. (Others include mathematical symbolical processing and chip layout.) While many production versions of these may be implemented in C or C++, LISP is apparently quite good for prototyping too. And if a command language is needed. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons TI gave up the Explorer LISP hardware was that the SPARC chips had instructions to support data tagging: from memory I think maybe a 24-bit data word and 8-bit tag field (though it might be 30:2). I don't know how much this is used, but it is a further example of how LISP ideas have become part of the furniture. As a result there are now few if any things that can only be practically done in LISP proper, because many languages and environments have raided LISP's storehouse, as they should. I think it is a bit like UNIX: the more anti-UNIX people say it is no good, the more their favorite operating systems grow to look like it: like some kind of divine humor. They have to end up disliking smaller and smaller parts of UNIX, or just the implementation details. Similarly, the more anti-LISP people say LISP is no good, the more their favorite programming languages tack on ideas from LISP (I am not saying this is a bad thing). I can picture a C++ rocket scientist sitting at his integrated debugging environment and browser, hacking away at C++ lists, dynamic arrays and multiple inheritance and writing nice clean iterators etc, in his rebindable editor with a simple programmer's assistant software to generate code stubs, all the time amazed anyone might think LISP has anything going for it. :-) -ricko -- Rick Jelliffe email: ricko@allette.com.au Allette Systems phone: +61 2 262 4777 Sydney, Australia fax: +61 2 262 4774 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 16:13:59 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950117T161359Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <19950117.050850.010310.NETNEWS@VM1.ULG.AC.BE> \ Subject: Re: Lisp Parser? [Jacques Teller | Is there a free Lisp parser or anybody working at this? [Steinar Bang] | There are many free Lisp parsers for several different dialects of | Lisp. What does this have to do with the newsgroup comp.text.sgml? I don't think he wants a Lisp parser -- they are so trivial to build that you generally don't ask for them. rather, I think it's a shorthand notation for "SGML parser written in Lisp". across the net, you will find many people producing HTML with Lisp tools, many people who play with WWW stuff from Lisp programs, and even people who parse and process SGML with Lisp tools. one of them is GNU Emacs. others frequent the comp.lang.lisp and c.l.scheme groups. | If you are looking for ways to implement DSSSL, then you have to look | for free implementations of the Lisp dialect called Scheme. And yes, | there are several such free implementation available. I suggest you | get hold of the comp.lang.scheme FAQ list, and start reading. also note that you can process DSSSL expressions in Common Lisp. you need a fairly well-equipped Scheme to avoid doing trivial things all over again. hash tables, for instance. they are standard in Common Lisp and come with many Schemes because they can be hard to get fast. (true in any language.) #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 16:55:21 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501171655.AA07898@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries Thanks Rick, for the examples and more facts to add to my quickly growing collection. These become part of the many handed arguments I supply to my customer. As we are all reading the posts on how we can get the computer industry to take technically effective approaches to the challenges of handling SGML, we profit from the accretion of this information and its publication. I am aware of the applications you mention but it is perceptions we are shaping, and the common perceptions, or *myths* are that C++ is invincible in the commercial market, and that Lisp's long association with AI has *killed* it in the DoD community. As I had hoped, my post has invoked the defenders of the language to offer countering views to these perceptions. Ada has also had to defend itself despite the testing done in the DoD community that proved with current optimizing technology, it can outperform C++ (-| note use of CAN, not always does |-). However, if C and C++ are that BAD, one must ask how they became so ubiquitous? Could it be the *free* UNIX operating system given to the universities so many years ago? That was a factor but only one. Unix was often referred to then as "That dammed hippie operating system". Calling programs awk, grep, sed, nroff/troff, didn't exactly endear it to the user interface specialists. A lot of time and energy was spend putting interfaces over the multiple operating systems we were using (Unix, VMS, Domain, early MS-DOS, etc) because the overhead of using all the variants on simple commands became too great. GUIs slowed most of us down, and we objected loudly. It was to no avail. The customers (remember them, they write the checks that pay the employees that have the families that buy the groceries, etc. Can't get above food, unfortunately...) wanted it so we gave it to them. We knew the backdoors to the command line prompts, so our suffering wasn't great, mostly a loss of memory which was getting cheaper by the day. It was a perspective thing, not a moral issue. When the switch to C from Fortran and Assembly began in earnest, the reasons cited were: o Portability. We were becoming very concerned with open systems. Hardware was becoming a commodity and this was before the IBM PC entered the arena. o Compatibility with UNIX (considered desirable as we were concurrently migrating to distributed token ring networks) o Availability of talent (universities were turning out Pascal and C programmers in droves). So why not Pascal? Too big and too slow. o Need for machine-efficient object-oriented systems. C++ wasn't available. We were rolling our own object systems. Performance was an issue. A 5 MIPS machine on a desktop was a real miracle then, so a lot of concentration was on getting fast code (still brewing in assembly chunks) and fast math (non-uniform rational B-splines of NURBS were the hot topic). During these arguments, many were advocating LISP as it was natural for object-orienting and many of the concepts we wanted to put into the next generation products especially in the document database (a term one couldn't use then without being called a "wild-eyed heretic") developed in the AI community. Hypermedia was just a toy although all of the features of systems like the WWW and quite a few more advanced ones were already fully developed (look at the work at Brown U (the best, IMO), Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. Systems like ZOG_now_KMS had already explored and charted the territory now occupied by HTML/WWW). LISP was not chosen again, because of UNIX and the prevalence at that time of DEC equipment, Apollo and the emerging Sun platforms (yes, Virginia, these problems predate Bill Whatsits). So, given a little history, what can you say about the issues that were influential the last time this debate was held in earnest, that is, portability, efficiency, operating system compatibility, and availability of skill? What has changed? Bonus points for any affinity of SGML and LISP in the authoring and/or processing environment. Len Bullard PS: Erik has kindly supplied the LISP and Scheme FAQs to me, but as I am not the only reader, statistics and other facts derived from this source are still fair game. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Path: ifi.uio.no!naggum.no!comp-text-sgml Approved: erik@naggum.no Date: 17 Jan 1995 16:56:43 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501171656.AA29405@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries Lines: 87 [Bob Agnew] | This is a fine example of what committees and government organizations | can do to a standard. Instead of mandating one existing implementation | (FOSIs), propose two incompatible standards, one of which doesn't exist | yet, and let the community use the non-availability of one to as a | reason not to implement or comply with the other. In my opinion, DSSSL | has done more to impede the progress of SGML than any other single | factor. | | We should all take a lesson from the way DARPA conducted their business | of implementing the internet so successfully: If an RFC did not provide | a working implementation of the standard within 9 months, the RFC track | was DROPPED. I concede the scenario you cite can indeed occur. In the beginning of the CALS initiative, we were told that all we had to do was comply with a single DTD being generated. It was based on MIL-D-38784. Later, as more was learned about effectively applying SGML, and it was rudely discovered that, in peace time, no amount of arm-twisting gets the Tri-Service to march to the same music (there are reasons but they aren't important here), multiple DTDs began to appear. We were also told not to worry about preserving format as SGML didn't *need* that. Then came the great format wars. Because SGML had its advocates and opponents, and because as always, some groups had to preserve organizations to preserve jobs, the printing centers of the services demanded that strict adherence to the formatting specifications was a requirement. Everyone knows what came next: years of work by a committee (the EPC) on the OS which is an application of SGML, Bob, not a standard. It can be cited as a requirement. It was to be a stopgap application until a standard could be written. Standards take years to develop and many of the same people who developed the FOSI worked on the DSSSL (Dr. Paul Grosso and Paula Angerstein come to mind as just two.) After years of concurrent activity, the FOSI emerged, was implemented by two vendors and shunned by others who felt it best to wait for DSSSL_The_Standard to emerge and to focus their meager research and development money in other areas rather than develop the FOSI whose justification was as a CALS requirement for the American military. If they mandate an implementation, they will mandate ArborText. While that may suit you, it will effectively destroy the CALS initiative... remember system neutral data? Personally, I view such mandates as proof of the failure of the DoD to understand the technology it mandates. How DARPA does business is irrelevant. More than Defense is involved here. I also believe that unless implementations quickly appear, there is a tendency to move on, but let the standard be approved before we start the clock. I think we will all be surprised by the rapidity of implementation because the requirements are there and are pressing. I don't want to be contentious, Bob. You're too good an expert for that. I do want to point out that "waiting for the FOSI" to mature was one of the reasons the functional areas of the services used not to implement CALS. If I have to use ArborText to use a FOSI, the OS is reduced to being the proprietary stylesheet language of a vendor. Even if two can do it without error, that is still a "marriage", not a communications standard. While I don't think delay is necessary, haste in choosing the standard or an implementation of an application can be just as bad. For those who need and want to use the OS, it is available. But the DSSSL draft standard is more important to applications outside the DoD and for some, inside it. Why? Because the DSSSL is more than a formatting specification language. It is a standard for associating processing with the data declarations of SGML. This is very important to many applications including IETMs. For example the ability to associate a query with a transform is critical to using the information you have generated with MIL-M-28001 without automatically reclassifying it as "legacy". Should you wish to truly "start over", denying the use of DSSSL in DoD will accomplish that in about two years because your next assignment will be to begin converting the SGML legacy you have created into PostScript for use in Adobe Acrobat. That isn't a "scare tactic". It is a proposal being considered very seriously in the Pentagon and elsewhere right now. It's supporters have strong arguments and are well-positioned to make them stick through approval of expenditures. The issues are too numerous to go into in a single post, but try if you have time, to look at the DSSSL spec. I haven't been a fan of it in the past, but after reading the DIS, I find there is much to be learned from it, and while we all have jobs to do, we must continue to learn and absorb the new work emerging from the standards bodies. Else, SGML dies. Cheers, Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 17 Jan 1995 20:03:14 UT From: Marcy Thompson \ Message-ID: \ References: \ \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) I *swore* I wasn't going to get involved with this. But somehow, I finally got pushed over the edge. Paul writes: | It doesn't matter. You can't stop him by calling him names (Bill the | Goat), or calling his customers names (the stupid PC world), or calling | his products names (Windoze). We can stop him by offering reasonable, | usable, technically correct alternatives. This is touchingly naive belief. I actually try to run my work life by providing reasonable, usable, technically correct services and work to my customers. But I do not for one second believe that doing so guarantees that I will not eventually lose out in this business to people who will tell customers what they want to hear, even if it's false, in order to sell a product or get a consulting contract. My favorite advertisement was one I saw in London a few years ago. It was a placard in one of those lovely London taxis. It had four little pictures on it: a VHS tape, a Betamax tape, a screenshot of OpenLook and a screen shot of Motif. The copy said "The best solution doesn't always win. Hadn't you better invest in Motif for your Suns?" Say this 17 times before you go to sleep every night. The best solution does not always win. Those of us who believe we know what the best solutions might be for certain tasks that people want to accomplish have an obligation to recognize that being right might not be enough. The best solution does not always win. This does not mean we should stop fighting on the side of right, justice and truth. Just that we should recognize the reality. The best solution does not always win; what can I do today to help ensure that THIS TIME the best solution wins? Marcy, who thinks it's cool that there are ads for Sun-related products in taxis P.S. The best solution does not always win. -- Marcy Thompson at work: marcy@passage.com at play: marcy@world.std.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 21:10:03 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950117T211003Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ <9501171655.AA07898@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | I am aware of the applications you mention but it is perceptions we are | shaping, and the common perceptions, or *myths* are that C++ is | invincible in the commercial market, and that Lisp's long association | with AI has *killed* it in the DoD community. with all due respect, there is more than one "commercial market". there are people who provide working software solutions that do not want to use C++, do not actually use C++, and who still sell well. truth is: customers don't care whether it was built using C++ or C or Lisp or whatever. well, who cares then? who is this "commercial market"? good questions. the perception we're talking about is not about products delivered, it's about using APIs in the only language they support. it's also about managers who don't know any programming, but think they see the faint writing on the wall that if their programmers quit or they fire them, there will always be hundreds, if not thousands, of half-competent C++ programmers ready to take over. but see below for the things these programmers do. | However, if C and C++ are that BAD, one must ask how they became so | ubiquitous? Could it be the *free* UNIX operating system given to the | universities so many years ago? Unix is married to C, not to C++. C++ is not even popular on Unix. people may dislike C for many reasons, but the fact remains that C is a baseline for a large number of languages, and works exceedingly well as such. Unix continues to support many languages because of C's simplicity. C++ is not one language, but a fairly large number of incompatible outgrowths on the C baseline, notably as perceived by system utilities like the linker. what makes C++ special is that these outgrowths are mandated by libraries that are so incompetently built that you can't use them without also buying the compiler that compiled the binary you link with. (this makes producing portable C++ class libraries an absolute hell. similar things never were a problem with C.) thus, you lock people into C++ if they want to use the Windows environment for delivery to the personal computer market. please, remember that C++ has nothing to do with Unix. the support for C++ in the Unix programming environment has been notoriously weak, and there's not much improvement in sight. Borland's compilers for DOS were sporting C++ at least eight years ago, and with the advent of Windows this was the community that _defined_ the popularity of the language. Unix continues to support a large number of languages well. C makes a few assumptions about the hardware and run-time system that you may need to fight to get things done, but most languages and applications can live with them. C++ makes a whole truckload of assumptions which means that you can't expect to port C++ applications anywhere unless the compiler is also portable. I note that James Clark's sp/nsgml compiles with a specific version of g++, while sgmls compiled with every compiler in sight. (I don't program in C++ anymore because of the immaturity of the language and the tools, and the lack of portability between environments. maybe I'll try again in the next millennium.) | o Availability of talent (universities were turning out Pascal and C | programmers in droves). So why not Pascal? Too big and too slow. what about Borland Turbo Pascal? it ran circles around their C compilers for years. Apple used Pascal on their systems for at least a decade. I think many awful things can rightfully be said about Pascal, but "big" and "slow" are not among them. | LISP was not chosen again, because of UNIX and the prevalence at that | time of DEC equipment, Apollo and the emerging Sun platforms ... . Franz Lisp was very successful on the DEC VAX 11/780 running BSD 4.x. a number of features in BSD 4.x were there specifically to aid Lisp. among hundreds of other sites, it was in use at the U of Oslo in 1983, and probably several years before that. this was OSLOVAX.ARPA, to those who remember the old ARPAnet. | So, given a little history, what can you say about the issues that were | influential the last time this debate was held in earnest, that is, | portability, efficiency, operating system compatibility, and | availability of skill? What has changed? what can I say? history has been rewritten by the winners. and _that_ never changes. having lived a decade and half outside of the personal computer market, I see it reinvent things I marveled at and regularly used when I was still in high school. if you don't listen to these guys, but go outside their closed minds and attendant worlds, you will find that the pattern is clear: just like hypertext is nothing new with HTML/WWW, only popularized and badly at that, everything the personal confuser market has hailed as "new and improved" was actually done and then discarded a quarter century earlier, and those who pick it up have learned nothing. C++ was 15 years behind the times when it was created, and it's even more behind now. what disturbs me most in this rewritten history is that everything that does not add up to supporting the winner is declared irrelevant or not even included. but there are reasons to doubt the winners' version of Genesis. first, we know that the personal computer market is built on deception. second, for all the C++ programmers in the world, do they get more work done than the much smaller number of Lisp programmers? they may solve Paul Prescod's idea of "real problems", which affect tens of millions of people, i.e., hundreds of millions of dollars of lost productivity and time, while programmers in "unpopular" languages continue to make the world go round. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 17 Jan 1995 22:08:25 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950117T010859Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) I have replied in email to preserve bandwidth. I will email my reply to any lurkers that request it. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 22:18:50 UT From: Marcus Carr \ Message-ID: \ Subject: Consolidation of Legislation We are embarking on a project that involves marking up legislation in SGML. One requirement is that the system must support consolidation and rollback of amendments to an act to a specified date. An amendment might be the replacement of an existing object (section, subsection, etc) or might be the replacement of a string within an object. One of the main issues we see as being significant is the possibility of these string-type amendments overlapping. I would appreciate any views or experiences anyone may have in relation to rollback and consolidation, or any other aspect of legislation. We are OmniMark users, so we are really after a conceptual model for handling this type of thing by any application. Also, we have had fairly extensive experience marking up legislation, so we aren't asking for a legislation DTD, just a model for consolidation and advise on pitfalls. Thanks in advance, -- Marcus Carr Allette Systems Level 10, 91 York Street, Sydney, Australia mrc@allette.com.au Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 17 Jan 1995 23:41:39 UT From: Dave Strange \ Organization: NetNet, Inc. Wisconsin's Leading Internet Provider Message-ID: <3fhkjj$6sh@netnet2.netnet.net> Subject: GML to Wordperfect Conversion Please execuse me if I'm posting this in the wrong newsgroup, but, I need to identify a way to convert the old IBM DCF/GML markup language to Wordperfect. Does anyone know of a utility to help me? Thanks Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 05:56:54 UT From: Arthur Ogawa \ Organization: TeX Consultants Message-ID: \ Subject: Entity questions Here are three straightforward questions about entities. 1. Concerning the entities in isodia, the diacritical marks, if an SGML document has an instance of use like: Mu\¨ller does this actually mean the same as: M\üller where the entity uml is defined in isodia.ent and uuml is defined in isolat1.ent. My question in the abstract is, does a diacrit entity signify a postfix diacritical modifier? I would have thought that it represented the diacritical mark in isolation, but maybe I'm wrong. The first example above is from an actual (live job) document. 2. On a related note, if the diacrit appears *before* the letter it should modify, is that not incorrect? The following: \˙x seemed intended to mean "x with a dot over it". I think this is not correct usage. Am I right? 3. If an entity reference is immediately followed by a Record End, then am I correct in interpreting that wordspace should follow the entity? In the following: 1776\&endash; 1782 it appears that an unintentional wordspace will appear after the en-dash. Am I right? Thank you for your help. -- Arthur Ogawa/Publishing Consultant/TeX Consultants ogawa@teleport.com/voice:+1 209 561 4585/fax:4584 Mail: Kaweah CA 93237-0051 PGP-Key: "finger -l ogawa@teleport.com" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 10:07:15 UT From: Steinar Bang \ Organization: Falch Infotek, Oslo, Norway Message-ID: \ References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> \ \ \ Subject: Re: DSSSL implementation (Was: Help with possible Thesis) [Basile Starynkevitch] | I agree with the idea. But I want to point out that libscheme is slow. It is slow, very slow, when it comes to arithmetic. How does it compare in typical lisp list operations? | This is not a critic of it, libscheme was designed to be embeddable, | and for small scripting (similar to Tcl's goals). A full DSSSL should | in my naive opinion have thousands of line of Scheme. Not sure about this. The core part of the suggested framework will be to create a compact tree representation of the tree of the parsed SGML document, and to create the DSSSL query mechanism that will stroll through the tree and do strange and wonderful stuff. If I were to create this system, I would use C for both the tree construction and the tree walking routines. All query primitives would be Scheme interfaces to these C routines and data structures. In this setting libscheme intitially seemed ideal because of the simple, elegant API. But when I stop to think of it, DSSSL "programs" (what should they be called? "Style sheets" seems too restrictive), can become quite large, and may need to be evaluated frequently, so performance of the Scheme part of the implementation is certainly an issue. - Steinar -- -------------------http://www.falch.no/~steinarb/dod/----------------- Home (page) of the Norway Denizens Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 10:20:48 UT From: Steinar Bang \ Organization: Falch Infotek, Oslo, Norway Message-ID: \ References: <19950117.050850.010310.NETNEWS@VM1.ULG.AC.BE> \ <19950117T161359Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: Lisp Parser? [Steinar Bang] | There are many free Lisp parsers for several different dialects of | Lisp. What does this have to do with the newsgroup comp.text.sgml? [Erik Naggum] | I don't think he wants a Lisp parser -- they are so trivial to build | that you generally don't ask for them. rather, I think it's a | shorthand notation for "SGML parser written in Lisp". Ouch! Of course. | across the net, you will find many people producing HTML with Lisp | tools, many people who play with WWW stuff from Lisp programs, and even | people who parse and process SGML with Lisp tools. one of them is GNU | Emacs. Hrrm,... seeing as I am one of them (I use GNU Emacs, with Lennart Staflin's excellent "psgml", which BTW includes an SGML parser written in Emacs lisp) I have no choice but to humbly agree. Side note: "psgml" with the HTML 2.0 DTD is, so far, the best "HTML Editor" I have encountered. It makes it easy for me to produce *valid* HTML documents, and luckily prevents me from using the Netscape tags, or other variant tag sets. - Steinar -- -------------------http://www.falch.no/~steinarb/dod/----------------- Home (page) of the Norway Denizens Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 11:25:54 UT From: Wolfgang Rieger \ Message-ID: <3fits2$t3g@marvin.muc.de> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ <9501171655.AA07898@source.asset.com> <19950117T211003Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries Dear Erik! From your recent posts I gather, that you dislike - Microsoft, - C++ and - C++ programmers, which you consider half-competent; and that you prefer - anything but Microsoft - Lisp and it's dialects. Suppose that I would (convinced by your argument) switch from C++ to Scheme. Then I would need a Scheme system under MS-Windows, which has - a MS-Windows IDE (debugger, class browser, etc.) - a MS-Windows API - an interface builder - preferably a portable GUI library - a portable OODBMS library The code should be portable (i.e., acceptable for Scheme systems under Unix, DOS, Mac, OS/2), and of course things like classes, inheritance etc., should be available and portable, too. There may be a problem. Do you agree? BTW, some of your statements in your recent reply to Claude L. Bullard astonished me, to put it mildly. For instance: - "C++ is not portable." And the various dialects of Lisp are? You mentioned Turbo Pascal, too. Is Turbo Pascal portable? - "Producing portable C++ class libraries is the absolute hell." I wrote portable C++-libraries years ago using cfront 1.0 and early Zortech compilers (and there where incompatibilities) but I did not notice being in hell. - "C++ is not popular under Unix." If I hear of some new project, and ask which language is used, I hear either "C++" or "C but we will ASAP switch to C++". - "C++ makes a lot of assumptions concerning the hardware." That's really new to me. Maybe the whole language discussion is boring or should at least be shifted to comp.lang.c++, where currently the respective merits of ADA/Pascal/C++/... are talked to death. Kind regards Wolfgang -- Wolfgang Rieger Email: rieger@colin.muc.de c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung WWW : http://www.muc.de/~rieger/ Frankfurter Ring 193a 80807 Munich Germany Tel.: +49 89 323 19 93 Fax: +49 89 323 19 93 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 13:10:31 UT From: Mark Giguere \ Message-ID: <01HLZGQDOC3M8WWE21@albnyvms.BITNET> Subject: OCLC's FRED Has anyone on this list tried using the Online Computer Library Center's FRED, an automated SGML grammar builder, which creates a DTD from submitted tagged text? If so, please advise regarding the efficacy and accuracy of output. Furthermore, has anyone taken a FRED-created DTD and run it through an SGML parser? Did it work? Thank you, Mark Giguere -- Mark D. Giguere, Research Support Specialist Voice: +1 518 443 5427 SUNY Central Administration Fax: +1 518 443 5360 Office of Archives & Records Management Internet: mg3721@cnsvax.albany.edu SUNY Plaza, T-10 Bitnet1: giguermd@snycenvm.bitnet Albany, NY 12246-0001 Bitnet2: mg3721@albnyvms.bitnet Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 13:40:44 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3fj5os$o9r@argo.hks.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <19950117T040843Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Erik Naggum] | ... there are some companies out there who try to destroy DSSSL because | they have products to "protect" (and they aren't even in the FOSI | business!) ... As an SGML newbie trying to decide on an editor, I've been reading this thread with some trepidation. Right now, ArborText is our top pick, mainly because of the equation capability (anybody know of any others?). I'm wondering about the following statement in ArborText's whitepaper "Getting Started with SGML" (aka pap with which to convince your boss): "The FOSI and DSSSL standards groups are working together to ensure a conversion path from FOSI to DSSSL so that systems developed to accept a FOSI will be in a good position to accept DSSSL." What do you folks make of this? Is it complete bull? If we start developing FOSIs, and DSSSL gets off the ground, will we be left high and dry? Thanks for your opinions! -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 18 Jan 1995 15:16:45 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> \ \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Marcy Thompson] | P.S. The best solution does not always win. I did not say that it does. But the best solution _can_ win and sometimes _does_ win. Therefore it is wrong to either give in to the bad solution prematurely or to decide to "keep the good solution for yourself" and allow the bad solution to win in the larger market. These two attitudes are the primary reasons that the bad solution often wins out. (i.e., "Unix can never beat DOS, so why bother making it usable to compete" or "DOS is going to win anyways so why bother agitating for change?") Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 15:34:26 UT From: "David Becke, #?" \ Organization: Bombardier Regional Aircraft Division Message-ID: <1995Jan18.153426.16644@dhnews.dehavilland.ca> Subject: DSSSL Information I would like to know where I can find information on DSSSL and if there is a news group for the subject. I have done some FOSI development, all be it basic, but I believe the DSSSL will become the prevalent standard once there is reasonable vendor support. I hope that the DSSSL-ites don't keep the information to themselves because this will only delay the acceptance of a standard which is very much in need. David Becke \ or \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 16:46:22 UT From: Eddy Wong \ Organization: Cambridge Technology Partners Message-ID: <3fjgku$nf7@toon.ctp.com> Subject: Seybold Boston '95 Hi netters, Does anybody know where I can get info on the Seybold Conference in Boston? Who organizes it? Thanks in advance, Eddy. -- /\\/\\ | Eddy Wong ewong@ctp.com | / /_.\\| Cambridge Technology Partners, Inc. +1 617 374 8410 | \\ /./| 304 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139 +1 617 374 8300 (fax) | \\/\\/ | | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 17:23:06 UT From: Daniel Dardailler \ Organization: X Consortium, Inc. Message-ID: <3fjipq$rg@public.x.org> References: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Frame format to SGML/Docbook Hi, is there any business out there doing this kind of filtering? I know about FrameBuilder, but I'm looking for something "lighter", like MifMucker or WebMaker if you know this kind of package, but generating docbook DTD rather than HTML. I don't even need to read SGML, just output it from Frame (assuming my Frame documents follow a reasonnable structure, that can be mapped to the DTD without too much exception, of course). Thanx -- Daniel Dardailler | Email : daniel@x.org X Consortium, Inc. | Phone : +1 617 374 1000 x133 One Memorial Drive | Fax : +1 617 374 1025 CAMBRIDGE, MA 02142-1301 | URL "http://www.x.org/people/daniel" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 17:44:05 UT From: Stephan Bechtolsheim \ Organization: Another MCSNet Subscriber, Chicago's First Public-Access Internet! Message-ID: <3fjk15$prq@Mercury.mcs.com> Subject: Links I don't want to resume here the discussion of the usefulness of LINKs and also not of POTENTIAL applications of links. What I would like to find out is: WHO ACTUALLY USES LINKS? If you use links in one of your projects, please drop me a note, send me a short description of what you do with them and I will summarize for the net in a few days. Thanks. StvB Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 17:46:02 UT From: Christopher Lapkowski \ Organization: School of Computer Science, McGill U, Montreal Message-ID: <3fjk4q$32v@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> Subject: Indexing HTML docs Hi, I'm looking for a way to index many documents interconnected using HTML. I would expect to have to somehow mark the words to be indexed in the documents but then have some tool do the indexing and create an HTML doc that would allow one to search for the topick or word. Does anyone have some method for doing this? Thanks, Christopher Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 17:57:16 UT From: Tom Boudreau \ Organization: Zilker Internet Park, Inc. Message-ID: <3fjh7f$6a5@oak.zilker.net> Subject: PC Magazine For those interested, PC Magazine (Feb 7, 1995 Issue) is full of information on SGML and the W3. Most of the SGML tools are mentioned and overviews are given! -- Tom Boudreau (triton@triam.com) Triton American 512/339-9402 2020 Centimeter Circle 512/339-7870 (Fax) Austin, TX 78758 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 19:10:59 UT From: Peter Jordan/MSL \ Message-ID: <9501182313.AA4571@notes.microstar.com> Subject: Careers at Microstar Microstar Software Ltd has immediate openings for document engineers and software engineers. All positions at this time are at the company's headquarters in Nepean, Ontario, Canada (suburb of Ottawa). Share in the growth of a new publicly traded firm. Send your resume and a brief covering letter indicating the position in which you are interested. Document Engineers Microstar's Computer Aided Document Engineering framework has streamlined the implementation of SGML based document management systems. CADE is new, evolving and exciting. Its future is limited only by the imagination and vision of the individuals that join the Microstar team. Knowledge and experience of SGML, HTML, HyTime, DSSSL and other related standards is desirable but not essential. Sharing the vision of the benefits and power of structured information is. Software Engineers Microstar develops innovative software products that simplify structured information system design and implementation. These are unique and powerful and are exciting to be part of. If you eat, drink and sleep object technologies and have experience to boot, then we should be talking. By Internet: CADE@microstar.com By Fax: +1 613 727 9491 -- /\\ /\\ Peter Jordan - pgjordan@microstar.com \\/ \\/ Computer /\\ /\\ Aided Microstar Software Ltd. Phone: +1 613 727-5696 \\/ \\/ Document 34 Colonnade Road North Fax: +1 613 727-9491 /\\ /\\ Engineering Nepean Ontario Can/US: 1 800 267-9975 \\/ \\/ CANADA K2E 7J6 Info: cade@microstar.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 20:09:48 UT From: Joe English \ Organization: Call Really Late Dialup Internet Access Message-ID: <3fjsic$qpt@crl2.crl.com> References: <3fjk15$prq@mercury.mcs.com> Subject: Re: Links [Stephan Bechtolsheim] | I don't want to resume here the discussion of the usefulness of LINKs | and also not of POTENTIAL applications of links. | | What I would like to find out is: | WHO ACTUALLY USES LINKS? Do you mean the SGML \ feature, or some other kind of link? If the former, I've used IMPLICIT LINK for a few document conversion problems: from Rainbow to LaTeX, from an intermediate DTD to RTF, and from a private DTD to LaTeX and to HTML. Well, sort of. sgmls doesn't support LINK, so I had to roll my own. I used Scheme on the first two projects, implementing the basic IMPLICIT LINK functionality in application code instead of the parser. The LPDs were specified in Scheme instead of the usual SGML syntax, but were functionally quite similar to the SGML definition. (A sample Scheme "LPD" and associated processing code is included at the end of this message.) That implementation worked OK, but it had a few flaws. (That's a drastic understatement.) On the latter project I added the same functionality to CoST, this time using the real SGML syntax for LPDs. This implements nearly all of IMPLICIT LINK except for entity declarations (which it can't do -- since CoST works as a postprocessor it can't affect the entity declarations that sgmls uses), multiple link rules for an element, and a few stupid mistakes in the LPD parsing code. (This will be part of the next CoST release if I can fix the stupid mistakes.) My experiences: IMPLICIT LINK is very useful, and the subset that CoST handles was not very hard to implement. (The rest of it -- how entity declarations interact -- looks *very* difficult unfortunately. No wonder few parsers support it. That's too bad, since LINK is a powerful feature.) --Joe English jenglish@crl.com -- Sample "LPD" in Scheme: ; ; Specification for Rainbow -> LaTeX conversion ; (require "latex.scm") (!linktype 'latex 'rainbow #f '( (!attlist rainbow (latex NAME cdiv)) (!attlist doc (latex NAME document)) (!attlist (fileinfo paratype styinfo) (latex NAME metainfo)) (!attlist (struclvl) (latex NAME hdiv)) (!attlist (head) (latex NAME cdiv) (before CDATA "\\n") (after CDATA "\\n")) (!attlist (para) (latex NAME #f) (macro CDATA #f)) (!attlist (paracont) (latex NAME phrase)) (!attlist (clf) (latex NAME macro) (macro CDATA "emph")) (!attlist (graphic) (latex NAME macro) (macro CDATA "XXX")) (!attlist (illus) (latex NAME environment) (environment CDATA "unknown") (after CDATA "\\n\\n") (before CDATA "\\n\\n")) (!LINK :initial (struclvl (:USELINK div1)) (head (:USELINK head0)) (para (latex para))) (!LINK head0 (para (latex heading) (macro "part"))) (!LINK div1 (head (:USELINK head1)) (struclvl (:USELINK div2))) (!LINK head1 (para (latex heading) (macro "section"))) (!LINK div2 (head (:USELINK head2)) (struclvl (:USELINK div3))) (!LINK head2 (para (latex heading) (macro "subsection"))) (!LINK div3 (head (:USELINK head3))) (!LINK head3 (para (latex heading) (macro "subsubsection"))) )) (!linktypes 'latex) ; override defaults: (set! re-handler no-op) (define *latex-document-prolog* "\\\\documentclass{article} \\\\newenvironment{unknown}{}{} \\\\newcommand\\\\XXX{} \\\\begin{document} ") -- Document processing code (latex.scm) (define *latex-begin-math* "\\\\(") (define *latex-end-math* "\\\\)") (define *latex-document-prolog* "\\\\documentclass{article} \\\\usepackage{scopeman} \\\\begin{document} ") (define *latex-document-epilog* " \\\\end{document} ") (define (start-element element) (let* ((getattr (lambda (aname) (get-link-attribute element aname 'latex))) (gi (element-gi element)) (giname (symbol->string gi)) (latexform (getattr 'latex)) (prefix (getattr 'prefix)) (suffix (getattr 'suffix)) (before (getattr 'before)) (after (getattr 'after)) (environment (or (getattr 'environment) giname)) (macro (or (getattr 'macro) giname))) (if before (output before)) (case latexform ((macro heading) (output "\\\\" macro "{")) ((environment list) (output "\\\\begin{" environment "}\\n")) ((group) (output "{")) ((para) (no-op)) ((math) (output *latex-begin-math*)) ((document) (output *latex-document-prolog*)) ((hdiv cdiv metainfo phrase list item) (no-op)) (else (unknown-form-error gi latexform)) ) (if prefix (output prefix)))) (define (end-element element) (let* ((getattr (lambda (aname) (get-link-attribute element aname 'latex))) (gi (element-gi element)) (giname (symbol->string gi)) (latexform (getattr 'latex)) (prefix (getattr 'prefix)) (suffix (getattr 'suffix)) (before (getattr 'before)) (after (getattr 'after)) (environment (or (getattr 'environment) giname)) (macro (or (getattr 'macro) giname))) (if suffix (output suffix)) (case latexform ((document) (output *latex-document-epilog*)) ((macro heading) (output "}")) ((environment list) (output "\\n\\\\end{" environment "}")) ((group) (output "}")) ((math) (output *latex-end-math*)) ((para) (output "\\n\\n")) ) (if after (output after)))) (define (re-handler . args) (output "\\n")) (define (process-event event) (let ((type (event-type event)) (value (event-value event)) ) (case type ((stag) (start-element value)) ((etag) (end-element value)) ((re) (re-handler value)) ((sdata) (output value)) ((cdata) (charmap-output *latex-charmap* value)) ))) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 20:22:06 UT From: Mike Meyer \ Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Message-ID: <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3fdrkp$hjr@panix3.panix.com> <3fdtcc$5io@lucy.infi.net> <3ff16b$gve@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> Subject: Rant on HTML extensions (Was: Ubiquity of Netscape (Mozilla Eats the World)) [Rex Deaver] | Actually, I applaud efforts to bring HTML into line with standard DTP | practices... Would you also applaud efforts to bring flight simulators into line with standard DTP practices? Those aren't any further from a DTP application than HTML. | ... like it or not, are going to become the majority of Web users in a | matter of months. That market is going to drive development and | Microsoft would *love* to own the standard...which they will, if the | HTML specification isn't improved to provide the flexibility that | market will demand, is in fact demanding now. MicroSoft will also own the standard if we let proprietary extensions by the dominant web browser dictate what HTML is. Yes, HTML needs better ways to indicate how a document should be presented. No, we don't need ways for the author to have absolute control over how a document should be presented, because that control is at best an illusion that deceives only the author, and at worst an illusion that will cause useful information to be lost as the document is translated into HTML from whatever it exists in before, even if that is only the authors head. We're already seeing that. Someone pointed out that with the Mozilla extensions people are tempted to use \ & \ in lieue of the existing \ tags. This means that tools that index headers, or build tables of contents, or whatever, don't work properly. Another someone suggested -- and it looked like a serious suggestion -- that the solution was to only index on title, where markup questions don't come into play. I can only conclude that this person doesn't really care how many people see their document, as otherwise they wouldn't suggest disabling useful ways of finding it. If you're going to index on title only, you might as well use RTF or LaTeX, and put the title in a separate file (there are web servers that will support this). That gives you absolute control over the format and the indexing facilities you're willing to settle for. What we need are well-thought-out enhancements to HTML that preserve the ability to display it on a wide variety of platforms, from Unix boxes with 27" 32-bit-deep monitors to Newtons to your local pay phone; that are designed to make it easy to write HTML that displays well on platforms that can't display those enhancements or on browsers that don't understand them, or better yet, hard to write HTML that doesn't do that; and most importantly, it needs to take the desires of ALL the potential users into account - those that want to translate it to braille, or read it over a phone, or use it as part of a larger data system need to be included, not just those who want it as part of a multimedia system (even though those may be the vast majority). HTML 1.0 fell down on the third point, because most of the current users weren't aware that it was being done and probably would have been annoyed at being bothered about an obscure research project. HTML 2.0 (basically, "fixed" versions of the Mosaic extensions) fell down on all three. HTML 3.0 is still being developed, and corrects many of the problems with HTML 2.0, as well as providing new extensions that generally meet all three criteria. If you expect me to say that the NetScape extensions do anything except fail on all three criteria, you're not paying attention. Clearly, almost nobody was consulted on the Mosaic and NetScape extensions. They were born in finished form, complete with deformities, from the forehead of Jove (or whoever). Do they preserve the ability to be displayed on a wide variety of platforms? Again, clearly not. They extend HTML in ways that some platforms can't deal with. They can't be blamed for that. Could they be better done, so that more platforms could display them? Some yes, some no. \, for instance, could be replaced by the HTML 3.0 \ and \, which gets more flexibility for both the browser author and the HTML author. For instance, VT100s and the like have a chance of displaying them by using their very limited set of fonts. The same might be done for \, but there's no indication on the \ documentation about which of the seven fonts should be used. Finally, and critically, do they make it hard to write documents that aren't portable between browsers, or at least easy to write documents that are? Again, the answer is no. \ and \

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lose line break information. So you have to make sure those tags occur with other tags that generate line breaks, or your documents will lose information in browsers that don't understand those tags. One suggestion was that a standard + lots of proprietary extensions is a good thing, as this gives you lots of flexibility. The history of Unix shows that this person is right; you get lots of flexibility. Almost any Unix system lets you do things that you can't do on a standard Unix, and you can chose from almost as many ways as there are Unix vendors to do it. If you want your software to work on all of them, you have to either stick to the standard (well, the subset of that the vendors didn't tweak in adding their extensions), or write code with conditional compilation for all those features. Already, the HTML world is seeing all three choices - people writing pages specifically for one browser, people writing in a subset of the standard that works on most browsers, and people checking the browser type to figure out which page to send. It's been nearly 20 years since the initial split in the Unix market, and it appears to be mostly recovered; except that vendors are already starting the same game again with the new standard. Personally, I'd rather not go through the same thing with the WWW; I'd like to have a web that interoperated for all documents before the year 2020, without going to a standard dictated by the largest company writing browsers. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 20:30:00 UT From: "Horace A. Vallas, Jr." \ Organization: hav.Software Message-ID: <3fjto8$ol9@uuneo.neosoft.com> References: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Re: Reflow Problems with .mif Files [Sue Kientz] | I apologize if this is a thread you have rehashed over and over, as I | suspect it might be. WHile I've been registered for this group for | months, I have not had time to be a regular reader, but before my | office spends $16,000 on Macs, I wanted to see if you _wonderful_, | understanding people could help :-) | | Our office is totally IBM yet our service bureaus seem 98% Mac-based. | Our problem is we had a typesetter create several publications in Frame | 4.0 on a Mac and now that we are getting our files back (in .mif | format) we are having terrible reflow problems, not to mention the font | mapping that's causing additional problems. My questions are: | | (1) When you transfer platforms, MUST you use the .mif interchange way | of saving? We have ascertained that this is what is causing reflow. I have not exchanged data between Mac and anything else; however, in exchanges between Windows and Unix (Sun & RS6000), I have never used .mif. I simply do a binary ftp between the platforms. There may still be font differences that can, at times be irritating. | (3) Is there a way to "lock in" fonts from one platform so if you | create Mac, transfer it to work on on an IBM, and then return it to a | Mac for linotronic output, you'll get those original fonts first | encoded in the paragraph designer? I worry that once on the IBM, and | remapped (like Helvetica Neue to Times, of all things), once you save | the document on ... you might be able to get compatible fonts for much less than $16,000. ooba ooba, Horace -- The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory. - Prof. Edwin Conklin Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 21:24:29 UT From: Matthew Stringer \ Organization: Calspan Advanced Technology Center Message-ID: <1995Jan18.212429.16542@calspan.com> Subject: FrameBuilder HTML EDD I am looking for a relatively recent HTML DTD translated into a FrameBuilder EDD. Any pointers would be appreciated. Frame support was unable to help, and I'd prefer to avoid reinventing the wheel if the wheel in question is available to the public. Thanks. -- *- Matthew S. Stringer Software Engineer Calspan Advanced Technology Center *- Business related email - stringer@calspan.com voice-+1 716 632 7500x5119 *- Personal email - stringer@cs.buffalo.edu fax-+1 716 631 6722 *- The opinions stated here are my own and do not reflect on my employer. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 21:53:52 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan18.215352.5152@ast.saic.com> Subject: Minimal Tagged SGML Document Having grown tired of vendors' claims that their product was "SGML Compliant", I submitted the following DTD to SGMLS: \ ]> followed by following "TAGGED" SGML document: This is a plain document. and guess what? It parsed. I know, I know, what did I expect? But I was still amused. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 22:37:05 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3fk56h$s4r@argo.hks.com> References: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> <3fjipq$rg@public.x.org> Subject: Re: Frame format to SGML/Docbook Tough problem, actually. Getting from Frame to SGML is not easy, and trying to get to DocBook in particular is tougher. Electronic Book sells DynaTag, which will take you from Frame to SGML, but using the Rainbow DTD. (DynaTag goes for $2500.) Avalanche software told me they could do it, but for a price. ("It" being Frame to SGML -- at the time I wasn't even talking a particular DTD yet.) Currently, they only support Interleaf. There are probably consultants that can do this for you, but I know that's not what you're after. -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 18 Jan 1995 23:11:11 UT From: Arjan Loeffen \ Message-ID: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> Subject: Questions on attributes Dear reader, 1. The declared value of an SGML attribute may be a name group, and the default may be #FIXED to any name in the name group. Can you give me a good example of this construct? 2. A name token in a name token group of an attribute definition list can only occur once (Handbook pg. 330, 424). You cannot declared the following attribute list: \ The whole idea here is that you cannot minimize the document instance by leaving out attributes: you wouldn't be able to decide what was red when "red" was entered as the attribute value. Even for SHORTTAG NO the construct is invalid. Is this position defendable? Is it outdated? Thanks in advance. Arjan. -- Arjan Loeffen Achter de Dom 22-24 +31 30536417 voice work Faculty of Arts 3512JP Utrecht +31 206656463 voice home University of Utrecht The Netherlands +31 30539221 fax work Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 00:39:56 UT From: Mike Meyer \ Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Message-ID: <19950118.765B468.F530@contessa.phone.net> References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> \ \ Subject: Re: DSSSL implementation (Was: Help with possible Thesis) [Steinar Bang] | In this setting libscheme intitially seemed ideal because of the | simple, elegant API. But when I stop to think of it, DSSSL "programs" | (what should they be called? "Style sheets" seems too restrictive), | can become quite large, and may need to be evaluated frequently, so | performance of the Scheme part of the implementation is certainly an | issue. When the issue of "Which Scheme?" first came up, I almost suggested Scheme->C, then decided that it wasn't really appropriate. Since the thread has continued, I've changed my mind. Scheme->C compiles Scheme into C code, which you then compile with the systems native code compiler. As in writing C instead of assembler, you can't quite convince the compiler to produce code as tight as that written by hand, but you can come close. On the plus side, the compiler will do a number of high-level optimizations (Alpha & Beta reductions, loop hoisting, tail recursion elimination, automatic function inlining, etc.) that appear to be rare in C compilers. The system is easy to extend (aren't they all?), but not embeddable. Your code names the "main" routine which will be called by default when the program is started. As a compile-time option, you can build it to start the standard REPL loop instead, which means you get a Scheme interpreter with your functions as built-ins. Anyone for an interactive DSSSL environment (does that even make sense?)? Using compiled code goes a long way towards solving the speed problem without losing the advantages of Scheme. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 01:33:46 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3fkfhqINNk06@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <1995Jan12.012053.5071@ast.saic.com> <3f63osINN32p@oasys.dt.navy.mil> <3ffifl$6t8@hopper.acm.org> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Betty Harvey] | Just precaution. Yes you can do math in SGML but before you decide | Before marching off blindly in an SGML project some variables should be | known, such as will the composition system handle math tagging, table | tagging. If these variables are unknown, you should hope for the best | and expect the worst. For instance, create graphics from math if you | are not sure what type of composition system will be used. [Dave Peterson] | I have seen math marked up the ISO mathpack successfully composed using | Xyvision software, so there's one example. I suspect it could also be | done using Omnimark to go from SGML to TeX or RTF (or...), and then | using TeX or MS Word or some other system that can compose math | reasonably well. Yes it can be done but how much time, effort and money will it take? I still contend that if you know in advance that your documents will contain math it is a sound 'business decision' to take the intended output composition system into account. If the composition system is an unknown (which happens alot in SGML projects) it would be wise to have graphical representations of equations. BTW, if you have a conversion method for SGML from Mathpack to ISO 12063 Math tags I would be interested in talking. I get an idea from your message that you have been faced with this problem in the past |-). Regards. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 02:12:19 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3fkhq3INNlqc@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> <3fcpajINNdtn@oasys.dt.navy.mil> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | We can also encourage people to use validating editors and true | descriptive markup. Perhaps we should publicize the freely available | SGML DTDs that have formatting software that produces HTML. One | example is LinuxDoc. Is there a list anywhere? This is a good idea but in my opinion it won't solve the problem. How does the saying go "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". All the tools in the world can be provided but if the individual does not like them they will not use them. There are three things you don't discuss with sane individuals (IMHO), religion, politics, editors (and loosely maybe operating systems). In the techy world, HTML is just ASCII data and it can be written in any old word processor/editor of choice. Most WWW system administrators think of HTML as just another mark-up language and the means to the end-result. We need to change this thinking. Evangelize the necessity to adhere to the structure of HTML(SGML). I am surprised that I haven't seen any HTML courses (other than on-line) offered. I bet if an SGML company wanted to make a few $ a short SGML (HTML) course would be a big hit while serving a valuable service. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 02:45:54 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3fkjp2INNmu0@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <9501171656.AA29405@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | I concede the scenario you cite can indeed occur. In the beginning of | the CALS initiative, we were told that all we had to do was comply with | a single DTD being generated. It was based on MIL-D-38784. Later, as | more was learned about effectively applying SGML, and it was rudely | discovered that, in peace time, no amount of arm-twisting gets the | Tri-Service to march to the same music (there are reasons but they | aren't important here), multiple DTDs began to appear. We were also | told not to worry about preserving format as SGML didn't *need* that. I can't comment, this was before I started working in the CALS arena however, I don't think it was ever the belief that one DTD would serve the entire DoD, i.e., MIL-M-81927, 81928, 81929, etc. | Then came the great format wars. Because SGML had its advocates and | opponents, and because as always, some groups had to preserve | organizations to preserve jobs, the printing centers of the services | demanded that strict adherence to the formatting specifications was a | requirement. Everyone knows what came next: years of work by a | committee (the EPC) on the OS which is an application of SGML, Bob, not | a standard. It can be cited as a requirement. It was to be a stopgap | application until a standard could be written. Standards take years to | develop and many of the same people who developed the FOSI worked on | the DSSSL (Dr. Paul Grosso and Paula Angerstein come to mind as just | two.) After years of concurrent activity, the FOSI emerged, was | implemented by two vendors and shunned by others who felt it best to | wait for DSSSL_The_Standard to emerge and to focus their meager | research and development money in other areas rather than develop the | FOSI whose justification was as a CALS requirement for the American | military. I beg to disagree, MIL-M-28001 is a Military Standard. This includes the Output Specification in Appendix B. | If they mandate an implementation, they will mandate ArborText. While | that may suit you, it will effectively destroy the CALS initiative... | remember system neutral data? Personally, I view such mandates as | proof of the failure of the DoD to understand the technology it | mandates. Untrue. Granted that the vendors haven't embraced the FOSI concept but there are several vendors who have based the composition on the Output Specification. At SGML 94 Word Perfect displayed their new SGML product and according the person demo'ing the software it can input and FOSI which adheres to MIL-M-28001B. I have not tested this myself so I cannot comment on this. MIL-M-28001 and the Output Specification in particular was developed by a partnership between Government and Commercial Vendors. The Output Specification was developed to fill a void that missing in the SGML solution to document architecture. Even if DSSSL proves to be a better solution, it will be years before applications are developed. DSSSL like the OS is an untested standard. In all probability it will go through the same growing pains that the OS has gone through. Time will tell. | I don't want to be contentious, Bob. You're too good an expert for | that. I do want to point out that "waiting for the FOSI" to mature was | one of the reasons the functional areas of the services used not to | implement CALS. If I have to use ArborText to use a FOSI, the OS is | reduced to being the proprietary stylesheet language of a vendor. Even | if two can do it without error, that is still a "marriage", not a | communications standard. While I don't think delay is necessary, haste | in choosing the standard or an implementation of an application can be | just as bad. For those who need and want to use the OS, it is | available. But the DSSSL draft standard is more important to | applications outside the DoD and for some, inside it. What is important to remember is that the OS was developed to solve problems of paper publishing. Paper publishing is still a requirement, however, I think you will see the emphasis being put towards electronic publishing and printing-on-demand rather than publishing Technical Manuals from beginning to end. However, there are some books that can never be useful in this realm. Somehow, I can't envision reading "Gone With The Wind" on my laptop on a cross-country flight |-). | Why? Because the DSSSL is more than a formatting specification language. | | It is a standard for associating processing with the data declarations | of SGML. This is very important to many applications including IETMs. | For example the ability to associate a query with a transform is | critical to using the information you have generated with MIL-M-28001 | without automatically reclassifying it as "legacy". I agree with you!! I have heard many times (and I don't agree) that as soon as something is authored it becomes legacy data. | The issues are too numerous to go into in a single post, but try if you | have time, to look at the DSSSL spec. I haven't been a fan of it in | the past, but after reading the DIS, I find there is much to be learned | from it, and while we all have jobs to do, we must continue to learn | and absorb the new work emerging from the standards bodies. Else, SGML | dies. I don't think SGML will die but it does have some problems. Mainly cost. The cost associated with SGML publishing is tremendous to small businesses and I understand their concerns. Of course, this isn't a FOSI/DSSSL argument. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.unix.osf.osf1,comp.unix.ultrix,comp.sources.wanted,comp.text.frame,comp.text.interleaf,comp.text.sgml,comp.text Date: 19 Jan 1995 02:55:28 UT From: Michael Rush \ Organization: James Cook University of North Queensland Message-ID: <1995Jan19.025528.10015@marlin.jcu.edu.au> Keywords: bibliography unix X Subject: Biblio Package for Unix/X windows Does anyone know of a good X windows based Bibliographic Package (like Pro-Cite etc) that can run on a Unix platform? (Preferably to run on Dec OSF/1 or Ultrix) I'm not interested in anything TeX based. Could you please email any replies. Thanks in advance, Michael -- || Michael Rush || * _--_|\\,-- From Townsville || James Cook University || * * / \\ in sunny || Computer Centre || ' \\_.--._/ North Queensland || || * v AUSTRALIA. || Internet: Michael.Rush@jcu.edu.au || Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 11:30:53 UT From: Tobias Rischer \ Organization: University of Tromsoe Message-ID: <1995Jan19.113053.16274@news.uit.no> References: \ Subject: Re: Entity questions I don't have a reference beside me, but I'm pretty sure that: Mu\¨ller does actually mean the same as M\üller and that this is the only way to describe it using isodia. The mark always *follows* the character it is to sit upon. (Which is a little nasty when converting to TeX, where it *precedes* the character). I am incompetent to question 3. Tobias -- : Tobias Rischer : Tunveien 9 A21 : 9018 TROMSOE : NORGE Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 13:18:53 UT From: Pekka Kataja \ Organization: Telecom Finland Message-ID: <3flort$i2n@smtp.tele.fi> References: <3fjk4q$32v@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> Subject: Re: Indexing HTML docs [Christopher Lapkowski] | I'm looking for a way to index many documents interconnected using | HTML. I would expect to have to somehow mark the words to be indexed | in the documents but then have some tool do the indexing and create an | HTML doc that would allow one to search for the topick or word. | | Does anyone have some method for doing this? Try freeWAIS-sf more about freeWAIS-sf look at http://ls6-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/freeWAIS-sf/README-sf.html Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 13:25:17 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3flp7t$7st@argo.hks.com> References: <3eh1po$nj0@argo.hks.com> <1995Jan12.012053.5071@ast.saic.com>,<3f63osINN32p@oasys.dt.navy.mil> <3ffifl$6t8@hopper.acm.org> Subject: Re: Q: What's wrong with SGML math? [Dave Peterson] | A few SGML editors (e.g., ArborText's) provide WSYWYG equation editing, | but only support a single DTD for it. It never ceases to amaze me that | users refused to accept locked-in DTDs for generala editing (IMHO quite | rightly so), but roll over and accept being locked in to a not-widely- | supported single DTD for math (and tables) without a whimper. Dave, which math DTD do you think is the one that's most widely supported? We're looking at EBT for online presentation, and they support ISO TR 9573 part 11, AAP, and ArborText. Are any of these a good idea? Does anybody anywhere supply a WYSIWYG editor that will create equations compliant to something besides ArborText? -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 14:53:02 UT From: Keith Shafer \ Organization: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Message-ID: <3fluce$684@oclc.org> References: <01HLZGQDOC3M8WWE21@albnyvms.BITNET> Subject: Re: OCLC's FRED [Mark Giguere] | Has anyone on this list tried using the Online Computer Library | Center's FRED, an automated SGML grammar builder, which creates a DTD | from submitted tagged text? If so, please advise regarding the | efficacy and accuracy of output. Furthermore, has anyone taken a | FRED-created DTD and run it through an SGML parser? Did it work? From what I have seen so far (I developed Fred and have some feedback on its use), Fred appears to correctly represent the structure of submitted tagged documents. We have, on several occasions, been able to use Fred generated DTDs directly with sgmls to validate documents. So, the DTDs are pretty good. However, automatically produced DTDs sometimes have rule "ambiguities" that keep SGML validators from using the DTDs. When this occurs, it means that Fred was unable to write the structural rules simply enough to meet the processing requirements of the SGML validator, not that the rules were written incorrectly. We are considering additional reductions to try to make the structural rule representations match the current processing needs of SGML validators and the expected style of the SGML community. Regardless, SGML experts will most likely want to hand edit Fred produced DTDs to add entity declarations, reduce any complexity that Fred may have left in, and match their writing style. The idea of Fred was NOT that all the generated DTDs would be perfect out-of-the-box, but that it would jump start the writing of DTDs for large retrospective tagged collections and aid SGML novices in writing DTDs. For those of you unfamiliar with Fred, you can read about the DTD creation aspects of Fred under http://www.oclc.org/fred/ Keith. -- OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. | shafer@oclc.org 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395 | +1 614 761 5049 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 16:04:59 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501191604.AA38317@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <19950117T040843Z.enag@naggum.no> <3fj5os$o9r@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Glenda Jeffrey] | What do you folks make of this? Is it complete bull? If we start | developing FOSIs, and DSSSL gets off the ground, will we be left high | and dry? It is not "complete bull". Individuals are working on both efforts and have from the beginning. As to the difficulty of the conversion path, that is undetermined by me ("time and the river" issues). DSSSL is a richer environment than the OS DTD which specifies the rules for writing FOSI applications, so I *believe* these difficulties to be minimal. If this is not the case, the experts in these subjects should comment at this time. The information issued from the committees seemed to indicate that what you are reading in the ArborText literature was the intent and result. "High and dry" is a matter of cost and your own effort. If you invest in expensive systems solutions, you should contractually mandate in the specifications which form the basis of your contract with your systems supplier your intent to migrate to DSSSL and perhaps your willingness to become a beta site for their product developments. Remember, companies that invest time and resources into an application and system must spend this energy again to migrate. This is the endemic problem of all product development unless a clear upwardly compatible strategy is in place for product evolution. One of the problems with the PC market that we have been discussing is that the following strategy and tactics are difficult to apply to shrink-wrap vendors. I suggest that you or your representatives carefully discuss issues with the vendors you are interviewing. Do this in the context of a well-written clear and detailed specification for the system you want to procure. Cite the standards that you wish to enforce (you and your company ARE the enforcement agency in this transaction). Carefully examine the standards and determine if their conformance clauses are sufficiently descriptive to be cited. If not, extend them with clear and simple language of your own. Such a specification enables the vendors to reply with detailed descriptions of how they can best meet the requirements you cite. If they do not, move on. Face to face interviews of the vendor technical personnel are recommended in cases where the answers you are receiving are vague. Often one has been discussing technical issues with marketing or contracts personnel. They may be intentionally misleading you, but in more cases, they are simply not prepared to answer technical questions. So, before one thinks them fraudulent, patiently inquire of their technical experts. If such experts cannot be insist on the customer doing this exercise and help them should they require it. If a vendor or customer balks at this, I move on. "You know what you know but you know you never know." Cheers, Len Bullard Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 17:13:50 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3ff16b$gve@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> Subject: HTML Extensions considered harmful What a great post summarizing the issue! Do you mind if I keep that and repost it when I see more DTPers trying to turn the net into a platform specific, browser specific information wasteland? Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 17:22:57 UT From: Mary Holstege \ Message-ID: <9501191722.AA20366@mercury> References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Arjan Loeffen] | 2. A name token in a name token group of an attribute definition list | can only occur once (Handbook pg. 330, 424). You cannot declared | the following attribute list: | | \ | | The whole idea here is that you cannot minimize the document | instance by leaving out attributes: you wouldn't be able to decide | what was red when "red" was entered as the attribute value. Even | for SHORTTAG NO the construct is invalid. | | Is this position defendable? Is it outdated? My feeling is that is not a good thing, primarily because it seriously hampers modular DTD design and weakens syntactic constraints. What I see over and over again is attributes getting defined as "CDATA" with a comment like "should be x or y or x" just to sidestep this problem. Real life example: a piece of the HTML3 DTD: \ 'clear' should be defined as a model group, but it isn't to avoid conflicts with alignment attributes. And, so far as I can tell, one reason that 'needs' isn't NUMBER with another attribute to specify units (as is done elsewhere in the DTD) is mainly because these attributes are included in places where there is already a units attribute. The whole DTD is weakened because of this rule. An SGML validation of a document instance based on this DTD will miss some things that it could otherwise check. I find this all deeply unfortunate. I think the right rule would be to disallow the leaving out of attribute names in cases where there is ambiguity. However, if one is using a large modular DTD (with various marked sections to include/ignore various feature sets), it mightn't be wise to *use* such minimization anyway. In general I think SGML would be greatly improved if it stepped beyond all the special cases designed to reduce keystrokes. I think we're getting to the point now where there *are* decent software tools to support creating and editing SGML documents, and a lot of the minimization rules get in the way of efficient use and reuse. -- Mary Holstege@kset.com -- Mary Holstege, Sr. Member of Technical Staff KnowledgeSet Corporation 555 Ellis Street Tel: +1 415 254 5452 Mountain View, CA 94043 FAX: +1 415 254 5451 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 19:38:17 UT From: Peter Davis \ Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc. Message-ID: <3fmf39$8p2@info-server.bbn.com> References: <3fjgku$nf7@toon.ctp.com> Subject: Re: Seybold Boston '95 [Eddy Wong] | Does anybody know where I can get info on the Seybold Conference in | Boston? Who organizes it? Call Seybold Seminars at +1 800 488 2883. They can send you a copy of the advance program with all the info. -- Peter Davis "Education is not the +1 617 873 4145 BBN Educational Technologies filling of a pail, but FAX: +1 617 873 2455 150 Cambridge Park Drive the lighting of a fire." pdavis@bbn.com Cambridge, MA 02140 -- W. B. Yeats Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 19 Jan 1995 19:48:22 UT From: Marcy Thompson \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: \ References: \ \ \ \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Marcy Thompson] | P.S. The best solution does not always win. [Paul Prescod] | I did not say that it does. But the best solution _can_ win and | sometimes _does_ win. Therefore it is wrong to either give in to the | bad solution prematurely or to decide to "keep the good solution for | yourself" and allow the bad solution to win in the larger market. | These two attitudes are the primary reasons that the bad solution often | wins out. (i.e., "Unix can never beat DOS, so why bother making it | usable to compete" or "DOS is going to win anyways so why bother | agitating for change?") Okay, let's return to the examples in the ad I quoted. Did VHS beat Betamax because Sony kept it to themselves or because they didn't bother to compete? Which of those two reasons you quote caused Motif to win? And to return to an SGML topic, since neither I nor anyone else I can think of (in this conversation anyway) is keeping SGML to themselves (counter- productive for those of us trying to make a living off it) or giving in to the bad solution prematurely, I'm not sure I understand your point. Especially since in the part of my posting you excised, I specifically said that it's incumbent on those of us who do think SGML can be the best solution for a variety of problems to do what we can to make sure the THIS TIME the best solution *does* win. Where is it exactly that we disagree? I guess it's in your naive belief that avoiding what you call the primary reasons why bad solutions win will defeat Bill Gates. I'm not convinced of that. Marcy -- Marcy Thompson at work: marcy@passage.com at play: marcy@world.std.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 19:56:26 UT From: David Megginson \ Organization: Department of English, University of Ottawa Message-ID: \ References: <199501121449.IAA05574@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu> \ \ <19950118.765B468.F530@contessa.phone.net> Subject: Best Scheme for DSSSL (was Re: DSSSL implementation) [Mike Meyer] | When the issue of "Which Scheme?" first came up, I almost suggested | Scheme-> C, then decided that it wasn't really appropriate. Since the | thread has continued, I've changed my mind. We are almost over the edge of an appropriate c.t.s thread here, but I would like to suggest that scm with the Hobbit compiler provides _both_ a good runtime environment _and_ the ability to compile Scheme code into C (and to dynamically link it into the interpreter at runtime). I especially like scm because the Linux binary on my tiny notebook is only 147K (!) and the runtime size is around 512K, so I can run in nicely inside Gnu Emacs with only 4MB RAM and little or no swapping. David -- David Megginson Department of English, University of Ottawa, dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA K1N 6N5 dmeggins@acadvm1.uottawa.ca Phone: +1 613 564 6850 (Office) ak117@freenet.carleton.ca +1 613 564 9175 (FAX) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 19:59:47 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950119T195947Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ <9501171655.AA07898@source.asset.com> <19950117T211003Z.enag@naggum.no> <3fits2$t3g@marvin.muc.de> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Wolfgang Rieger] | From your recent posts I gather, that you dislike | | - Microsoft, | - C++ and | - C++ programmers, which you consider half-competent; I dislike half-competent programmers, especially such C++ programmers. I know a few very good C++ programmers personally. I have been exposed to scores of people who claim they are C++ programmers but to whom I would not entrust making toast. the primary problem with C++ programmers is that you have to assume that one who says he knows C++ is lying until he can actually demonstrate what he means by "knowing C++". if he says something along the lines of "the more you know it, the less you like it", then you face someone who probably knows C++ very well. | and that you prefer | | - anything but Microsoft | - Lisp and its dialects. sigh. Microsoft is but an example of an irresponsible software company. equally Lisp and its dialects are but examples of languages that remove silly hardware-level fiddling (e.g, memory management, type sizes) from the programmer's agenda. | The code should be portable (i.e. acceptable for Scheme systems under | Unix, DOS, Mac, OS/2), and of course things like classes, inheritance | etc. should be available and portable, too. | | There may be a problem. Do you agree? no, of course not -- I have read the comp.lang.scheme FAQs, and I have never been a believer in the "one language shall rule them all" game. the problem I see is that many people think C++ is the only language supporting such things. I suggest you read the comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.scheme FAQs if you want to broaden your horizons. I also suggest you read them if all you want is to pose better rhetorical questions. | BTW, some of your statements in your recent reply to Claude L. Bullard | astonished me, to put it mildly. For instance: | | - "C++ is not portable." And the various dialects of Lisp are? yes. the specific "dialects" (_languages!_) in the Lisp family that you should consider are Common Lisp and Scheme. C++ is not portable because it makes a number of assumptions about the hardware (see below). | - "Producing portable C++ class libraries is the absolute hell." | I wrote portable C++-libraries years ago using cfront 1.0 | and early Zortech compilers (and there where incompatibilities) | but I did not notice being in hell. I have seen claims to having produced portable C++ class libraries before. I have yet to see that demonstrated, and I have yet to see one that worked as intended on both 16-, 32- and 64-bit machines, and on machines with flat and segmented memory. FYI, MIT Scheme runs under Unix, Windows and DOS, and possibly others -- I haven't checked. | - "C++ is not popular under Unix." If I hear of some new project, | and ask which language is used, I hear either "C++" or "C but | we will ASAP switch to C++". _if_ you hear about some new project? when I hear of new projects under Unix, C++ accounts for perhaps 5% of the languages chosen. the problem is that (1) there are very few reasonably good compilers under Unix, and (2) those that exist cost so much that you can buy a fleet of PC's instead. very often, I hear things like "we would have used C++ if we could trust the exception mechanism/templates/multiple inheritance/etc". also, I think it's naive to think that "ASAP" is synonymous with "reality" in the computer business. tell me about it when they have switched. for a couple projects I know, they said "C++ ASAP" three years ago. they still wrote new code in C last time I checked. | - "C++ makes a lot of assumptions concerning the hardware." | That's really new to me. search for the term "implementation defined" in the reference manual, that's a compiler and/or hardware dependency staring you in the face, and there are _many_ of them. consider the size and signedness of fundamental types as the archetypical hardware assumption, with no means to specify the sizes you really want. consider the result of dividing two integers, the result is "implementation defined" if one of them is negative. this is even in the index under "division operator, implementation dependency" in Stroustrup. if you have never heard of any of this, you have never written portable C++ class libraries. or maybe you have written "portable" code in the sense that it "can be ported at implementation-defined cost", which unfortunately is what many people believe "portable" means. the GNU project uses amazingly intelligent "configure" scripts to make their code portable, and the job it does is to intuit the hardware and compiler assumptions that it has to work under. it doesn't remove any responsibility from the programmer to be aware of those assumptions. there are hundreds of them, and keeping track of hundreds of such assumptions while trying to write code (it's same with constness -- you don't want to do it afterwards!) is certainly a hellish experience for me. I consider more than 10% debugging time a strong sign of defeat in the design process of either application or language, or both. Common Lisp and Scheme does not suffer from such assumptions because the language is defined so the compiler does the right thing, instead of the programmer having to know the right thing on the all the hardware and compilers to which it might be ported. if you tell the compiler what you know when it can infer it, you get code that is generally better and faster than manually tweaked C/C++ code -- same as good C/C++ compilers generate better assembly code than you could do possibly do on your own. | Maybe the whole language discussion is boring or should at least be | shifted to comp.lang.c++, where currently the respective merits of | ADA/Pascal/C++/... are talked to death. the one "reader response card" I have received seems to indicate that those who are bored of it are _really_ bored of it, so, yes, this is not the place. however, if you want to know something about Scheme and Lisp, check out the comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.scheme FAQs. your C++ code will improve from knowing how things _could have been_ done. and always remember that if you really can't find it in the high-level language, there's always an escape to C, much like most C's have escapes to assembly. #\ -- if you evaluate C++, you still get C, but C gets bigger Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 20:06:07 UT From: "Eric R. Skinner" \ Organization: Exoterica Corporation Message-ID: <1995Jan19.200607.6924@exoterica.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> \ Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude Bullard] | Outside the AI community, Lisp and its dialects for all of the years | they have existed, have not been popular. [Rick Jelliffe] | That will raise the eyebrows of people using Interleaf, Emacs and | AutoCad. I believe OmniMark was originally developed in LISP too: it | certainly is very LISPy in feel still. Just a quick clarification: Exoterica's original SGML parser, the "XGML Engine", had a Lisp core. The newer high-speed "SGML Kernel" is written in C and in an SGML markup language which gets translated to C. OmniMark contains the SGML Kernel; the rest of it is written entirely in C. -- Eric R. Skinner ers@exoterica.com Exoterica Corporation Tel +1 613 722 1700 Ottawa, Canada Fax +1 613 722 5706 Product information: info@exoterica.com Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 22:10:44 UT From: Frank Peters \ Organization: Computing Center, Mississippi State University Message-ID: <3fmo14$677@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3ff16b$gve@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> Subject: Re: Rant on HTML extensions (Was: Ubiquity of Netscape (Mozilla Eats the World)) [Mike Meyer] | We're already seeing that. Someone pointed out that with the Mozilla | extensions people are tempted to use \ & \ in lieue of the | existing \ tags. This means that tools that index headers, or build | tables of contents, or whatever, don't work properly. Such tools will very probably never be useful for the web. They were mostly useless for the web long before Mozilla was born. People use H2 and H3 to make elements of menus stand out more. They use H6 for legalese and disclaimers. People have been doing this things for years. And they will continue to do so as long as no tag for "fine print" exist and as long as most web client platforms render H6 as small print. And if you give them a "fine print" tag they'll stop abusing H6 and go on to abusing some other tag that seems to give them the layout they want most of the time. The center and font tags are no different from H6 in this regard. And of the three H6 is still much the more frequently abused. Authors want to control the look of their documents (whether they should want to is a completely separate issue). Authors will attempt to seize that control if the markup language doesn't yield it to them voluntarily. This is human nature and its silly to hold Netscape to blame for it. Misuse of tags will continue until you either 1) Change human nature so that authors don't want to control the look of their documents except where the markup allows it, or 2) Include markup in HTML for every type of element that occurs in every type of document known to man so that there is an appropriate tag to do everything that I want to do. Frankly, I don't see either of these happening anytime soon. It will probably be solved only when web servers become generalized SGML providers and web browsers become generalized SGML viewers. -- Frank Peters - UNIX Systems Group Leader - Mississippi State University Internet: fwp@cc.msstate.edu - Phone: +1 601 325 7030 - FAX: +1 601 325 8921 WWW Home Page: http://www.msstate.edu/~fwp/ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 22:42:57 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3fmpth$rmt@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Arjan Loeffen] | 1. The declared value of an SGML attribute may be a name group, and | the default may be #FIXED to any name in the name group. Can you | give me a good example of this construct? I can't you a real life example, although folks building HyTime or HyTime-like systems probably can. Here is a contrived example, for fun: This is a DTD fragment from my quantum particle information system. \ \ \ \ \ Of course, if you really want to do this you'll probably pick a modeling language that has better support for inheritance. | 2. A name token in a name token group of an attribute definition list | can only occur once (Handbook pg. 330, 424). You cannot declared | the following attribute list: | | \ | | The whole idea here is that you cannot minimize the document | instance by leaving out attributes: you wouldn't be able to decide | what was red when "red" was entered as the attribute value. Even | for SHORTTAG NO the construct is invalid. | | Is this position defendable? Is it outdated? You're not the first to stub your toe on this and yelp. It is outdated and no one will defend it. Just wait for the five-year revision in ... Michael Leventhal "Du bist am Ende-was du bist." -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606-1244 http://www.textscience.com/homets michael@textscience.com Voice: +1 510 444 2962 Fax: +1 510 444 1672 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 23:05:20 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3fmr7g$baf@argo.hks.com> Subject: Q: SGML Indexing software Anybody know of any decent (or halfway decent) indexing software that will work on an SGML document? Thanks! -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 19 Jan 1995 23:15:36 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3fmrqo$baf@argo.hks.com> Subject: Here's some SGML WWW Sites Since it took me a long time to scrounge up any SGML-related Web sites, I thought I'd share what I've found with y'all. If anybody knows of more, by all means please post! http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html#toc-ftpSites SGML Web Page http://www.sgmlopen.org/ SGML Open Consortium Home Page http://www.falch.no/~pepper/SGML-Tools/index.html The Whirlwind Guide to SGML Tools http://etext.virginia.edu/TEI.html TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/sgml.html Navy SGML/DSSSL Page http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/ Jim Clark's DSSSL Page http://www.falch.no/~pepper/DSSSL-Lite/ DSSSL Lite (DL) Page (includes discussion group archives) http://www.ileaf.com/ Interleaf http://www.ebt.com Electronic Book Techonologies I hope someone finds these useful. -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 00:27:02 UT From: Lou Burnard \ Message-ID: <0098AB85.02BF98B4.1@vax.ox.ac.uk> Subject: Portable Documents: Visit Report VISIT REPORT "Portable documents: Acrobat, SGML and TeX" Bridewell Theatre, London, 19 Jan 95 This joint meeting of the UK TeX Users Group and the BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group attracted a large and mixed audience of academics, TeX hackers, publishers, and software developers, with representatives from most UK organizations active in the field of electronic publishing and document management. I was expecting rather more disagreement about the relative merits of the various approaches now available for the creation of portable documents; in the event, the path of SGML-based righteousness, with appropriate concessions to the practical merits of PostScript-based systems, was apparently endorsed by the consensus. First of the seven speakers was David Brailsford from Nottingham University, who described Adobe's Acrobat as "a de facto industry standard". His presentation of exactly how the various components of this product worked together, and could be made to interact with both LaTeX and SGML, was very clear and refreshingly free of hype. The choice of PDF (which is effectively a searchable and structured form of Postscript, in which logical structure and hypertextual links are preserved along with the imaging information) as an archival format was a pragmatic one for journals such as EPodd where fidelity to every detail of presentation was crucial. The availability of a free Acrobat reader was also a plus point. He characterized the difficulties of mapping the logical links of a LaTeX or SGML document on to the physical links instantiated in a PDF document as a classic case of the importance of "late binding", and revealed the open secret that Adobe's free PDF reader would soon be upgraded to recognise and act on HTML-style anchors. A demonstration of the Acrobat-based electronic journal project CAJUN is already available online at http://quill.cs.nott.ac.uk. David Barron, from Southampton, gave an excellent overview of what exactly is implied by the phrase "portable document". Documents are not files, but compound objects, combining text, images, time-based media. There is a growing awareness that electronic resources should be regarded as virtual documents, repositories of information from which many different actual documents may be generated. These developments all make "portability" (defined as the ability to render documents -- with varying degrees of visual fidelity -- in different hardware or software environments) very difficult. Portability was of crucial importance, not only for publishers wishing to distribute in the electronic medium, and not only for specific user communities wishing to pool information, but also for all of us. Information available only in a non-portable electronic form was information at the mercy of technological change. He cited as portability success stories the widespread use of PostScript and LaTeX as a distribution medium by the research community, referring to the Physics preprint library at Los Alamos as a case where this had now become the normal method of publication. By contrast, the success of the World Wide Web seemed to be partly due to its use of a single markup language (HTML) which effectively takes rendering concerns entirely out of the hands of authors. From the archival point of view, however, none of the available standards seemed a natural winner: hypertext was still too immature a technology, and there were still many intractable problems in handling multiple fonts and character sets. Professor Barron concluded with a brief summary of the merits of SGML as providing a formal, verifiable and portable definition for a document's structure, mentioning in passing that Southampton are developing a TEI-based document archive with conversion tools going in both directions between SGML and RTF, and SGML and LaTeX. Looking to the future, he saw the IBM/Apple Opendoc architecture as offering the promise of genuinely portable dynamic documents, which could be archived in an SGML form once static. The third speaker of the morning, Jonathan Fine, began by insisting that the spaces between words were almost as important as the words themselves. I felt that he wasted rather a lot of his time on this point, as he did later on explaining how to pronounce "TeX" (surely unnecessary for this audience) before finally describing a product he is developing called "Simsim" (Arabic for sesame, which is a trademark of British Petroleum we learned). This appears to be a set of TeX macros for formatting SGML documents directly, using components of the ESIS to drive the formatter, but I did not come away with any clear sense of how his approach differed from that already fairly widely used elsewhere. Peter Flynn, from University College Cork, did his usual excellent job of introducing the Wondrous Web World, focusing inevitably on some of its shortcomings from the wider SGML perspective, while holding out the promise that there is a real awareness of the need to address them. What the Web does best, in addition to storage and display of portable documents, is to provide ways of hypertextually linking them. Its success raises important and difficult issues about the nature of publishing in the electronic age: who should control the content and appearance of documents -- the user, the browser vendor, or the originator? Publishing on the Web also raises a whole range of fundamental and so far unresolved problems in the area of intellectual property rights, despite the availability of effective authentication and charging mechanisms. He highlighted some well-known "attitude" problems -- not only are most existing HTML documents invalid, but no-one really cares -- and concluded that the availability of better browsers, capable of handling more sophisticated DTDs, needed to be combined with better training of the Web community for these to be resolved. The three remaining presentations, we were told after a somewhat spartan lunch, would focus on the real world, which seemed a little harsh on the previous speakers. Geeti Granger from John Wiley described the effect on a hard-pressed production department of going over to the use of SGML in the creation of an eight volume Chemical Encyclopaedia. Her main conclusions appeared to be that it had necessitated more managerial involvement than anticipated, largely because of the increased complexity of the production process. She attributed this partly to the need for document analysis, proper data flow procedures, progress reports etc., though why these should be a consequence of using SGML I did not fully understand. More persuasively, she reported the difficulty the project had had in finding SGML-aware suppliers, in designing a DTD in advance of the material it described, in agreeing on an appropriate level of encoding and in getting good quality typeset output. Martin Kay, from Elsevier, described in some detail the rationale and operation of the Computer Aided Production system used for Elsevier's extensive stable of academic journals. Authors are encouraged to submit material in a variety of electronic forms, including LaTeX, for which Elsevier provide a generic style sheet. Other formats are converted and edited using an inhouse SGML-aware system (apparently implemented in WordPerfect 5, though I may have misheard this). This uses their own DTD, based on Majour, with extensions for maths, which seemed to be a major source of difficulty. Documents will be archived in SGML or PDF in something called an electronic warehouse, of which no details were vouchsafed. Both PDF and SGML were seen as entirely appropriate formats for online journals, CD-ROM and other forms of electronic delivery. The advantages of SGML lay in its independence of the vagaries of technological development, and its greater potential. However, potential benefits always had to be weighed against current costs; like any other business, Elsevier was not interested in experimentation for its own sake. The last speaker was Michael Popham, formerly of the SGML Project at Exeter, and now of the CTI Centre for Textual Studies at Oxford. His presentation did a fairly thorough demolition job on the popular notion that there is still not much SGML-aware software in the world, starting with a useful overview of the SGML context -- the ways in which SGML tools might fit into particular parts of an enterprise -- and then listing a number of key products organized by category. It was nice to hear the names of so many real SGML products (auto-taggers, authoring aids, page layout systems, transformation tools, document management systems, browsers and parsers) being aired, after a long day obsessed by Acrobat and LaTeX. He concluded with a useful list of places where up-to-date product information can be found, and a reminder that the field is rapidly expanding, with new tools appearing all the time. The day concluded with an informal panel session, onto which I was press ganged, which effectively prevented me from taking notes, but also gave me the chance to promote the recently-published DynaText version of the TEI Guidelines, which I did shamelessly. I also remember Malcolm Clark asking, tongue firmly in cheek, why everyone couldn't just use Word, and being somewhat agreeably surprised by the number of people in the audience who were able to tell him the answer, and in no uncertain terms. Other topics addressed included auto-tagging, whether maths and formulae should be encoded descriptively or presentationally, whether Microsoft will still be around in the next century, and whether we would ever learn how to format documents for electronic presentation as well as we could on paper. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 01:32:12 UT From: Ralph Ferris \ Organization: Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. Message-ID: <3fn3qs$2pe@yucca.ossi.com> Keywords: SMSL SGML HyTime ANSI ISO Summary: Rationale behind SMSL Subject: Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) Some people have commented on my original posting that it contained many technical details but omitted to discuss the reasons behind SMSL's development. The following is intended to give an idea of the larger picture. Ralph E. Ferris Project Manager, Electronic Publications Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. (FOSSI), Engineering Services Phone: (408) 456-7806 Fax: (408) 456-7050 E-mail: ralph@ossi.com A Davenport Group sponsor. For information on the Davenport Group see ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/README.html or http://www.ora.com/davenport/README.html *********************************************************************** Rationale for the Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) The rationale behind developing the Standard Multimedia Scripting Language (SMSL) is to support the same kinds of capabilities in SGML authoring tools that are now available to users of multimedia authoring tools, and to do so within the SGML environment. Currently, SGML authoring tools support the creation of documents in SGML markup, including the addition of hyperlinks to entities containing graphics, audio, and video. However, unlike the user of multimedia authoring tools, the SGML tool user has no control over the placement of graphics and video or the duration of their display and the playing of any accompanying audio. SGML itself does not define the semantics for specifying the required parameters; HyTime, through its scheduling, measurement, and rendition modules, does. SMSL will provide the means for building applications that exploit these features of HyTime by providing an object oriented interface between any programming language that can support the services required by SMSL and SGML/HyTime documents. Through the use of these applications, authors will be able to specify how an anchor is rendered when a link is selected; for example, authors could specify when and where a graphic is displayed. Authors will also be able to specify an individual segment or segments of an audio or video file that is to be played. This capability will be extremely valuable in saving both the author's time and disk space, since otherwise separate entities with the appropriate audio or video fragments have to be created, and the author has to keep track of which ones to link to for what purpose. An important use for these applications will be in developing interactive tutorials and maintenace manuals where different information is presented for different skill levels. For example, the video of an installation procedure would be played in full for the novice, while only selected segments would be played for intermediate users; yet other segments would be played for experts. The video would only have to be recorded and stored once, however, instead of being edited and stored multiple times; the required segments would be accessed through HyTime pointers. Other examples could be given that make use of other HyTime features. To sum up then, SMSL will provide a key ingrediant in allowing SGML authors to go from writing "text with links to audio/visual add-ons" to creating true multimedia. Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Followup-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 20 Jan 1995 01:42:19 UT From: "Daniel N. Wood" \ Organization: University of California, Berkeley Message-ID: <3fn4dr$2gu@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> <3fmo14$677@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> Keywords: html Summary: semantic markup versus layout Subject: Re: Rant on HTML extensions [Frank Peters] | Authors want to control the look of their documents (whether they | should want to is a completely separate issue). Authors will attempt | to seize that control if the markup language doesn't yield it to them | voluntarily. This is human nature and its silly to hold Netscape to | blame for it. | | Misuse of tags will continue until you either ^^^ | 1) Change human nature so that authors don't want to control the look | of their documents except where the markup allows it. Or | | 2) Include markup in html for every type of element that occurs in | every type of document known to man so that there is an appropriate | tag to do everything that I want to do. Perhaps _he_ should do nothing. Perhaps someone who enjoys controlling the look of their documents should design and promulgate a standard way of doing this on the Web. Perhaps one of the current contenders (Acrobat and HyperTex) will become a standard, but I doubt it. Sadly, my impression is that few of the people using HTML for layout right now are willing to put any work into developing a solution which would help fans of both approaches. Daniel. \

This message is Copyright 1995, Daniel Wood.\

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 04:22:31 UT From: Howard Schoenberger \ Organization: HBS Message-ID: <3fndq7$hc6@gti.gti.net> Subject: SGML ISO-8879 How do you use it??? I downloaded some files from the IRS on Fedworld and they extract as TXT files but they are actually in some format called SGML that follows ISO-8879 format - does anyone know what this format is and how I can read it? Is there an easy way to covert it to ascii, or wordperfect, wri, ....anything more standard??? Thanks for your help. -- Howard Schoenberger hbs@gti.net Newsgroups: aus.computers,comp.text.sgml,aus.education,aus.cdrom Date: 20 Jan 1995 08:29:31 UT From: Tom Worthington \ Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia Message-ID: <1995Jan20.082931.16796@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> Subject: RFC: Guidelines for Managing Electronic Documents in Australian Gov Age A copy of the draft "Guidelines for Managing Electronic Documents in Australian Government Agencies" is available on the Internet at: http://acslink.net.au/~tomw/edg1301.html Those without a HTML document browser can send a message to \ with "www http://acslink.net.au/~tomw/edg1301.html" in the body of the message. A text version of the document will be sent back. Please note that this is an experimental service provided by CERN. Comments on the guidelines are invited. The Information Exchange Steering Committee - Electronic Data Management Subcommittee, which prepared the guidelines,will consider this draft on 24 January. It is planned to release the finalized guidelines in May 1995. Please address comments to the _content _of this draft, not formatting issues.A number of tables, appendices, figures and "recommended actions" are yet to be incorporated in the report. Also the conversion of this draft to HTML was done in some haste. Please note that comments which suggest wording to improve the guidelines will be most valuable. Comments which only suggest some fault in the guidelines, without suggesting a correction, will be of less value. This is the last scheduled work item for the subcommittee and the committee will be dissolved on completion of this task. Suggestions for new work items cannot be considered, but can be forwarded to the IESC for consideration of possible future subcommittees. A "Pocket Guide to the Management of Electronic Documents in the Australian Public Service" is also available, at: ftp://archie.au/ACS/edocgd.html ABOUT THE IESC: The IESC is an advisory body, responsible for providing guidance to Commonwealth agencies on policies and strategic directions relating to Information Technology and related issues, including telecommunications. For further details of the IESC contact Max McGregor (e-mail: \, ph: +61 6 263 3553, fax: +61 6 2632276). Please send your comments to: Tom Worthington Chair of the IESC Electronic Data Management Subcommittee & Senior Policy Adviser, Information Management Strategic Planning Communications and Information Systems Engineering Branch Department of Defence Room APW2-1-06, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia e-mail: tomw@adfa.oz.au Fax: +61 6 2666758 Home page: http://acslink.net.au/~tomw/ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 09:48:57 UT From: "D. Haunschild" \ Organization: Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (KFA) Message-ID: <1821@zam103.zam.kfa-juelich.de> Subject: sgml2html Hi, I am currently working on a filter to convert SGML documents (ArborText Publisher) to HTML to provide theses documents under WWW. If anyone is working on a similar filter and is interested to exchange strategies, please contact me. Dirk -- D.Haunschild Software und Systemberatung Juelich - Germany phone : +49 2461 52841 email : d.haunschild@kfa-juelich.de Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 10:54:56 UT From: Peter W Meyer \ Organization: Desktop Law Pty Limited Message-ID: \ References: <3fmr7g$baf@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Q: SGML Indexing software [Glenda Jeffrey] | Anybody know of any decent (or halfway decent) indexing software that | will work on an SGML document? Try either: OpenText, at Waterloo, Ontario Canada Ph: +1 519 571 7111, Fax: +1 519 571 9092 or DynaText from Electronic Book Technologies, Providence, Rhode Island Ph: +1 401 421 9550 Fax: +1 401 421 9551. -- Peter W Meyer Desktop Law Pty Limited pmeyer@magna.com.au Fax: 61 2 416 9995 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 11:03:12 UT From: Guenther Steinmetz \ Organization: Digital Equipment GmbH, Munich, Germany Message-ID: <1995Jan20.110312.21018@janix.mfr.dec.com> Subject: How do I get started with SGML? I am currently trying to find out whether SGML would be appropriate for creating our project documentation. I have read some introductory articles and glimpsed through two books, but didn't understand everything. I guess it's time to get some hands-on experience. Therefore I have the following questions: 1. Is there a lisp package for emacs which supports SGML? Alternatively, are there other public domain SGML editors? 2. Where do I find DTDs (and their descriptions)? 3. What public domain tools are available to parse and format a SGML document? The tools should run under OSF/1. Once the decision is made to use SGML, I will have no problems buying SGML tools. Does anybody have a list of commercially available SGML tools? Thanks for any answers. -- | Günther Steinmetz Mail: Postfach 810247 81902 München | | Quality Consultant Voice: +49 89 9591 2892 | | Digital Equipment GmbH Fax: +49 89 9591 2575 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 12:46:05 UT From: David Silverman \ Message-ID: \ References: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> <3fjipq$rg@public.x.org> <3fk56h$s4r@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: Frame format to SGML/Docbook Another company that does Frame to SGML conversion as a service bureau or customizes software for you is Data Conversion Laboratory. Their number is +1 718 357 8700. And yes, I used to work there, but that only makes me slightly biased. :-) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 13:05:17 UT From: Arjan Loeffen \ Organization: C\&L Message-ID: \ Keywords: WWW HTML COMP.TEXT.SGML Subject: WWW pages to comp.text.sgml submissions Dear reader, For some time I've been using the MOSAIC/NETSCAPE browser to access all comp.text.sgml submissions on my local disk by subject line and keyword from subject line. It worked great, and as the files were encoded in HTML, I've put them on the net. The WAIS access to ftp.ifi.uio.no (comp.text.sgml.src) has been discussed in this group. Maybe you should see my web pages a bit differently. 1) You can get an overview of all subject lines. 2) You can follow a thread and a "near thread" through 5 years of c.t.s. 3) You can access the submissions by keywords from the subject line. 4) You don't need a WAIS client program. 5) You can pick up any subject and link it to your own HTML document (e.g., to refer to a thread, or a single submission, or a topic discussed in several submissions). 6) All e-mail addresses of people who where responsible for a submission are inserted (click & reply to sender) The big disadvantage of this is that it will not cover all submissions: now only the submissions of 1990-1994 (inclusive) are available. I will try to update the list every 2 months. All "surrounding" pages are in construction. We don't have much experience with the Web yet. If you are interested, visit: introduction: www.let.ruu.nl/departments/C+L/loeffen/ctsl/ctsintro.htm (short, links to words and subjects) direct to terms from subject line: www.let.ruu.nl/departments/C+L/loeffen/ctsl/ctswords.htm (114 kb) direct to list of all subjects: www.let.ruu.nl/departments/C+L/loeffen/ctsl/cts.htm (254 kb) Example: term is: comp.lang.html? comp.text.sgml? Check terms first. these terms will link to: http://www.let.ruu.nl/departments/C+L/loeffen/ctsl/l0000449.htm htpp://www.let.ruu.nl/departments/C+L/loeffen/ctsl/l0000522.htm Note that you will access the ftp.ifi.uio.no for each submission to be read, and the www.let.ruu.nl for each subject list, term list, or submission list. Our site may undergo some changes. We will avoid having to relocate the files. If we have to do this, it will be notified here. Hope this may be useful to some of you. Arjan. -- Arjan Loeffen Achter de Dom 22-24 +31 30536417 voice work Faculty of Arts 3512JP Utrecht +31 206656463 voice home University of Utrecht The Netherlands +31 30539221 fax work Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 15:46:35 UT From: Will Martin \ Message-ID: <3folsr$lkj@news.cais.com> References: <3fjk4q$32v@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> <3flort$i2n@smtp.tele.fi> Subject: Re: Indexing HTML docs [Christopher Lapkowski[ | I'm looking for a way to index many documents interconnected using | HTML. I would expect to have to somehow mark the words to be indexed | in the documents but then have some tool do the indexing and create an | HTML doc that would allow one to search for the topick or word. | Does anyone have some method for doing this? Thanks. [Pekka Kataja] | Try freeWAIS-sf | more about freeWAIS-sf look at | http://ls6-www.informatik.uni-dortmund.de/freeWAIS-sf/README-sf.html If you're using a Mac server you might also see the MacHTTP documentation. It provides for dynamic AppleScript calls that I believe can be used to generate search results from a document set. It won't of course allow you to index only those words that are most semantically relevant (oops, dare i say anything like that?), but it might be useful anyway. The following is taken from the doc: =============================== MacHTTP Read Me ver 1.1 Searchable Documents You can use the ability to execute scripts to implement searchable documents. The following is an example of an AppleScript that presents a menu to the user and receives search keywords from a WWW client: if http_search_args = "" then return "\\

Please enter the keyword to search for.\

" else if http_search_args = "hello" then return "\

Hello, how are you?\

" else return "\

Sorry, I don't understand '" & http_search_args & "'. Try 'hello' instead.\

" end if http_search_args is a variable that is predefined by MacHTTP, prior to script execution, that contains the search arguments passed by the WWW client. \ is a HTML tag that indicates the following document is searchable. ========================== note that this allows user keywords, although it has other restrictions that might mitigate (?) such flexibility. -- Will Martin Work & Technology Institute Washington DC, USA Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 16:19:46 UT From: "W. Eliot Kimber" \ Organization: Passage Systems, Inc. Message-ID: \ References: <19950117150229ECN3SJK@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU> <3fjipq$rg@public.x.org> Subject: Re: Frame format to SGML/Docbook [Daniel Dardailler] | Hi, is there any business out there doing this kind of filtering? | | I know about FrameBuilder, but I'm looking for something "lighter", | like MifMucker or WebMaker if you know this kind of package, but | generating docbook DTD rather than HTML. Passage Systems provides exactly these filters for a number of our customers (usually as part of a larger effort). Don't provide an off-the-shelf tool for doing this although we could package our technology in a more accessible way if there was sufficient market for it (we don't see our converters as our primary product). Conversion from Frame to Docbook is not a trivial problem, both because of the complexity and variability of Frame and the sophistication of Docbook (as compared to Rainbow or HTML or a similar so-called simple document type). You might have some success with EBT's DynaTag product. It make it pretty easy to do direct one-to-one mappings of word processor and DTP formats to SGML. It's main limitation is no facility for determining the output element based on the context of an input paragraph or character style and no ability to re-order elements, but it is reasonably easy to use. FrameBuilder also includes a "structure recognizer" that might work for this in some cases -- I haven't had a chance to experiment with it. -- \

W. Eliot Kimber (kimber@passage.com) Systems Analyst and HyTime Consultant Passage Systems, Inc., 9971 Quail Blvd., Suite 903, Austin TX 78758 +1 512 339 1400 465 Fairchild Dr., Suite 201, Mountain View, CA 94043, +1 415 390 0911 \

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 16:20:06 UT From: Jonathan Ward \ Organization: The University of Birmingham, UK. Message-ID: \ Subject: Is THE SGML HANBOOK under revision? The SGML Handbook is currently being reprinted in the UK and I have been told that it is quite likely that there is little or no stock in the USA. I have not been able to find out when more will be shipped. Jonathan Ward Oxford University Press wardj@oup.co.uk Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 16:25:10 UT From: Al Hartmann \ Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Austin, TX, USA Message-ID: \ References: <3fjh7f$6a5@oak.zilker.net> Subject: Re: PC Magazine [Tom Boudreau] | For those interested, PC Magazine (Feb 7, 1995 Issue) is full of | information on SGML and the W3. | | Most of the SGML tools are mentioed and overviews are given! You can browse a table of contents to the Feb. 7, 1995 issue at: http://www.pcmag.ziff.com/~pcmag/1403/03toc.htm --Al.Hartmann@AMD.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 19:05:06 UT From: Fred K Weil \ Organization: Private Internet Node Message-ID: <711430138wnr@fred1.demon.co.uk> Subject: SGML Editors for SCO ODT I am looking for SGML editors which run under SCO Open Desktop. Please either follow up this posting or Email me. -- Fred K Weil EMail fredw@fred1.demon.co.uk Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Followup-To: comp.text.frame Date: 20 Jan 1995 19:54:53 UT From: "M. James Bartley" \ Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, Canada Message-ID: <3fp4ed$l3t@bmerhc5e.bnr.ca> References: <1995Jan18.212429.16542@calspan.com> Subject: HTML: FrameBuilder EDDs and SGML attributes [Matthew Stringer] | I am looking for a relatively recent HTML DTD translated into a | FrameBuilder EDD. I used to use Frame 3 heavily and when we got FrameBuilder I started creating an HTML EDD as an exercise in learning Builder's features. This was just for myself and not work-related in any way, though it might have become work-related had it been a success. I stopped when I ran into the issue of how to handle SGML attributes using an EDD. Has a "defacto" approach to handling SGML attributes in Frame EDDs managed to bubble to the surface yet? Just curious. -- M. James Bartley, Bell-Northern Research Ltd. \\ Internet: mjamesb@bnr.ca P.O. Box 3511, Station C, Ottawa, Canada, K1Y 4H7 \\ Phone: +1 613 763 3556 ** Opinions expressed are mine, not BNR's. - MJB ** \\ Fax: +1 613 765 2051 "Stupid pigeons!" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 19:57:01 UT From: "Charles F. Goldfarb" \ Organization: Information Management Consulting Message-ID: <3fp4id$ee0@www.interramp.com> References: \ <1995Jan19.113053.16274@news.uit.no> Subject: Re: Entity questions [Tobias Rischer] | I am incompetent to question 3. I'll try to help. When a record ends with an entity reference, like \&this; the record end follows the refc (reference close) delimiter and the SGML parser makes it available to the application (which typically treats it as a space.) When a record ends with an entity reference like \&this the record end is used by the parser to terminate the entity reference and is not made available to the application. (See p.352 in The SGML Handbook.) -- Charles F. Goldfarb * Information Management Consulting * +1 408 867 5553 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 20:34:50 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan20.203450.5197@ast.saic.com> References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Arjan Loeffen] | 1. The declared value of an SGML attribute may be a name group, and | the default may be #FIXED to any name in the name group. Can you | give me a good example of this construct? How about \ ? | 2. A name token in a name token group of an attribute definition list | can only occur once (Handbook pg. 330, 424). You cannot declared : | The whole idea here is that you cannot minimize the document | instance by leaving out attributes: you wouldn't be able to decide | what was red when "red" was entered as the attribute value. Even | for SHORTTAG NO the construct is invalid. | | Is this position defendable? Is it outdated? I beleive the thinking is that since it must be this way for SHORTTAG YES that it must be this way for all cases because it would be too hard to change the parsing rules as a function of every specifiable option. Defendable or not, it is the standard and will remain so until ammended which I think is unlikely. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 20:35:24 UT From: An Tran \ Organization: University of California Press Message-ID: <3fp6qc$24k@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <1995Jan18.153426.16644@dhnews.dehavilland.ca> Subject: Re: DSSSL Information [David Becke] | I would like to know where I can find information on DSSSL Try: http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html for some pointers ftp://infosrv1.ctd.ornl.gov/pub/sgml/WG8/DSSSL/dsssl.pdf for a PDF version of the DIS (or dsssl.ps for a postscript version) Hope this helps. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 20:38:43 UT From: "M. James Bartley" \ Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, Canada Message-ID: <3fp70j$mnb@bmerhc5e.bnr.ca> References: <199501101831.AA19982@naggum.no> <3fcpajINNdtn@oasys.dt.navy.mil> \ <3fkhq3INNlqc@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Betty Harvey] | Most WWW system administrators think of HTML as just another mark-up | language and the means to the end-result. We need to change this | thinking. Evangelize the necessity to adhere to the structure of HTML | (SGML). I am surprised that I haven't seen any HTML courses (other | than on-line) offered. I bet if an SGML company wanted to make a few $ | a short SGML (HTML) course would be a big hit while serving a valuable | service. There have been two or three courses in HTML here in Ottawa advertised in our local newsgroups by individuals and companies in the past month or so. We're a government town with a good university and computer culture and that might have something to do with it. I don't know how much attention these courses pay to the role of SGML in HTML. Yes, the vast majority of WWW users are happy with the superficial appeal of the WWW as a sexy and easy-to-use thing and don't bother with or care about the further benefits they could get by exploring its full potential ... we're talking about HTML/SGML here, but it also applies to HTTP: most people treat HTTP as a fancy version of FTP and ignore its ability to handle the basics of the full life cycle of information management. If superficial sex appeal will captivate large numbers of users (doesn't take much brains to realize that), then I still think that if there was a basic, free SGML viewer that was as easy to use as the Mosaics and Netscapes of the world so we were able to do "gee-whiz" demonstrations of how SGML offers you the opportunity to find the needles of information in the haystack of data that we're faced with, then SGML could very well acquire the same kind sex appeal that the WWW has today. Hand-in-hand with the availability of such an SGML viewer, the creation of a comp.text.sgml.html (or equivalent) newsgroup in recognition of the volume of traffic concerning HTML would reinforce the fact that HTML is simply SGML and is part of a larger picture that has much value to contribute to our long-term ability to cope with the ever-expanding information society. -- M. James Bartley, Bell-Northern Research Ltd. \\ Internet: mjamesb@bnr.ca P.O. Box 3511, Station C, Ottawa, Canada, K1Y 4H7 \\ Phone: +1 613 763 3556 ** Opinions expressed are mine, not BNR's. - MJB ** \\ Fax: +1 613 765 2051 "Stupid pigeons!" Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 21:49:14 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501202149.AA35140@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <9501171656.AA29405@source.asset.com> <3fkjp2INNmu0@oasys.dt.navy.mil> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Betty Harvey] | I can't comment... Then you do. This should go offline. I cite personal (eyewitness) experience in CALS and SGML concepts back to the drafts 1840 and 8879. Who cares? My point to Bob is that if we use the excuses of "no implementations" and "there those committees go again" to not begin to consider DSSSL in our application designs we will indeed hold things up. Been there. Done that. Don't care to do it again. | I beg to disagree, MIL-M-28001 is a Military Standard. Only in DoDspeak. In the semantics of SGML, it is an application or pieces of one. A major source of confusion in CALS has been whether the community was writing standards or applications. Call them performance standards to protect them from the Perry memo if you must to control your own destiny, but in the context of an SGML technical discussion, they are applications of SGML. | Untrue. Granted that the vendors haven't embraced the FOSI concept but | there are several vendors who have based the composition on the Output | Specification. You skirt the issue. If DoD mandates ArborText, CALS fails. If DoD mandates SoftQuad, CALS fails. If DoD mandates Acrobat, CALS fails. | Even if DSSSL proves to be a better solution, it will be years before | applications are developed. IMO, about two. It is technically sound and elegant. That eases the development problems tremendously. If technical problems remain with the standard, it should not pass the upcoming ballot. Otherwise, implementation can take place quickly. | What is important to remember is that the OS was developed to solve | problems of paper publishing. Paper publishing is still a requirement, | however, I think you will see the emphasis being put towards electronic | publishing and printing-on-demand rather than publishing Technical | Manuals from beginning to end. True. DSSSL can handle both. That's why it is interesting. | However, there are some books that can never be useful in this realm. One can do some neat things with annotations, cross-references, histories of Margaret Mitchell, snippets from the movie, spoken dialog etc. The reason for online media is to get beyond the book metaphor. It takes creative thinking. To do that, one must be free to create and not be caged by a tagging standard. So unless the laptop signals the fly-by-wire system to begin a barrel role or thrust reversal.... |-) Of course, writing interactive novels and producing IETMs are very different activities. There is little *creative freedom* in the latter and in most cases, there shouldn't be. | I don't think SGML will die, but it does have some problems. Mainly cost. True, but the transition has begun. The cost of pieces of the solution have come down dramatically as systems with adequate functionality and sometimes zero cost have forced them to. The impact of SGMLS was phenomenal in this regard. Better integrated systems without all of the *awkward* interfaces are required. As long as SGML systems are *awkward* they will remain unpopular. Sad but so. len Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 22:33:39 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950120T223339Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <19950117T040843Z.enag@naggum.no> <3fj5os$o9r@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Glenda Jeffrey] | Right now, ArborText is our top pick, mainly because of the equation | capability (anybody know of any others?). I'm wondering about the | following statement in ArborText's whitepaper "Getting Started with | SGML" (aka pap with which to convince your boss): | | "The FOSI and DSSSL standards groups are working together to ensure | a conversion path from FOSI to DSSSL so that systems developed to | accept a FOSI will be in a good position to accept DSSSL." | | What do you folks make of this? Is it complete bull? If we start | developing FOSIs, and DSSSL gets off the ground, will we be left high | and dry? I have been trying to find out more about this supposed FOSI and DSSSL work, and all I can say is that if it is happening, it must be informal or occurring outside the channels to which I have access. I'm not sure about a "conversion path", but as those of us who have tried to say anything about an SGML document in declarative languages will know, it is the left side of the transformation rules (location -> action) that is hard to pin down and get right. that is, once you find out where there are differences in the actions to be performed, how you actually specify those actions is nearly trivial. the differences will be in the varying degrees of granularity that differing languages and approaches offer. the actions will have to depend on your application system, and they will most likely change frequently. this is one of the reasons why LINK in SGML is a good idea, despite having no application semantics. (this is not obvious.) the current state of affairs is a little complicated. LINK specifies locations through the parents and left siblings of an element, essentially from the top downwards, notably such that a link rule can have no other effect than to select other rules further down in the structure. FOSI uses a different approach, which associates an element with a certain context, essentially from the bottom up, notably such that the elements selected with be associated with immediate actions, not the deferral that LINK provides. DSSSL provides, as far as I can see, both top-downward rules and bottom-up patterns in the above mentioned senses, more conveniently than either. (a parenthetical note on link: it does support an "implied" source for an element, technically allowing "queries" to match anywhere in the tree, and also allows more than one link rule to apply to a given element, to be selected by the application. getting this to work requires cooperation with the application (understatement), effectively making the application become the query resolution engine, which is not a good idea.) if you can do it with FOSI, stay with FOSI. if you find that you think "there _must_ be a better way" and call upon the dark forces so eloquently described by H.P.Lovecraft, then DSSSL is most probably going to be a force more acceptable to your colleagues, as well as a more effective one. #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 20 Jan 1995 23:58:25 UT From: Mike Meyer \ Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Message-ID: <19950120.74416A0.E56E@contessa.phone.net> References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3ff16b$gve@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> <3fmo14$677@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> Subject: Re: Rant on HTML extensions (Was: Ubiquity of Netscape (Mozilla Eats the World)) [Mike Meyer] | We're already seeing that. Someone pointed out that with the Mozilla | extensions people are tempted to use \ & \ in lieue of the | existing \ tags. This means that tools that index headers, or build | tables of contents, or whatever, don't work properly. [Frank Peters] | Such tools will very probably never be useful for the web. They were | mostly useless for the web long before Mozilla was born. They were fairly useful before Mozilla came along, though more extensions like those from Netscape could change that. Even more importantly, they are still useful to people who care about issues larger than how their documents look in one particular browser in one particular configuration. Whether they will continue to be useful depends on how blindly accept extensions that were slapped onto the spec with no though about how they would affect anything other than the presentation. | [H? tag abuses examples] Yes, people have been abusing those tags for a while, fostered by using only a single browser that tried to make any random garbage you fed it look good, with no menu entry that pointed to documentation on what was and was not legal HTML. So what? People have been running over things with cars for 100 years. I don't think anyone seriously advocated giving up, and padding all the roadways so people could run into things with impunity. Instead, you work on making the cars safer. | Misuse of tags will continue until you either | | 1) Change human nature so that authors don't want to control the look | of their documents except where the markup allows it. Or | | 2) Include markup in html for every type of element that occurs in | every type of document known to man so that there is an appropriate | tag to do everything that I want to do. You completely missed the point. Even if you manage to do #2, people are still going to abuse the markup. That's going to be a fact of life, and you have to design for it. That's part of why extensions slapped on to solve the problem of the moment are a bad idea. Creating a DTD that works for a all users (which is what this is all about) requires a lot of work, starting with finding out what ALL those users want. If people are willing to do the work, solutions can be found that don't weaken the illusion the presentation-first crowd has about controlling the display, while at the same time leaving the content-first crowd capable of doing the jobs they want to get done. Given the choice between fighting the good fight, surrendering the field, or rolling in the muck on the field, I'm going to fight the good fight. \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 01:32:52 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T013252Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ Subject: Re: What IS Canon? [Jann VanOver] | I'm having a discussion with a co-worker about what is "canonized" | SGML. I haven't heard "canonized", but I frequently refer to "canonical" SGML myself. I assume it's the same thing. | Is there a list somewhere of the qualities that make an instance | "canonized"? not that I know of. however, it's an interesting question, and borders on an issue that I have spent some time on. it goes like this: suppose we regard SGML as the external representation of "something". we can read that "something" in from an SGML file, and according to our parsing model, we will get a bunch of useful stuff from it, which is broadly up to the application to define. now, suppose we want to write that "something" back to a file for later perusal. this is where a "canonical" form would come in very handy. one of the more important results is that it would define an "equality operator" between two instances that could be implemented as a simple string/file compare. this is useful for regression testing, and for finding out what a program did to the information you fed it. another important result is the ability to allow editors to make consistent-looking changes to SGML documents, instead of being forced to obey the input character by character. one may desire to have an SGML editor that will not change more than explicitly you ask it to, but in practice this creates many very difficult problems. a "canonical" form would alleviate most of those problems. | Can someone please help me with this definition? A spec reference? A | book section? I don't know. the question is also related to a question of "good SGML style", and there aren't much documentation on what that is. one could easily argue that a "canonical" form would be without superfluous whitespace or minimization, but that wouldn't be very readable. then one could argue that a "canonical" form would apply certain simple rules to whitespace and minimization, perhaps ruled by the SGML declaration, but then it becomes a less than obvious issue, again. "pretty-printing" is often done in Lisp to obtain human-readable forms, and a "print" function produces "canonical" output. a long-standing issue here is preservation of comments, and SGML has to worry about marked sections, too. you certainly don't want your SGML-writing application to discard ignored marked sections or comments, and may not want it to mess with the conditional inclusion, either. then we're back to the "preserve the input string form", and I threw in the towel at this point. I note that some SGML editors quietly enforce a "canonical" form of their own. they haven't made any particular effort to document it as such, and maybe that wasn't necessary, either, but perhaps the revised SGML standard should say something on this topic. I'd like to see functions to read and write SGML the way, say, Common Lisp `read' and `write' functions do, in order for programs to process SGML documents without bothering too much with the actual syntax. I realize there's a significant number of worms in this can, but do anybody (else) want to open it? #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 01:44:40 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T014440Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> <3fmpth$rmt@aimnet.aimnet.com> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Michael Leventhal] | Of course, if you really want to do this you'll probably pick a | modeling language that has better support for inheritance. hmmm. how much work would it be to make SGML that modeling language? do we want it to be? | It [name group member collision prevention] is outdated and no one will | defend it. Just wait for the five-year revision in ... since the whole idea is to allow minimization to work with a sub-minimum of intelligence in the parser, you can obtain reasonable results by prefixing the name of the attribute to the name of the name group member, increase the NAMELENgth quantity, and omit the "attribute=" part in the tags, essentially replacing "foo=bar" with "foo-bar". I think this would be a reasonable fall-back solution while still allowing experimentation with an obvious improvement to the standard that we all expect to see adopted. I wouldn't bet any money on the revision of the standard occurring any time soon, though. I'm also wary of any rush in that process now that we have stalled so long that those who had ideas for change have largely given up. above all, confidence in the revision process needs to be regained before those will consider it useful to again contribute to it. #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 11:04:21 UT From: Tim Bray \ Organization: Open Text Message-ID: \ References: <3fmr7g$baf@argo.hks.com> \ Subject: Re: Q: SGML Indexing software [Glenda Jeffrey] | Anybody know of any decent (or halfway decent) indexing software that | will work on an SGML document? [Peter W Meyer] | OpenText, at Waterloo, Ontario Canada | Ph: +1 519 571 7111 | Fax: +1 519 571 9092 We moved. That's Open Text, +1 519 888 9910, Fax +1 519 888 0677, info@opentext.com Cheers, Tim Bray, Open Text (tbray@opentext.com) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 12:18:42 UT From: Tobias Rischer \ Organization: University of Tromsoe Message-ID: <1995Jan21.121842.18830@news.uit.no> References: <3fndq7$hc6@gti.gti.net> Subject: Re: SGML ISO-8879 How do you use it??? [Howard Schoenberger] | [...] they are actually in some format called SGML that follows | ISO-8879 format - does anyone know what this format is and how I can | read it? Is there an easy way to covert it to ascii, or wordperfect, | wri, ....anything more standard??? oh, oh -- this is too beautiful to be true. Honestly, Howard, you wrote the best contribution I've ever seen on this list! If you're not just making fun, I'm looking forward to the replies -- it's somehow like someone walking in at MicroSoft and asking: "Look, friends, I've bought a computer, and it's got this strange program called `DOS' on it -- copyright says it comes from you. Any idea what THAT is?" To answer your question, SGML _is_ quite standard (it has an ISO number, after all: WordPerfect doesn't). But if you want to actually _read_ it, you'll have to convert it. There are big and small tools for all the lots of things you can do with SGML -- so you have to face the choice: Do you want to swim these fascinating oceans, but swallow water for a while: then follow the newsgroup, buy some books, etc... If you just got this damned text messed up with all kinds of funny \ \s and you just want to make approximate sense of what the real text is: remove the headers and everything between <>'s (by some automated method, with a small program or something) -- the result won't be beautiful, but readable. Hope to see more answers :-) Tobias -- : Tobias Rischer : Tunveien 9 A21 : email: : 9018 TROMSOE : tobiasr@stud.cs.uit.no : NORGE : (rischer@informatik.tu-muenchen.de) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 14:36:36 UT From: Arjen Zonnevijlle \ Organization: Access for all Message-ID: \ Subject: Q; VRML, where? I'm sorry to post this Q here. But I'm looking for more information by usenet about VRML. I can't find a newsgroup for it. Does somebody know the right one? Please mail me. Sorry for the posting. This Q is not a subject for this group. Met vriendelijke groeten, Best regards, -- Arjen Zonnevijlle, Amsterdam, The Netherlands - arjzon@xs4all.nl - apz@dds.nl (Amsterdam's Free-Net 'The Digital City' ) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 21:03:10 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T210310Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> <1995Jan20.203450.5197@ast.saic.com> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Bob Agnew] | I beleive the thinking is that since it must be this way for SHORTTAG | YES that it must be this way for all cases because it would be too hard | to change the parsing rules as a function of every specifiable option. | Defendable or not, it is the standard and will remain so until amended | which I think is unlikely. there are two ways to view this. first, the current understanding, is that name tokens in name groups share a single namespace and that name collisions are therefore forbidden. once the parser sees a name or name token, it will know whence it came, either by checking the next lexical token, which might be the value indicator, in which case it is an attribute name, or the next lexical token is not the value indicator, and therefore the name token is a member of a name group that is uniquely associated with its attribute. minimization is therefore trivial to implement. second, the understanding that is very likely to win favor with the revised standard, is that each name group forms an individual name space. once the parser sees a name or name token, it will look for the value indicator as before, and if not found, will search the namespaces. now, the difference: if the name (token) exists in more than one namespace, then it is an error _not_ to specify the attribute name and value indicator. implementing the second method is not very different from the first, since name collisions are detectable at compile-time and instead of a reference to the attribute, it may contain a value that says that it is an error to omit the attribute name and value indicator. an example may help to illuminate the difference. \ this is illegal according to the current understanding. the "solution" to prefix color names with some random code, even though you do not allow minimized attribute specification lists, is clearly inferior to requiring that if you wish to use "yellow", you must specify which yellow you mean: \ => \ \ \ (there are still ways to deduce it from the other attributes: \ => \ \ => \ \ => \ but this doesn't ring well with the already excessively simplistic ambiguity rules in SGML.) there are other issues that make it highly desirable to have separate name spaces and to allow minimization only when there are no possible conflicts. conclusion: there is no reason to restrict the unminimized form to that which is allowed in the minimized form, and many good reasons to restrict the minimized form to the unminimized form if the minimized form would be ambiguous. as far as revision goes, lifting the restriction has no possible impact on conforming documents according to the existing standard, so none of the reasons not to accept an amendment apply. #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 21 Jan 1995 21:54:27 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T215427Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ <19950115T151650Z.enag@naggum.no> \ \ \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | I did not say that it does. But the best solution _can_ win and | sometimes _does_ win. Therefore it is wrong to either give in to the | bad solution prematurely or to decide to "keep the good solution for | yourself" and allow the bad solution to win in the larger market. | These two attitudes are the primary reasons that the bad solution often | wins out. (i.e., "Unix can never beat DOS, so why bother making it | usable to compete" or "DOS is going to win anyways so why bother | agitating for change?") I have gone through our exchange and that of you with others, and I cannot for the life of me find any reference to any such argument as you so vociferously denounce. nobody disagrees with your strawman argument. we disagree (violently) that the good is only possible if used by the masses (keeping the good to ourselves is bad), and that pointing out flaws in products are not effective in making people stop and think about something they didn't think about before. those who mimic others will have to stop mimicking the bad others, and you can't make them stop by offering a good product that those "relevant others" are not using. you can perhaps make them stop by telling them that the tools they are using are broken and that they need other tools. telling them that tool X is better than their current tool is a waste of time if they are happy with their current tools. maybe I have just explained to myself why the advertising in the personal computer world is so disgusting. hmmm. #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 22:35:05 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T223505Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <3fdbr8$q8e@gagme.wwa.com> <3ff16b$gve@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> <3fh7gd$psj@mindcrime.interstate.net> <19950118.73F56F0.AF23@contessa.phone.net> <3fmo14$677@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu> <19950120.74416A0.E56E@contessa.phone.net> Subject: Re: Rant on HTML extensions (Was: Ubiquity of Netscape (Mozilla Eats the World)) [Mike Meyer] | Creating a DTD that works for a all users (which is what this is all | about) requires a lot of work, starting with finding out what ALL those | users want. this cannot succeed, no matter how hard you try. making an extensible DTD is the way to go, and then you need a programming language to associate semantics with elements. i.e., full SGML with DSSSL. | If people are willing to do the work, solutions can be found that don't | weaken the illusion the presentation-first crowd has about controlling | the display, while at the same time leaving the content-first crowd | capable of doing the jobs they want to get done. this requires a fundamental understanding of the desirability of separating a user interface from the underlying functionality. once this is established, the rest follows. if anything, the current (popular) browsers follow the trend of making the underlying functionality inaccessible except through a hard-wired user interface. this is probably so because if you invest (lots of) time and money in making a language that people can use and understand with the ease we hope for, somebody who is smarter than you marketing-wise will copy it and will be able to sell products at a far lower price than you, while possibly breaking the spine of your design. hmmm, maybe software patents are a good idea, after all, correctly applied. #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 21 Jan 1995 23:29:10 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950121T232910Z.enag@naggum.no> References: \ Subject: Re: Entity questions [Arthur Ogawa] | My question in the abstract is, does a diacritical entity signify a | postfix diacritical modifier? I would have thought that it represented | the diacritical mark in isolation, but maybe I'm wrong. there is nothing in the standard or in the appendices that says anything either way. thus, it is up to the formatting application to decide how to process diacritical entities. this is the same issue as applies to the character to glyph mapping, except that it is (should be) possible to document this behavior better. the morale of the story is not to use the "standard" entities, but define your own which has the intended semantics. | \˙x seemed intended to mean "x with a dot over it". I think this is | not correct usage. Am I right? the "dot above" only means that, and whether diacritical marks follow or precede their intended target has been subject to much heated discussion. ISO 10646 has become a functionally crippled standard because it required that "combining" characters follow their non-"combining" target, such that you don't actually know which character you have read until you have read far enough beyond it to find a non-"combining" character. this makes certain stateless file I/O operations much harder to accomplish cleanly, such as keyboard input, which cannot return a character until you press the next character, and then only if that is a non-"combining" one. brilliant. (in all fairness, other solutions exist, but formatting languages and character set standards are different worlds. which of these SGML entities are intended to model is not known with certainty.) #\ -- a "memory leak" is a black hole from which no C++ programmer escapes. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 22 Jan 1995 14:13:55 UT From: Paul Grosso \ Message-ID: <9501221413.AA15680@texcel.no.texcel.no> Subject: DSSSL & FOSI To recap this thread (pardon the necessary glossing over of details as I capture admittedly only part of each person's previous posting): 1. Bob Agnew considers that DSSSL has impeded the progress of SGML and wishes FOSIs had "won out." 2. Len Bullard says that FOSI (that is, the Output Specification or OS) is an application of SGML, not a standard; that the OS was a stopgap application developed while waiting for DSSSL; that there was an overlap of people working on the OS and DSSSL (and kindly mentions myself and Paula Angerstein as examples); that FOSIs have been implemented by two vendors while the rest waited for DSSSL. 3. Erik Naggum speaks of companies out there who try to destroy DSSSL to protect their own interests (and thoughtfully adds that he's not speaking of those who have implemented FOSIs). 4. Glenda Jeffrey quotes some of ArborText's whitepaper "pap" about how the FOSI and DSSSL standards groups are working together to ensure a conversion path from FOSI to DSSSL and wonders if she'll be left high and dry if she goes with FOSIs (or more specifically, with ArborText) and then DSSSL gets off the ground. The SGML standard (ISO 8879) does not define a formatting language. For SGML-encoded information to get composed, various application semantics (e.g., style sheets in the simplest case) must be associated with the various markup constructs used to encode the given information. There are various ways to do this, and to date almost all of them have been "proprietary" -- by that I mean developed and used by a single for-profit company. In theory, there is really nothing inherently wrong with this, and SGML has been used to great advantage for almost a decade with mostly proprietary methods of attaching (formatting and other) semantics. However, way back before 8879 was passed in 1986, it was realized that a standard way of attaching (at least formatting) semantics to SGML applications was a worthwhile thing, and work toward the standard which later became known as Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) began at the ISO standards level. Meanwhile, in the late 1980's a lot of SGML-related action in the US was concentrated on the US government's CALS initiative. The CALS Industry Steering Group's Electronic Publishing Committee (EPC) became the key driving force behind the development of the CALS standard called MIL-M-28001, "Markup Requirements and Generic Style Specification for Electronic Printed Output and Exchange of Text." It was realized at the time by members of the EPC that CALS would benefit from agreeing on a standard way to describe and interchange "style and format requirements." It was also realized that the DSSSL effort, with its complex international and wide-ranging scope, would be a while in coming, so the EPC formed an OS subcommittee to develop an Output Specification that addressed the smaller scope of specifying the formatting of documents with composition requirements that were defined mostly by US government technical manuals. It was assumed that CALS would use FOSIs until DSSSL could be evaluated for possible (in fact, probable) CALS use. Several members of the original OS committee were also members of the ISO DSSSL committee, and the overlap between the committees has continued to varying degrees through to today. The OS was developed by a multi-vendor industry committee. For whatever reasons, many companies that participated in the development of the OS did not create products that supported the OS. Many companies indicated that they were "waiting for DSSSL" (though it is interesting to note that many of those vendors with proprietary methods of attaching formatting semantics to SGML-encoded information were not participating on the DSSSL committee whereas the two commercial vendors who now support FOSIs were both represented on the DSSSL committee for most of its existence). In the late 1980's when ArborText was designing its editor and composition tools that could handle any SGML DTD, we had to address the issue of attaching formatting semantics to arbitrary SGML markup. Our choices at the time were to do something proprietary or to use the OS defined in MIL-M-28001. While the latter wasn't/isn't an International Standard, it was/is a US government standard and was (and, in fact, remains with the exception of the DSSSL Draft International Standard published last fall) the only non-proprietary option. ArborText decided in favor of the OS and since that time has been actively involved in both the EPC/OS standards process and the DSSSL standards process. We continue to work on the OS standard; an important milestone has just been finalized (amendment 1 to MIL-M-28001B), and cooperation among the various implementors of FOSI-based composition systems has dramatically increased over the last year. Meanwhile, along with many of the experts in the SGML area, ArborText in general and myself in particular are very interested in DSSSL. I was one of the key instigators of the SGML Open/WWW effort to develop a practical DSSSL subset (known as DSSSL Lite) that could form a basis for specifying simple formatting semantics that would be usable by SGML vendors as well as Web browsers, and ArborText has plans to add some subset DSSSL support in its upcoming releases. The CALS community plans to develop its own subset of DSSSL with generally equivalent functionality to the current OS. Since, by definition, every single ArborText customer is a FOSI user, and since we are heavily involved in the development of DSSSL, it is clearly in our best interest to support FOSI users with respect to the transition to DSSSL. We plan to make the use of DSSSL by our customers as painless as possible, and our ongoing work on both standards as helped to ensure that this will be feasible. It will take some effort before DSSSL use is widespread, and I still believe that effective use of FOSIs will continue for some time. ArborText is committed to supporting its customers' use of standards such as the OS and DSSSL that improve the interoperability of SGML. In summary, FOSIs are good, DSSSL has the potential (and every expectation) to be better, the transition is feasible and of crucial importance to vendors such as ArborText, and I believe the progress of SGML continues to the benefit of a very large and rapidly growing community. paul -- Paul Grosso VP Research, ArborText, Inc. Chief Technical Officer, SGML Open Chairperson, OS/FOSI/DSSSL subcommittee of the CALS EPC Member, ISO JTC1/SC18/WG8 (the SGML/HyTime/SPDL/DSSSL working group) Email: paul@arbortext.com or pbg@texcel.no Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 22 Jan 1995 17:45:14 UT From: Terry Allen \ Organization: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Message-ID: <3fu5ja$j3c@ruby.ora.com> Subject: Entities for Transliteration of Arabic? As cheap SGML viewing technology appears to be coming to market soon, I am contemplating converting a long work in progress on Islamic architecture, now written in Tex, to SGML. Only contemplating, but still ... In the transliteration of Arabic to the Latin alphabet, I need several characters (or glyph combinations, as you like) not found in the ISO character entity sets -- I think. These are for dot-under diacriticals, as in Muhammad . (to represent it crudely), and the glottal stop consonant, ayn, sometimes rendered as a single left quote: `Ali. The other characters needed (vowels with macrons) are already available. Conceivably I could use a single combining glyph for dot-under, but it seems just as easy and maybe more useful to define entities for all the underdotted characters. I append a test file showing the entities I think I need. Does this approach make sense? have I overlooked an easier one? has anyone already done this? are two-letter entity names (easy to type) dangerously short? \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ ]> \ \\\\

Henry Churchyard \

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• \To send me e-mail.\\
• \Documentation on my \htmlchek\ HTML error-checker (\awk/perl\).\\

\\ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 16:35:24 UT From: Lloyd Rutledge \ Organization: UMass-Lowell Computer Science Message-ID: <3g5ukc$bvl@ulowell.uml.edu> References: \ Keywords: SGML, Multimedia, HyTime Subject: Re: SGML and Multimedia Applications [Bernie Scholz] | Has anyone out there done any work with representing multimedia | documents/applications (e.g., the kind of applications you can create | using Authorware, Aimtech IconAuthor, or Asymetix ToolBook) using an | SGML markup? My research group, the UMass Lowell Distributed Multimedia Systems Laboratory, has done some research in this area. In particular, we've developed just this kind of multimedia application, and it processes documents in a HyTime-conforming format. We have published some papers on this work, and postscript files for some of them are available at ftp://imgftp.uml.edu/pub/hytime/. | Does anyone know if these companies or ones like them are thinking SGML | (an if they are, what they are thinking)? I have heard that Aimtech IconAuthor is considering an implementation of SGML into their products, but I have not heard and details of the nature of this implementation.n Lloyd -- Lloyd Rutledge Distributed Multimedia Systems Laboratory Computer Science Department University of Massachusetts One University Avenue Lowell, MA 01854 USA voice: +1 508 934 3554 fax: +1 508 452 4298 email: lrutledg@cs.uml.edu Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 17:42:42 UT From: S. R. Mounce \ Organization: University of Bradford, UK Message-ID: <1995Jan25.174242.15367@bradford.ac.uk> Subject: Help finding SMDL Does anyone know where the latest version of the Standard Music Description Language (SMDL), a SGML application, can be obtained? I have the Journal of Development which is dated 1988, but I suspect this is well out of date. Cheers, Steve. S.R.Mounce@bradford.ac.uk Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 21:35:49 UT From: Kathy DeAngelo \ Message-ID: <199501252135.AA06655@interlock.mgh.com> Subject: Need FastTAG help Looking for FastTAG users We have gone through all the user tutorials and the documentation and are trying to get started on what looks like a fairly simple conversion project. Very structured-looking ASCII documents. Are there any other FastTAG users out there doing something similar? Kim King/Kathy DeAngelo Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 22:51:28 UT From: "Frederick R. Phelan Jr." \ Organization: NIST Message-ID: <3g6klg$nrp@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Compare: Frame w/ Corel Ventura 5 Has anybody used both FrameMaker 4 and CorelVENTURA 5 ... I recently read a comparison of features and Corel stacks up very well. Not only that, it costs less, comes bundled with a number of other application tools and read/writes SGML. I would be interested in finding out how user friendly and usable it is ... I have always been less than impressed with CorelDRAW, but maybe becuse we were using it on an old, somewhat slow 386. Comments appreciated. Fred -- Fred Phelan Polymer Composites National Institute of Standards and Technology ---------------------------------------------- e-mail .... fred@poly2.nist.gov Frederick.Phelan@nist.gov Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 23:09:42 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3g6lnm$nol@argo.hks.com> Subject: DocBook TOCs? Please help me settle a question about DocBook before I go and invest (waste?) a bunch of time learning it. One person told me that using the DocBook DTD precludes automatic generation of things like tables of contents. Another person has told me this is not true. Who's right and who's wrong? Thanks! -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 25 Jan 1995 23:41:34 UT From: Dave Peterson \ Organization: ACM Network Services Message-ID: <3g6nje$gta@hopper.acm.org> References: <1995Jan24.195407.6102@tower> Subject: Re: Superscript/Subscript Entity Ref's [Tony Harrison] | I will be quick and to the point. I have an ISO Standard 8879 before | me. And I cannot for the life of me find where the Entity References | for superscript and subscript are. There is a sup1, sup2, and sup3 on | page 121, but no description. I've not found any subscript entity | reference. The AAP ER's are sup and inf, respectively. The entity references you are looking at/for are for single special characters. "Superscript 2" is a single character. There are more special characters out there than anyone has wished to exhaustively catalog, but nothing prevents you from making up your own names for them -- just be sure your SGML software is versatile enough to be able to be told how to present them. On the other hand, "superscript" is not a character, not even a string of characters. Its a typographic abstract: a display process that can be applied to characters. It makes not sense to talk about entities for such a thing. AAP's "sup" is (if I remember correctly; it's been a while) an element type whose semantic role is prescribed to be that the content of an element of that type should be displayed using that "superscript" display process. This means that any characters placed inside a \ ^{element should be displayed as superscripts. (And, of course, the same applies for "subscript" and "sub".) The point being that AAP doesn't use entities for super/subscripts, they use elements, and they have introduced two element types to do so. Newcomers often have trouble sorting out these three different concepts. Hope my example, with its careful terminology, will shed some light on the difference. Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org} Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 00:56:14 UT From: Erik Naggum \ Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313 Message-ID: <19950126T005614Z.enag@naggum.no> References: <1995Jan8.160411.171673@eros.embl-heidelberg.de> <3g0dk1$oor@argo.hks.com> \ Subject: Re: [Q]SGML tools: SGML-edit, ->TeX ->HTML [Paul Prescod] | What _exactly_ is the problem? The SGML editor getting in the way of | typing, or the requirement to markup getting in the way of typing? The | SGML editor problem will go away. You will eventually be able to make | an SGML editor tailored for their job. The requirement to mark up will | not. Although they will eventually be able to markup in a wysiwyg, | visual, object-oriented, drag-n-drop manner (enough buzzwords?), they | will still have to mark up. because structure is a product, not a process. from watching everything from casual writers to highly acclaimed expert writers, I conclude that seemingly random refinement and experimentation are both essential to written communication. bondage & discipline editors, including those for programming languages that don't allow temporary, invalid syntax on the way to valid syntactic structures, stifle the experimentative phase of writing, and enforce an order on the refinement that detracts rather than helps. one way to think of the effects of the B\&D editors is to consider the load on the writer if he were to select the sentence structure (by name or menu choice) before being allowed to fill in the words. #\ -- miracle of miracles. look what the Net dragged in. Newsgroups: triangle.wanted,comp.org.decus,comp.text.frame,misc.writing,comp.text.sgml,comp.text.interleaf Date: 26 Jan 1995 01:29:34 UT From: Jim Hines \ Message-ID: <3g6ttu$643@mercury.interpath.net> Subject: Call for SMEs Call for Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs). Are you interested in working with a technical writing student to assist you in your document development needs? For their final project, students from the Durham Technical Community College Software Technical Writing Program will be producing documentation for local companies. In the past, project topics have included software manuals and tutorials as well as other types of documentation. The length is 20 to 50 pages. If you are an SME in any technical area and would like to take advantage of this opportunity, call Jim Hines at 598-9418 or jimhines@mercury.interpath.net. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 06:00:36 UT From: "Don R. Day" \ Organization: Real/Time Communications - Bob Gustwick and Associates Message-ID: <3g7dq7$vi@giga.bga.com> References: <1995Jan24.195407.6102@tower> \ <3g5uai$ll3@curly.cc.utexas.edu> Subject: Re: Superscript/Subscript Entity Ref's [Henry Churchyard] | Actually, these are characters in the ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 standard, | hardly "bygone". Shouldn't subscripts and superscripts be handled | mainly with elements, not entities (pretty much anything can be | sub/super, such as eta, aleph-null, etc. etc.)? As typesetting semantics, these can be applied to the presentation of element content and attribute value literals through a style mechanism (as I wish Netscape had done instead of introducing center, blink, and font presentational "tags"). Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 06:20:46 UT From: Don R. Day \ Organization: Real/Time Communications - Bob Gustwick and Associates Message-ID: <3g7evu$vi@giga.bga.com> References: <0098AFF021004F60.000009AE@software-ag.de> Subject: Re: Where to get a "loose" HTML DTD... [Jack Shaw] | The SoftQuad manual (for HoTMetaL tells me to phone up and ask for | something called the "loose DTD". I'm guessing that this would let | HoTMetaL "like" my files. Questions are: | | 1. Is this assumption right? Yes. The DTD distributed with the freebie HoTMetaL does not allow character data within the body element. Usually you find that a paragraph following a heading lacks a \

tag; add that and try opening again. Some Web documents defy the loosest DTD! | 2. If so, where can I get the loose DTD when (as is the case) SoftQuad | doesn't answer my plea? Is the loose DTD to be had elsewhere? Drop an e-mail to support@sq.com. Support for a freebie is lower on anybody's list than support for cash customers, so use the time to look for other markup "gotchas" in those documents that you can fix by hand or filter. | Oh, and a postscript: I've been told that I can run NCSA's DOS HTTPD as | a server against Mosaic on the same PC (in this case, a laptop), | providing I use the "nullsock" pseudo-winsock in the 32-bit | Windows/MS-DOS environ's.--True? And again, where does one get | "nullsock" or whatever? Or am I deluding myself here... . EINet's WinWeb and IBM Warp's WebExplorer both run standalone, convenient for reading web files on the plane. -- Don R. Day donday@bga.com (hobby mail and WWW access) donday@vnet.ibm.com (document systems analyst) xjht47a@prodigy.com (get Warped at OS/2 Club) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 06:34:06 UT From: Truly Donovan \ Organization: La Lunemere Message-ID: \ References: <1995Jan24.195407.6102@tower> \ <3g5uai$ll3@curly.cc.utexas.edu> <3g7dq7$vi@giga.bga.com> Subject: Re: Superscript/Subscript Entity Ref's [Henry Churchyard] | Actually, these are characters in the ISO 8859-1 Latin 1 standard, | hardly "bygone". I don't know of any reason to believe that the Latin 1 standard doesn't carry any ancient baggage of its own. You wouldn't today design a system that only supported the numeric characters as superscripts and didn't allow any other characters in superscripts and didn't support subscripts at all, but there have been such systems -- I don't know if the Latin 1 standard is a cause or an effect of such systems, but I do know that the result is next to useless. Truly Donovan Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 08:50:18 UT From: Dick Kaas \ Organization: ACCU Message-ID: \ Subject: creating forms under html For those who are interrested I created a AFC (Automatic Forms Creator) it is a very simple tool for those who: - are proposing questions to there www readers by FORMS. - get tired of typing complete INPUT tags including response names What does AFC. - It converts normal text into HTML+ - It converts simple instructions (rtf like) into HTML tags. i.e. .eq [level] takes care of OL tags including counts .rb takes care of creating various radiobutton INPUT tags .cb same for checkboxes etc. You want to see something it created? try: url=http://pablo.bru.ruu.nl en click IRIS. etc. So far the program is only available in Think Pascal but I will convert it to C. If you are interrested please let me know. Dick d.kaas@cc.ruu.nl -- Dick Kaas Academic Computer Centre Utrecht tel +31 30 531445/531474 fax +31 30 531633 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 09:13:04 UT From: Lian Chien-chin \ Organization: Institute for Information Industry, Taiwan Message-ID: <3g7p30$pe6@aladdin.iii.org.tw> Summary: Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics. Subject: Call For Papers TITLE:ROCLING VIII objetive: CALL FOR PAPERS Sponsored by: The ROC Computational Linguistics Society Information Technology Research Center, Yuan-Ze Institute of Technology. Tutorial Date: August 17, 1995 Conference Dates: August 18-19, 1995 Conference Venue: Yuan-Ze Institue of Technology, Chung-Li, Taiwan, ROC Scope: Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics, including, but not limited to the following. syntax/semantics large text corpora phonetics/phonology electronic dictionaries parsing/generation document database morphology machine translation discourse natural language interface text processing dialogue systems cognitive linguistics electronic books language understanding SGML tools and applications speech analysis/synthesis Hytime tools and applications quantitative/qualitative linguistics DSSSL tools and applications mathematical linguistics ODA tools and applications contrastive linguistics Paper Submission: Four copies of a preliminary version of a full paper (maximum 25 letter-or A4-sized pages, double spaced throughout) in English or Chinese should be sent to the following address. The first page of the submitted paper should bear the following information: the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), affiliations, (email) address for correspondence. All these items should be properly centered on top, with a short abstract of the paper following. Shinn-Shi Cheng Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering. National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan EMAIL: \ FAX: +886 2 3628167 Important Dates: Preliminary paper submission due: June 15,1995 Notification of acceptance: July 10, 1995 Camera-ready copy due: July 25,1995 Conference Chairman: Shy-Ming Ju (Yuan-Ze) Program Committee: Shinn-Shi Chen (National Taiwan University, chair) Shiuh Wang (National Tsing Hua University) Junn-Fa Wang (National Cheng Kung University) Shyi-Jian Li (National Chiao-Tung University) Keh-jiann Chen (Acade Mia Sinica) Jiu-ren Hwang (Acade Mia Sinica) Shiuan-Fann Hwang (National Taiwan University) Jiunn-Sheng Chang (National Tsing Hua University) Tein-Yaw Chung (Yuan-Ze Institute of Technology) Keh-Yih Su (National Tsing Hua University) Local Arrangement: Kou-Hua Lai (Yuan-Ze) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 09:30:00 UT From: "Peter Bergstrom" \ Message-ID: <2F326879@noak> Subject: Announcing SGML Sweden 95 SGML Sverige 95 The annual Swedish conference on SGML. Held at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm Wednesday and Thursday, February 22-23, 1995 This year the conference spans two days for the first time. The program is laid out with the intention that everybody should gain from attending, starting with an "up-to-speed"-tutorial, followed by discussions, tips and techniques around document analysis and DTD construction. After lunch, the annual meeting of the Swedish chapter of the SGML Users' Group is held. Then, a session about different types of DTDs tries to bring light over the different approaches possible when creating DTDs. The first day is rounded up, after a buffe, by meetings of the different working groups, open for anybody. The second day is devoted to SGML and publishing, including a discussion on standards related to SGML, and after lunch a session on SGML and databses. The presenters come from both Sweden and foreign countries, and the view points they take will vary from end-user through managerial to SGML technician. In parallell with the conference, an exhibition will take place with vendors for all major SGML products. SGML User's Group Sweden hopes that this conference will be the best SGML conference ever in Sweden, and welcomes you all! Peter Bergstrom Chairman ---------------------------------------------------- The following is the preliminary program in Swedish. ---------------------------------------------------- Onsdagen 22/2 ============= 0830-1000 Registrering och kaffe 0900-0945 Vad är SGML?" En introduktion tillstandarden Hasse Haitto, KTH och Helena Antbäck, Ericsson Telecom 1000-1005 Välkommen till SGML 95. Ordföranden öppnar konferensen 1005-1050 IT och SGML-standardens betydelse förframtiden Ain Ala, IBM 1050-1200 Session 1 Dokumentanalys och DTD-konstruktion Chairman: Peter Bergström, Telub Inforum CD-LAG ­ erfarenheter från arbetet med lagboken Greger Henriksson, C. E. Fritzes AB Blockdiagram: en enkel grafisk representation av en DTD HelenaAntbäck, Ericsson Telecom Designprocessen kring FMV Grund-DTD Peter Bergström, Telub Inforum 1200-1330 Lunch 1230-2000 Utställningen öppnar (sal E31 och E32) 1330-1430 Årsmöte 1430-1500 Kaffe 1500-1630 Session 2 Olika typer av DTDer Chairman: Andreas Björklind, LiTH Layout- kontra innehållskodning Peter Bergström, Telub Inforum SGML ur ett användarperspektiv Magnus Gröntoft, Jordbruksdepartementet "En jämförande DTD-studie" Christian Wallgren, Publishing Development 1630 Buffé 1730-2000 Utställarna håller olika presentationer 1730-2000 Arbetsgruppsmöten 1730 SGML & Publishing (ny arbetsgrupp) 1800 SGML & Databaser (ny arbetsgrupp) 1830 HyTime Torsdagen 23/2 ============== 0830-0900 Kaffe 0830-1700 Utställning 0900-1200 Session 3 SGML och Publishing Chairman: GregerHenriksson, C. E. Fritzes AB Standarder av betydelse för SGML Per-Åke Ling, Ericsson Telecom (HyTime, SDIF & 1840) Paul Grosso, ArborText Inc (DSSSL och FOSI) "Standarder av betydelse för grafiska branchen, och standarder av betydelse för SGML" Mats Bellander, Grafiska Företagen 1000-1030 Kaffe "SGML initiatives in higher Education" Cesare J. del Vaglio, McGrawHill Publishing i framtiden en paneldiskussion under medverkan av tidigare talare 1200-1330 Lunch 1330-1655 Session 4 SGML och databaser Chairman: Anna Ran, Saab Service Partners User requirements for SGML Databases Paula Angerstein, Texcel UK Document Component Management of Structured Documents Allen L. Brown jr, Xsoft/Xerox 1430-1500 Kaffe "Hantering av SGML-komponenter i en textdatabas" Magnus Sälgö, IDS Erfarenheter - konstruktion av relationsdatabaser för SGML-dokument Lars Lindberg, CPS SGML och STEP EuroSTEP AB Frågor och diskussion 1655-1700 Avslutning Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 10:38:07 UT From: Alfie Kirkpatrick \ Organization: ICL, Bracknell, UK. Message-ID: \ References: <3g6klg$nrp@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Re: Compare: Frame w/ Corel Ventura 5 [Frederick R. Phelan Jr.] | I recently read a comparison of features and and Corel stacks up very | well. Not only that, it costs less, comes bundled with a number of | other application tools and read/writes SGML. I'd take "read/writes SGML" with a pinch of salt. It comes with TagWrite, a general purpose conversion program. You then have to write the scripts for TagWrite to use and once you've done this, your custom filter will appear as one of the import/export options in VP. As far as I know, you are still into converting the normal Ventura source, and this is not a pleasant task. You have to have a very well structured stylesheet and good rules for authors to avoid ambiguous use of fonts and all the other nasties you get when converting. (note that I've only seen Ventura 5 briefly and scanned the TagWrite manual). Alfie. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 12:21:46 UT From: Betty Harvey \ Organization: Advanced Information Systems Branch, DTMB, CDNSWC Message-ID: <3g844qINNcri@oasys.dt.navy.mil> References: <1995Jan8.160411.171673@eros.embl-heidelberg.de> <3g0dk1$oor@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: [Q]SGML tools: SGML-edit, ->TeX ->HTML [Luca Toldo] | ...SGML as the input documentation language to use by the secretary... [Glenda Jeffrey] | I don't know -- I'm an SGML newbie, but from what I've seen so far of | SGML editors, I don't think our secretaries would be terribly happy | about it... And our secretaries are used to fighting with TeX! (Not | to say that TeX is easier, it's just that they are frustrated with that | kind of approach. They want to just TYPE, dammit! ;-) For this reason, | we've decided to use an SGML editor for our documentation, and Frame | for office communication. | | Anybody have experience with clerical staff using an SGML editor? I | admit that my conclusion is pure conjecture... If you have the right tools SGML structure is not difficult to understand. Tag Definitions in the authoring stage are probably the hardest to understand, especially for our military DTD's. I know several Contractors that have been used to convert legacy data to SGML used local college kids to tag documents. Last summer an organization here within David Taylor (not me) used a CEAP summer student (Junior in High School) to create all of their HTML documents. Maybe its a question of semantics but I think our Secretary (if we had one) would balk at creating documents in SGML. However, a clerk typist (who is normally lower on the pay scale) would not. Difference is job description. Betty -- Betty Harvey \ | David Taylor Model Basin Advanced Information Systems Branch | Carderock Division Code 183 | Naval Surface Warfare Bethesda, Md. 20084-5000 | Center | DTMB,CD,NSWC URL: http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/betty.html | Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 14:19:27 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3g8b1f$318@argo.hks.com> Subject: I got The SGML Handbook To those who are having trouble finding the SGML Handbook -- I just got a copy from: Tyson's Corner Computer Literacy Bookshops 8603 Westwood Center Drive Tyson's Corner, Virginia, USA URL: http://www.clbooks.com From the Web Page: General Information, stock levels, directions, etc +1 703 734 7771 Shipping orders (almost anywhere in the world!) +1 703 734 7771 or FAX +1 703 734 7773 Corporate Sales +1 703 734 7774 or FAX +1 703 734 7773 -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 15:25:04 UT From: "James F. Kelly" <74011.3375@compuserve.com> Message-ID: <3g8esg$3pr$1@mhadf.production.compuserve.com> Subject: Re: SGML and Multimedia Applications Mr. Scholz, The SGML Forum of New York wishes to devote our April meeting to SGML and multimedia. We would love to have a speaker address the issues you mention. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 16:29:27 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501261629.AA49161@source.asset.com> References: \ Subject: Re: SGML and Multimedia Applications Hi Bernie: The MID is *being_looked_at* by several vendors and weapons system programs. What plans they have are not known here. The MID technical report to David Taylor is about two months old, so I have few expectations that any will until MID has been evaluated more thoroughly. It was the expectation of the MID team that a period of about six to nine months of test bed work should occur to fully document the MID semantics and validate the design. While the prototypes for the initial examples revealed no glaring technical errors, they did show that the semantics of the script element types needed more clarification. Some of these were documented in the final report (not the team report) and delivered to David Taylor as part of the task order. The MID was designed to support the requirements of IETMs as specified in the Tri-Service specifications. Its extensibility outside that area depends chiefly on the matching of the features of the user interface element types, and the requirements for display complexity. The current MID design uses the simplest possible content and user interface representation and focuses more on the requirements for preserving dynamic location declarations (i.e., intelligent linking over path-based hard links) to underlying databases. MID is an SGML/HyTime application to support IETMs and Training applications with possible applications in enterprise management or, specifically, IETMs which need to support internal scripts and integration of multiple notation types through a single interface. Because the MID design is the property of the US Navy, only they can tell you what their plans are. There is interest in the ISO SMSL project in using the MID as a candidate for SMSL compliance. What this could involve in changes to the current MID design is unknown. My initial *guesses* are that the external language (e.g, NOTATION) interface provided by the xeno element types could change, and that the control types of user interactions (buttons, dialogs, etc) could become SMSL types. This is all crystal ball work on my part. It is acknowledged in several circles that MID could complete the *missing pieces* of the IETM puzzle. But at this time, the MID is a US Navy project and consideration for its use outside that arena will take time. If the MID is of interest to you and you have reviewed it, please send me your comments so I can forward them to David Taylor. If there are projects for which the MID will be useful, we stand ready to assist in any way possible. As to the rest of the questions, if vendor product managers require a large base of buyers for features before they will implement features for a base that cannot exist until they implement, there is little bit of a *tail wagging the dog* problem. There was no market for airbags in autos until they were required. The same was true of seatbelts. The northeast fisheries have been fished to almost to complete cyclic breakdown in the ecosystem. Some things for the common good require pressure. A *market analysis* seldom considers these *common good* problems and that is the difficulty of *laissez faire* economic approaches to specifying and procuring technology. Military applications have requirements that spell the difference in life and death for the users, and in large savings for the services and contractors who implement these requirements smartly. The pressure to use SGML in IETMs is reasonable, however its use in memos and short lifecycle information is doubtful unless some economy of system purchase or system integration results. SGML excels in the areas of reusable data for long lifecycle information management. Open system applications use it because of the ability to provide standard tests at the input and output interfaces, and the use of DTDs to parameterize production environments. If the applications make little use of text and do not have long lifecycle requirements, there are few issues that SGML addresses better that will benefit them except for interface interoperability which will be the focus of SMSL. Even this argument depends on some use of SGML/HyTime. If interoperability is not an issue, you are selling water to rocks. Len Bullard MID Document Editor Unisys Corporation -- Join the Wyle E. Coyote Association: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 17:20:00 UT From: Pentti Hietanen \ Organization: L M Ericsson, Cellular Systems Message-ID: <3g8lk0$763@pinkse1.lmf.ericsson.se> Subject: SGML editor for DOS/MSWin Is there one available? Pentti Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 17:24:06 UT From: Uwe Bless \ Organization: Fachhochschule fuer Technik, Esslingen Message-ID: <3g8lrm$cjn@news.belwue.de> Subject: Unknown document character set in SGML declaration. Does anybody know if the document character set (SGML declaration) of SoftQuads Author/Editor public identifier: "ISO Registration Number 109//CHARSET ECMA-94 Right Part of Latin Alphabet Nr.3//ESC 2/13 4/3" is identical with the ISO 8859-1 charset? Where could I get more info about this character set? Thanks for your help Uwe Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 18:11:06 UT From: Ken Kubiak \ Organization: Viewlogic Systems, Inc. Message-ID: <3g8ojq$8eo@viewlog.viewlogic.com> References: <3g6lnm$nol@argo.hks.com> Subject: Re: DocBook TOCs? [Glenda Jeffrey] | One person told me that using the DocBook DTD precludes automatic | generation of things like tables of contents. | | Another person has told me this is not true. | | Who's right and who's wrong? The DocBook DTD does include elements for describing tables of contents, as well as lists of figures, indices, etc. Apparently, the intent is that tools can be developed to generate the TOC and index and describe them in DocBook. I started writing a tool (using sgmls|perl) to do just that, but time limitations forced me to just rely on LaTeX's (the backend) facilities. The idea was that the TOC and index would each be in a file and included into the document in marked sections. To generate them, I'd run the document through the TOC/index extractor with those sections IGNOREd. Then I'd run the same document through the formatting application with the TOC and index INCLUDEd. Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Followup-To: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 19:21:05 UT From: Simon North \ Message-ID: <40@direct.iaf.nl> References: <3fp4ed$l3t@bmerhc5e.bnr.ca> <1995Jan24.141601.7510@calspan.com> Subject: Re: HTML: FrameBuilder EDDs and SGML attributes [Matthew Stringer] | Any ideas on why this process, which should be more seamless, tends to | take so much tweaking? Tweaking the process???? Just my ten cents, but it is a _lot_ more than tweaking. Try "rebuilding". I have an HTML 1.0 EDD that I too did as a learning exercise. I tried to go "up" to HTML 2.0 but also stalled on the entities and attributes. I am curious as to how one correspondent proposes five methods of dealing with them; I came up with four: 1. Throw them away. This does not always turn out to be so drastic as it might seem at first glance. Sometimes, it might well be easier to retrieve the attribute values you need from the surrounding (configuration management) system than to have that sort of meta-information "buried" in the data itself. It would appear to be a trade-off between meta-information that is intrinsic to the data itself, or relevant to the manner in which it is used. 2. Map to optional elements; one optional element for each possible attribute value. Messy; unnecessarily complicated and totally confusing for not so well informed users. 3. Map to FrameBuilder marker elements. While this seems the best solution from the FrameBuilder (let's be honest, FrameMaker) point of view. This causes lots of problems. For example: a graphic (non-SGML data) is an empty element. Empty elements in Builder cannot contain other elements. Worse, they cannot contain markers. End of story, but could be helped by (4). 4. Invent spurious container elements to contain the original element, plus one of the above. Even messier and just as limited. However. There are three other major problems that I would like to share: 1. Tables and figures. With tables and figures in separate flows (there is no other way); you end up with a collection of only partially related document fragments. It also means you can restart the hierarchy within one of these separate flows: document -> table -> table_cell -> document -> table -> table_cell -> document -> ad nauseum. Not quite what was intended. 2. Inclusions and exclusions (I would like to come back on this one since a colleague is still marshalling the evidence) but Builder appears to exhibit some very suspect behavior. 3. Inconsistency. Try this for fun. Read in a DTD, export the EDD you obtain as a DTD, and compare the results. Totally different. Read in the new DTD and compare the new EDD with the first one, totally different. Each time you run this loop you will get further and further away from where you started until the results become almost unrecognizable. OK, you can influence how the DTD is read - but there is (so it says in the documentation) no way to influence the behavior of the DTD writer. You can even change the DTD that is mapped in the SGML Application set - makes no difference. My worry is that in tinkering the with the EDD (and the original DTD from which it is derived) you end up destroying one of the main benefits of SGML - independence from particular applications (and don't you Interleaf users get so smug [{-} ... informed sources tell me that "under water" there is very little difference between Frame's approach and Interleaf's approach and that they share a lot of the same problems. Which leads to me conclude with a piece of philosophizing. I contend that the source of all the problems is simply the interface between two document "models"; on the one had that of a DTP world, and on the other that of SGML. The two live together side by side, but are very uneasy on each other's territory. In packages such as FrameBuilder, you can see the "joins" - FrameMaker is an _excellent_ "industrial" DTP package and is very hard to turn into an SGML package. -- Simon North \ Almelo, The Netherlands. or \ MY e-mail account, MY time, MY money, MY equipment; MY opinions. Newsgroups: comp.text.frame,comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 20:31:35 UT From: Scott Turner \ Organization: Texas Metronet, Inc 214/705-2901, login info Message-ID: \ References: <3g6klg$nrp@dove.nist.gov> Subject: Re: Compare: Frame w/ Corel Ventura 5 [Frederick R. Phelan Jr.] | I would be interested in finding out how user friendly and usable it is | ... I have always been less than impressed with CorelDRAW, but maybe | becuse we were using it on an old, somewhat slow 386. I have to admit that I have not see CorelVentura 5, but from what I have heard it does not change the old Ventura significantly to compare with FM4. If you had any experience with Ventura Gold or Ventura 3.0 then you will approach the Corel version with a lot of trepidation. Have it demoed for you before you pay for it. As far as I am concerned, FM is more cost effective. The bottom line is not how much money it costs up front, but how much it costs to support the silly thing, and Ventura has always been a lot of bother, without a lot of help. Scott -- Scott Turner sturner@metronet.com Fax: +1 214 242 1083 Voice: +1 214 323 5532 If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 21:04:24 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501262104.AA11480@source.asset.com> References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <3fejcm$118@arc.electriciti.com> <9501171656.AA29405@source.asset.com> <3fkjp2INNmu0@oasys.dt.navy.mil> <9501202149.AA35140@source.asset.com> \ Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries CALS-DSSSL will consist of a DSSSL-Lite like subset of DSSSL. The FOSI is a working solution until then and beyond. SGML interest in DSSSL is also focused on its implications for the other 98% of processing outside the formatting procedures. SGML offers many kinds of challenging work. Who will do the work is another issue. Somehow four billion dollars disappeared in the CALS initiative and it didn't go to the group of people who make up the EPC. Change that and we can discuss the stones. DoD has not driven the technology. Individuals have. Maybe Paul Strassman is John Galt. |-) In 1989, a secure version of the WWW technology was proposed in the original ACALS bids. It was rejected as being "too blue sky" in favor of that season's print proposals based on MIL-M-28001. Now we have the Web and it is fast becoming a circus of irrelevant content and incompatible browsers. So, the Internet, an invaluable means of promoting research drowns in the drivel of pirated data and neophytes seeking to advance self and career by jumping on a bandwagon of dubious reliability. Meanwhile, the JCALS nodes are completing their first experiments printing technical manuals and having a hard time of it. Is that what you mean by a *balancing act*? I trust you aren't relying on a congressional safety net. They are using it to round up Big Bird so they can sell him to a cable company. All I ask of my government is that it begin to consider the implications of its involvement in emerging technology and markets, make decisions based on the wisdom of not meddling in that which it does not understand, and taking on the responsibility to fully understand that in which it chooses to be involved. My opinions are mine. Len Bullard -- Join the Wyle E. Coyote Association: Evil geniuses for a better tommorrow. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 26 Jan 1995 22:23:13 UT From: "Claude L. Bullard" \ Message-ID: <9501262223.AA26384@source.asset.com> Subject: PDF Just when you think its darkest, it starts to rain. I've just received a *rumor* that the Defense Printing Services and some honchos in CALS under its new head are declaring PDF (Adobe Acrobat) the format of choice for IETMs and CALS and that no others should be considered. Anyone else hearing this or have more information. There must be honest work somewhere... sigh. len Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 00:35:15 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <1995Jan8.160411.171673@eros.embl-heidelberg.de> <3g0dk1$oor@argo.hks.com> <3g2am1$398@giga.bga.com> <3g5nnj$egi@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> Subject: Re: [Q]SGML tools: SGML-edit, ->TeX ->HTML [Leslie Giles] | I'm YASN (yet another SGML newbie) and I'm looking into introducing | SGML to my organization - where can I find out about "the SGML | extensions to popular word processors"? This seems to be the big | missing link to the whole SGML area - it's wonderful in theory but I | can't ask people to go back to the troff/tex/scribe days when they're | used to Word or DECwrite (spit!). Microsoft is about to come out with an extension for Word. But that is not necessarily your best route. There are also dedicated SGML editors that will "know" more about SGML than wil Word. The SGML editors can be really "pretty" too. If you want more information on one of the paths you can contact me directly or go to the SGML Web Page. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 01:25:50 UT From: Elham Sayed Alyan \ Message-ID: <1995Jan26.202551.37955@miavx1> Subject: Wanted: info on HTML and SGML Hello.. I'm a grad student in system analysis and I'm doing a paper on the use of SGML, HTML language and hypermedia. I can't find enough resources on the subject. Does anyone have suggestions about where to look, and is there any www sites that carries info on the subject? Also, is there any books you could suggest? My knowledge on the subject is quite limited, but I want to learn all that my mind can absorbe! Thanx in advance, Elham -- ***** Elham Alyan (Lolla). Miami University. Oxford, Ohio. ***** E_mail \ \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 09:27:02 UT From: Norm Smith \ Message-ID: <199501271427.AA24095@naggum.no> Subject: EasyDTD Hi all, I am a week or two away from starting to code the next version of EasyDTD. I have a long list of enhancements in mind that will probably not all make into the next version. The primary new feature I am planning is support for generating more complex attributes. The current version generates all attributes as CDATA and #IMPLIED. To make a short story longer, I thought I'd solicit the user community for their suggestions. So if you use EasyDTD, let me know what features you'd like to see added. Norm Smith smithn@orvb.saic.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 11:38:00 UT From: Ada Milne \ Organization: Queen Mary & Westfield College, London, UK Message-ID: <3galuo$grl@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> Subject: 3rd Year Project DTD Viewer Hello I'm a third year student at QMW (London) and I'm using SGML in my final year project. I'm building a DTD Viewer and I'd like to get feedback on some of the requirements, specification and design issues that result. Firstly I have been thinking of the viewer as a DTD viewer but as I want it to display the declaration as well am I really talking about a SGML Entity Viewer? When people speak about a DTD do they mean the declaration and the DTD or the DTD only? So far I have broken the Viewer down it to the following headings: File: Open / Close. (No need for Save as modifications will not be allowed.) Syntax: List the subheadings contained in the declaration and where appropriate display examples, e.g., the character set available. Elements: Visual display of the document structure, e.g., a tree. That the user by clicking on a box (or node) can open up that section and find out details such as location, legal positioning, entities use, start end tags etc. Attributes: Display the attributes available for the elements. Entities: Display the entities available and possible examples of how there used. I may not be able to implement all of this in the time available (which is about two and half months). The items that are displayed seem relatively straight forward as you can ask what is the character set and it can be displayed, can you use shorttag? answer yes/no. But the real problem seems to lie in displaying the elements as a structure. When someone wants to see what a DTD defines they are probably thinking about what it looks like and when they think of what it looks like they are probably thinking about what it looks like on a page. Yet a SGML document doesn't define how a document looks but how it's formed or structured To see a document you must first add a typographical mark up, even a document created on a typewriter has a typographical mark up despite the fact that it may use the same type size and font etc through out. As a result I would display the structure as a tree which can be shown in part or full so using Bryan example from his book the highest display level would be: textbook | ------------ | | | front body back ... from here "front" (say) could be selected, expanded and integrated for legal entities that can be used there, attributes etc. (I hope the diagram comes out OK). This would require a model of the structure to be built however as I thought about it I realized that if i built it as an n-ary tree I would have to start at the top and work down. Now this may be fine as long as you start with the highest element as front would reveal what is below it and they would reveal what was below them etc but what happens if, unlike Bryan's example the first element is not the top most element? My current solution is to create a structure that can begin at any point and can then built up and down. Is this reasonable, feasible or even possible? The viewer will except only validated SGML entities that use the concrete reference syntax and plan to use Tk to build the interface, gcc for the control functions and model and sgmls as the parser. Modifications and editing of the DTD will not be aloud. I hoping to put a copy of my report in progress on the WWW as soon as find out how to set up my own pages and I would greatly appreciate any comments, criticism or suggestions able it. As this is such a new area there virtually nothing available through the library so I have found this BB invaluable so far. I have copies of the bib and assorted FAQ's plus access to a copy of the SGML Handbook. Well that's as must as I've time for now (someone else need the machine) so thanx in advance for any help offered. Mary (ada) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 14:00:48 UT From: Thomas Stadler 74775 \ Message-ID: <9501271400.AA01535@grass.step.de> Subject: Job Opportunities at STEP, Germany STEP Stürtz Electronic Publishing GmbH is a company specializing in Information Reengineering, based on SGML. We concentrate on systems integration, consulting and software development. Our customers include the Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG and the German Lufthansa AG, from document management to multimedia. Since more and more companies are looking for solutions based on SGML, we are looking for new staff. The seventeen of us need help from three of you: one Developer, with thorough knowledge of user interfaces, object-oriented programming and relational databases under MS-Windows and perhaps UNIX, as well as some knowledge of SGML. We are also looking for two Project Managers, with experience in actively taking part in software projects as well as managing them, good organization talents, consulting experience and the ability to communicate well with customers and colleagues. At least some SGML experience is expected for these positions. We offer a good salary and conditions in Würzburg, Germany, a small, picturesque city situated in the state of Bavaria. If you are interested, send your job application to Thomas Stadler at \ (+49 9365 80620). Postal: STEP Stuertz Electronic Publishing GmbH Technologiepark Wuerzburg-Rimpar Kettelerstrasse 97222 Rimpar Germany Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 14:21:07 UT From: Anders Bostrom \ Organization: Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden Message-ID: <3gavgj$7td@nic.lth.se> Keywords: HP HPUX ICA Subject: ICA and HP? Hej Has anybody managed to get ICA 1.6 (or 1.5) to work on HP/HPUX? (ICA = Integrated Chameleon Architecture) Also - is the trouble report list of ICA working? I can't get in touch with anybody through that list! ha de /anders -- Anders Bostrom ABB Corporate Research Voice: +46 46 168536 IDEON Research Park Fax: +46 46 145620 S-223 70 LUND E'mail: Anders.Bostrom@crclund.abb.se SWEDEN Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 15:14:43 UT From: Gerry Murray \ Organization: ACM Network Services Message-ID: <3gb2l3$oac@hopper.acm.org> Subject: APL characters Folks! We'll be typesetting APL characters on our XyVision system. We'll be using Adept Editor to edit the SGML text. Obviously we'll have the prog listings in the text too! Here's the dilemma: I want to represent the APL char set in my SGML file using a special entity cluster. I already know the names of the APL characters (thanx IBM!). I don't want to reinvent the wheel if someone has turned such names into entities *already* and these names are "acceptable" to the community... e.g. quad not equal ... \&qne; (just a guess!) We'll map these to XyVision using the TransSGML map method, thus we're able to have the characters *in a presentation neutral form* in our files and still be able to typeset them. If this has already been adressed ...is there a site with this info? TIA Gerry Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:02:05 UT From: "James D. Anderson, P.E." \ Organization: A. J. Boggs & Company Message-ID: \ Keywords: SGML Subject: SGML Expertise Wanted We are looking for SGML expertise to develop an Internet Browser capable of reading SGML. If interested, send you name and a description of your experience (resume preferred) to A. J. Boggs & Company Attn: Personnel 4136 Shoals Drive Okemos, MI 48864 or email to jca@ajboggs.com -- Jim Anderson We are a systems integration A. J. Boggs & Company and engineering services firm 3512 Green Brier Blvd. #479B Ann Arbor, MI USA 48105 MMM MMM Phone: +1 313 761 5688 MMM MMM - Go Blue! Fax: +1 313 761 3114 MM M MM Email: anderson@ajboggs.com MMM MMM Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:02:40 UT From: Stavros Macrakis \ Organization: OSF Research Institute Message-ID: \ References: <1995Jan24.195407.6102@tower> \ <3g5uai$ll3@curly.cc.utexas.edu> <3g7dq7$vi@giga.bga.com> \ Subject: Re: Superscript/Subscript Entity Ref's [Truly Donovan] | ....a system that only supported the numeric characters as superscripts | and didn't allow any other characters in superscripts and didn't | support subscripts at all... next to useless.... Latin-1 superscripts are worse than that: only 1-3 exist (¹²³). What application that needs superscript 1-3 doesn't need superscript 4-0? The corresponding SGML entities sup1-sup3 are just as useless as the Latin-1 characters. In any case, superscripting and subscripting belong in markup, not in character sets. -s Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:15:22 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <3g8lk0$763@pinkse1.lmf.ericsson.se> Subject: Re: SGML editor for DOS/MSWin [Pentti Hietanen] | Is there one available? Several. Get February's PC Magazine for more information than I could give you. The review is probably on line somewhere, too, but I don't know where. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:19:52 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <1995Jan8.160411.171673@eros.embl-heidelberg.de> <3g0dk1$oor@argo.hks.com> \ <19950126T005614Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: [Q]SGML tools: SGML-edit, ->TeX ->HTML [Erik Naggum] | one way to think of the effects of the B\&D editors is to consider the | load on the writer if he were to select the sentence structure (by name | or menu choice) before being allowed to fill in the words. The editors I have used have a mode in which validation is turned off. I would be interested in more feedback from the original poster as to what were the _specific_ concerns of the secretaries. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:43:10 UT From: Michael Leventhal \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: <3gbpde$fuh@aimnet.aimnet.com> References: <1995Jan26.202551.37955@miavx1> Subject: Re: Wanted: info on HTML and SGML [Elham Sayed Alyan] | I'm a grad student in system analysis and I'm doing a paper on the use | of SGML, HTML language and hypermedia . I can't find enough resources | on the subject. You haven't looked very hard. It's hard not to stumble into CERN or NCSA pretty quickly, both of which have links to both HTML and SGML info. Sigh, you _are_ a grad student, so I guess that explains it. | Does anyone have suggestions about where to look, and is there any www | sites that carries info on the subject? Also, is there any books you | could suggest? My knowledge on the subject is quite limited, but I | want to learn all that my mind can absorbe! Easily the best place to begin learning about SGML on the Web is Robin Cover's pages at http://gopher.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html. There is lots of information there, and links to just about everywhere else you want to go. Thank you, Robin. Michael Leventhal -- Michael Leventhal 1824 Lake Shore Ave, Suite 17 Text Science, Inc. Oakland, CA 94606-1244 http://www.textscience.com/homets michael@textscience.com Voice: +1 510 444 2962 Fax: +1 510 444 1672 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 28 Jan 1995 19:00:11 UT From: Paul Prescod \ Organization: University of Waterloo Message-ID: \ References: <9501122310.AA39957@source.asset.com> <9501202149.AA35140@source.asset.com> \ <9501262104.AA11480@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: DSSSL inquiries [Claude L. Bullard] | In 1989, a secure version of the WWW technology was proposed in the | original ACALS bids. It was rejected as being "too blue sky" in favor | of that season's print proposals based on MIL- M-28001. Now we have | the Web and it is fast becoming a circus of irrelevant content and | incompatible browsers. I don't understand how the "irrelevant content" hurts you! Why do you care, and how do you determine that things that other peeople care about are "irrelevant?" And the incompatible browsers problem is also overstated. All browsers support HTML1. All are moving towards supporting HTML2. When they _stop_ moving in that direction we are in trouble. Right now Netscape has just provided a mechanism for idiots to restrict their audiences. Bravo! | So, the Internet, an invaluable means of promoting research drowns in | the drivel of pirated data and neophytes seeking to advance self and | career by jumping on a bandwagon of dubious reliability. Is it drowning? Has it become more difficult to find the important information than it was before the Web? Before the Web's popularity? I find the "weak link" in the bandwidth chain is usually the server. Servers with good technical information tend to be heavily hit. Not because of the neophytes, but because of those seeking technical knowledge. Paul Prescod Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 29 Jan 1995 00:24:42 UT From: Marcy Thompson \ Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: \ References: \ <19950121T013252Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: What IS Canon? [Jann VanOver] | I'm having a discussion with a co-worker about what is "canonized" | SGML. [Erik Naggum] | I haven't heard "canonized", but I frequently refer to "canonical" SGML | myself. I assume it's the same thing. I've never heard of "canonized" SGML either, although I've heard Erik talk about "canonical SGML". I wonder of Jann VanOver is refering to "monastic SGML"? Marcy -- Marcy Thompson at work: marcy@passage.com at play: marcy@world.std.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml,comp.infosystems.www.misc Date: 29 Jan 1995 13:38:48 UT From: Ken Creffield \ Organization: Myorganisation Message-ID: <791386728snz@porky.demon.co.uk> References: \ <19950121T215427Z.enag@naggum.no> \ <19950124T054820Z.enag@naggum.no> \ Subject: Re: comp.lang.html? (long) [Paul Prescod] | It is immoral, say, for me to write software to allow the blind to | "read" that which is on a computer screen, and then charge money for Are there blind people on the Net? How do they cope? What soft/hardware exists to help them? Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 29 Jan 1995 20:47:45 UT From: Richard Wal Matzen \ Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science Message-ID: <3gguth$uft@bubba.ucc.okstate.edu> Subject: Basic HTML questions Can anyone answer some basic questions and help me locate some info on HTML? 1. What are the tradeoffs and compatibility issues between HTML 1 and HTML 2.0? I could use an unbiased summary. What are the practical tradeoffs regarding these versions: suppose one wanted to publish a document (home page)? 2. Is there a formal spec for 1.0? Where does one get the "loose DTD"? I have a spec for 2.0, but it does not contain a machine readable form of the proposed DTD? Is there one available? 3. What do I need to know about HTML to set up a home page and publish thereon? What image formats are supported by the various viewers, etc? 4. What tools are available for converting/creating/editing HTML? Is there a short list? Where are the Rainbow makers? I have lost that location. 5. Is there a FAQ or some other nicely organized summary (not 5000 lines) that answers the above questions? Thanks in advance, Rick M Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 29 Jan 1995 23:13:51 UT From: Steve Arnold <76060.325@CompuServe.COM> Organization: Arnold+Asso. Message-ID: <3gh7ff$c8v$2@mhade.production.compuserve.com> Subject: Re: SGML editor for DOS/MSWin [Pentti Hietanen] | Is there one available? [Paul Prescod] | Several. Get Februaries PC Magazine for more information than I could | give you. The review is probably on line somewhere, too, but I don't | know where. Take the reviews with a grain of salt. There are demo versions of tools available. Try them before you buy. Best... -- s_arnold@delphi.com 76060,325 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 02:56:49 UT From: Peter W Meyer \ Organization: Desktop Law Pty Limited Message-ID: \ Subject: Law resources in SGML I would appreciate information on: 1. Jurisdictions which publish their legislation in SGML or HTML form. I am told that North Carolina is one such jurisdiction; and 2. Courts or Court reporting organisations which publish decisions of Courts in either SGML or HTML form. Please email me with information. If possible, give contact information for people involved in the various initiatives. -- Peter W Meyer Desktop Law Pty Limited pmeyer@magna.com.au Fax: 61 2 416 9995 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 05:48:58 UT From: Steve Kallal \ Message-ID: <3ghuka$bba@kaiwan.kaiwan.com> Subject: SGML -> RTF? I was wondering if there is any utility to convert SGML to RTF. Actually my real need is to get SGML into Word for Windows. I have an incredible amount of documentation that I would like to print. Word for Windows is the only way I currently know where I can print all odd or all even pages. If there is an other way to do this direct from SGML in a Windows environment, I would be interested to here about it. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 06:32:51 UT From: Pentti Hietanen \ Organization: L M Ericsson, Cellular Systems Message-ID: <3gi16j$nd2@pinkse1.lmf.ericsson.se> References: \ Subject: Re: Law resources in SGML [Peter W Meyer] | I would appreciate information on: | | 1. Jurisdictions which publish their legislation in SGML or HTML form. | I am told that North Carolina is one such jurisdiction; Finland has published in SGML the main law book, Finish Law (Suomen Laki). I don't know if there is other law collections in SGML in Finland. /Pentti Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 12:11:45 UT From: Drew Ames \ Organization: Mitsubishi Motors Aust. Ltd. Message-ID: \ Keywords: SGML Subject: Testview Does anyone know of a product called Testview, who sells it, what it does, etc.? Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 13:36:33 UT From: Christopher Brooksba \ Organization: Compulink Information eXchange Message-ID: \ References: <3g8lk0$763@pinkse1.lmf.ericsson.se> Subject: Re: SGML editor for DOS/MSWin I had a reply from Microsoft Customer Services on CompuServe 76701,245#25530. It says the SGML Author for Word For Windows is scheduled to be available during the first quarter of '95. Estimated retail price is $599. This is an add on for Word 6.00. Promises graphical easy to use tools for author and support for industry standards. Mail me if you want more info. Chris Brooksbank (cbrooksbank@cix.compulink.co.uk) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 16:34:00 UT From: "Beth Epperson" \ Message-ID: \ Subject: requesting tcl information I am currently working on an interface between SQL and HTML using tcl. However, the knowledge base of tcl users in my area is quite limited. Is there anyone out there who has tcl experience who would be willing to answer a few questions? Thanks Beth Epperson Beth_Epperson@Adcom-Systems.Ucsd.Edu Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 17:16:46 UT From: Steve Chadbourne \ Message-ID: <3gj6tv$dmu@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> Subject: SGML Pagination? Hi All, I am trying to find a Windows based pagination system/DTP package to paginate SGML files. I am writing a SGML document management system and would like to offer pagination as an output option. I use a very simple DTD (similar to HTML) but would need to "drive" the pagination system so that control remains with the document management system. TIA Cheers Steve -- +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Steve Chadbourne, BDC InfoVision Ltd, Derby, UK | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 17:31:34 UT From: Bob Agnew \ Organization: SAIC Message-ID: <1995Jan30.173134.8964@ast.saic.com> References: <199501271427.AA24095@naggum.no> Subject: Re: EasyDTD [Norm Smith] > To make a short story longer, I thought I'd solicit the user community > for their suggestions. So if you use EasyDTD, let me know what features > you'd like to see added. Support for IDREF and CONREF are absolutely essential for my applications. Of course, you'll need to build a name table to support these. Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 18:33:32 UT From: Susan Gallagher \ Organization: Gordian Message-ID: \ Subject: need document interchange application I'm looking for a document interchange application to put on CDROM with our documentation. I've gotten info on Common Ground, KRSMac, and FrameViewer. Does anyone know of any other products I should check out? We'll be shipping between 50,000 and 100,000 CDs a year. Thanks, Susan -- susan@gordian.com Gordian +1 714 850 0205 20361 Irvine Ave. +1 714 850 0533 FAX Santa Ana Heights, CA 92707 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.sw.components,comp.software-eng,comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 19:28:55 UT From: Stars Asset \ Organization: Asset Source for Software Engineering Technology Message-ID: <3gjeln$6pp@source.asset.com> Keywords: ASSET,Reuse,Ada Bindings,Image Processing,SGML DTD Subject: New at ASSET (Ada Bindings, Reuse '94, and more) The STARS ASSET Reuse Library has recently added the following new assets or new versions of existing assets. You need to have an account (no cost to acquire) with ASSET in order to access these new documents and software. More information about ASSET, acquiring an account, and a hyper-text catalog of our holdings can be found at the URL "http://source.asset.com/". Information can also be obtained by sending email \, FAXing to +1 304 594 3951, or calling +1 304 594 3954. ASSET's New Catalog Listings ============================= added: Asset ID Title -------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ ASSET_A_847 Ada Bindings: Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) ASSET_A_855 Ada Bindings: Database Language SQL ASSET_A_849 Ada Bindings: Generic Package of Elementary Functions (GPEF) ASSET_A_850 Ada Bindings: Generic Package of Primitive Functions (GPPF) ASSET_A_848 Ada Bindings: Graphical Kernel System (GKS) ASSET_A_851 Ada Bindings: Information Resource Dictionary System (IRDS) ASSET_A_852 Ada Bindings: Other Specifications and Standards ASSET_A_854 Ada Bindings: POSIX ASSET_A_853 Ada Bindings: Programmers Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) ASSET_A_868 Ada Bindings: X Window System ASSET_A_861 DTD FOR MIL-M-83495 Fault Isolation Technical Manual Preparation ASSET_A_863 DTD For MIL-M-38784C General Style & Format for Technical Manuals (AMEND3) ASSET_A_864 DTD For MIL-M-38784C General Style & Format for Technical Manuals (SUPP) ASSET_A_865 DTD For MIL-M-38807B Amend1 Illustrated Parts Breakdown Manual Preparation ASSET_A_860 DTD for MIL-M-83495 General System for Preparation of Technical Manuals ASSET_A_862 DTD for MIL-M-83495 Wiring Diagram Technical Manual Preparation ASSET_R_867 Khoros (Reference) ASSET_R_859 Process Engineering and Analysis Kernel System (PEAKS) (REFERENCE) ASSET_R_858 ProcessOPTIMIZER (REFERENCE) ASSET_A_856 Reuse 94 - Third Annual Workshop on Software Reuse Education and Training ASSET_R_857 WorkENGINEER (REFERENCE) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 19:58:51 UT From: Dave Peterson \ Message-ID: <3gjgds$d03@hopper.acm.org> References: <3galuo$grl@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 3rd Year Project DTD Viewer [Ada Milne] | Firstly I have been thinking of the viewer as a DTD viewer but as I | want it to display the declaration as well am I really talking about a | SGML Entity Viewer? When people speak about a DTD do they mean the | declaration and the DTD or the DTD only? Which declaration are you talking about: SGML or Document Type? The DTD consists of all of the element type attribute definition list, entity and other declarations that are incorporated into the document type declaration subset, either explicitly or by reference. Some people say DTD and mean only the so-called "external subset", which is the entity identified immediately after the document type name and before the opening square bracket. | So far I have broken the Viewer down it to the following headings: | | File: Open / Close. (No need for Save as modifications will not be | allowed.) | | Syntax: List the subheadings contained in the declaration and where | appropraite display examples eg the character set available. This sounds like you're talking about the SGML declaration. | Elements: Visual display of the document structure eg a tree. That the | user by clicking on a box (or node) can open up that section and | findout details such as location, legal positioning, entities use, sart | end tags etc. This sounds like you're talking about the structure of the document element (AKA document instance). | Attributes: Display the attributes available for the elements. But this sounds like you're talking about the DTD. | Entites: Display the entities available and possible examples of how | there used. As does this. | The items that are displayed seem relativly straight forward as you can | ask what is the character set and it can be displayed, can you use | shorttag? answer yes/no. Back to the SGML declaration. | But the real problem seems to lie in displaying the elements as a | structure. When someone wants to see what a DTD defines they are | probably thinking about what it looks like and when they think of what | it looks like they are probably thinking about what it looks like on a | page. Yet a SGML doc doesn't define how a doc looks but how it's | formed or structurd To see a doc you must first add a typogaphical mark | up, even a doc created on a typewriter has a typographical mark up | despite the fact that it may use the same type size and font etc | thourgh out. | | As a result I would display the structure as a tree which can be shown | in part or full so using Bryan example from his book the highest | display level would be: | | textbook | | | ------------ | | | | | front body back | | ...from here "front" (say) could be selected, expanded and interigated | for legal entities that can be used there, attributes etc. (I hope the | diagram comes out OK). | | This would require a model of the structure to be built however as I | thought aboout it I realised that if i built it as an n-ary tree I | would have to start at the top and work down. Now this may be fine as | long as you start with the highest element as front would reveal what | is below it and they would reveal what was below them etc but what | happens if, unlike Bryan's example the first element is not the top | most elment? My current solution is to create a strucutre that can | begin at any point and can then built up and down. Is this reasonable, | feasable or even possible? Not clear whether you're talking about displaying the abstract relationships between element types (from the DTD) and what content they permit, or the concrete elements (from the document element) and what content they have. The elements form a tree (ignoring IDREF-ID links); If the element types happen to form a tree its a coincidence -- in general they won't. Hope this helps Dave Peterson SGMLWorks! davep@acm.org Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 21:10:11 UT From: Marcy Thompson \ Message-ID: \ References: <61880.loeffen@ruulet.let.ruu.nl> <1995Jan20.203450.5197@ast.saic.com> <19950121T210310Z.enag@naggum.no> Subject: Re: Questions on attributes [Erik Naggum] | conclusion: there is no reason to restrict the unminimized form to that | which is allowed in the minimized form, and many good reasons to | restrict the minimized form to the unminimized form if the minimized | form would be ambiguous. | | as far as revision goes, lifting the restriction has no possible impact | on conforming documents according to the existing standard, so none of | the reasons not to accept an amendment apply. What he said. I am sick of the convolutions that are necessary to conform to the current standard in this area. What are the realistic chances that this will be fixed in my lifetime? Marcy -- Marcy Thompson at work: marcy@passage.com at play: marcy@world.std.com Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 30 Jan 1995 23:00:25 UT From: Sanjai Bhargava \ Organization: Oracle Corporation. Redwood Shores, CA Message-ID: <3gjr29$136@dcsun4.us.oracle.com> References: \ <9501261629.AA49161@source.asset.com> Subject: Re: SGML and Multimedia Applications Could the readers of the group suggest some books (failing that other sources) for HyTime/SGML information. Thanks sanjai Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 00:00:00 UT From: Jeremy Bedford \ Message-ID: <9501311124.aa05608@gate.demon.co.uk> Subject: SGML-aware programmer required PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPERS REQUIRED YORK (U.K.) To work in a publishing company specializing in SGML publishing system configuration, implementation & conversion for both in-house & bespoke applications. We require a number of experienced developers to complement our existing expert team, configuring SGML systems utilizing the Frame SGML Toolkit and other DTP systems. Ideal skill areas would be amongst: SGML, Text Processing, DTP, C programming, Workflow/Document Management & Pagination, but anybody who believes they can contribute is welcome to apply. In return we can offer a competitive salary, including assistance with relocation where necessary, and the opportunity to be part of an exciting team working within a specialist field where Pindar are at the forefront of new developments. Please respond by: mail: pindar3@cix.compulink.co.uk, please make the first line of the message (not subject) "Attn: Anne Wilson". telephone: Anne Wilson on York +44 (0) 1904 613040 write: including your CV, with details of current salary to Anne Wilson at Pindar plc Ryedale Building, 1st Floor 60 Piccadilly York, YO1 1NX UNITED KINGDOM. Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 00:34:53 UT From: Terry Allen \ Organization: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Message-ID: <3gk0jd$78v@ruby.ora.com> References: <3g1svo$fm6@ruby.ora.com> <3g39fh$34l@ulowell.uml.edu> Subject: Re Hytime Reftype query Thanks for the helpful reply, Lloyd. Let me poke at things a bit more, the specific issue first, then the question of validating Hytime. [Terry Allen] | Several issues connected with Docbook's Indexterm element and SGML | parsing that came up this past week lead me to a question about Hytime. | | \ | \ | | So an indexterm marking the end of a span is empty, and points back at | the indexterm beginning the span. Or at least the author can make it | so. Spanend can actually point at any ID (recall my earlier rant on | IDREF promiscuity and scoping). In fact, you can validly do | | \ | | although the results are not defined by the DTD doc! Here's a place | I'd like to be able to constrain the pointing to a particular GI | (Hytime reftype, described in the opaque style of the standard, in | 6.5.3), the GI indexterm, and also ensure that I'm pointing to | *another*, *a different* indexterm. Can one do that in Hytime? in | SGML alone? [Lloyd Rutledge] | If the indexterm elememt starting a span always appears in the same | document before its ending indexterm then HyTime can be used to | prohibit recursive ID referencing. The ID reference resolution range | (refrange) attribute, also described in 6.5.3, can be defaulted as | fixed for the indexterm element type to the value of "spanend B". The | B stands for "Backward reference to identified local element". It | restricts the spanend IDREF to being a direct reference to an element | that occurs previous to this one, thus prohibiting a reference to this | element. As a direct reference, the spanend cannot reference through | HyTime location addressing. The Docbook DTD does not use location | addressing, so this use of refrange does not present a conflict. The start of a span should appear before its ending, but nothing in SGML prevents a reversal of this normal order from parsing correctly. We talked about just that issue at the most recent Davenport Group meeting, in fact. This is either a feature or a bug, and insofar as Hytime is concerned, it probably ought to be thought of as a feature. But as the values of refrange (which I had not thought of in this connection) are only B, D, I, and X, the solution is incomplete. Perhaps an F value should be added, the inverse of B. Then, if we had an att on the element that starts the span IDREFfing to the end of the span, we could make it an F and have the problem licked. Really, though, an O (other) value would be useful too. (Observation: Docbook indeed does not use Hytime location addressing, but there is nothing to prevent someone tacking it on in another layer of processing. It becomes ever clearer to me that one wants the handling of linking to be separate from both the instance and the DTD, in a layer separate from document markup. That layer could be managed by Hytime or by any other method, even without the use of SGML, as on the WWW. Separating these layers would force Hytime to compete with other solutions, which would benefit all of us.) | And as we're visiting 6.5.3, doesn't the last para, 2 after note 109, | beginning "Failure of ID," seem so vague as to preclude the | construction of a standalone validating Hytime parser? Text follows: | | Failure of ID references to conform to the ID reference resolution | control attributes (refrange, reftype, etc.), or to conform in | number or type to other attributes, are RHEs only when (and if) the | application requires the IDREFs to be resolved sufficiently to | recognize the failure. Such failures are always RHEs, however, if | they can be determined from the markup alone (for example, if the | number if IDREFS specified differs from the number prescribed by a | reftype in the form "number #SEQ"). | | awful lotta room for interpretation there, and some things are errors | only if the application feels blue. Shouldn't I be able to validate my | Hytime so my application stays cheerful? | | There is a world of difference between what a minimally-validating | HyTime engine does and what a useful validating HyTime engine does. Which is more strict? I'd really like a fully validating engine. | The RHEs that the standard document explicitly defines are small in | number and often small in scope. It seems that RHEs were defined not | as a complete list of errors an engine should recognize but to clarify | particular issues regarding error recognition that may cause conflict | based on different interpretations of the standard. Which is just what the reference quoted above won't do, seems to me. | The HyTime DIS defined this RHE without the condition that it be | checked only at resolution. My guess is that the qualification was | added for the IS because the references HyTime ID reference resolution | control restricts can be unresolvable during a load-time validation or | can vary between load-time validation and run-time use. Validated | references can occur indirectly through HyTime location addresses. | That is, if an IDREF attribute references (through SGML ID referencing | only) a location address element, then the restriction from reftype | applies not to that location element by to what it locates (assuming | the appropriate values for the other all-ref attributes). Some | location address forms such as notloc and nmquery can require | extra-HyTime processing to be resolved. There is nothing in the | standard that restricts these types of locations from depending on | dynamic run-time characteristics for their resolution. Such references | can not be checked except in the context of their active use. There | may be other characteristics of location addressing that preclude | load-time validation. I can see that you can't validate that something exists if you can't touch all the targets of all your pointers in a reasonably short span of time. However, here an International Standard is talking here about "number and type" of undefined "other attributes" and of errors "if they can be determined from the markup alone." One wants an exhaustive list of these latter. | Perhaps HyTime RHEs in the IS are so few, so small in scope, and so | vague in order to avoid creating an RHE that may produce a conflict | that prohibits the use of some aspect of a HyTime facility (such as | run-time location resolution). Perhaps also by the time of HyTime's | review there will be enough of an understanding of HyTime's use to | allow a more complete and precise list of RHEs to be confidently made. I don't see why that shouldn't have been done earlier, but I confess I didn't think about it while Hytime was in its DIS stage. What gave me pause about the passage I quoted from 6.5.3, a pause your thoughtful response hasn't ended, is that this all sounds like "if it runs correctly then there were no errors," which is kinda like "if it looks right in Mosaic then there were no errors." If that's the prime criterion we don't have much assurance that Hytime applications will interoperate without error. But consider another aspect of validation: the Hytime fixed atts that are supposed to go in the DTD (re my Observation above, I now think they should go in some associated entity that points into the DTD---after all, you can't always touch the DTD, and Hytime *is* about pointing). Consider the following: \ \ \ ]> \\Do\Re\ Here the element quartet is called an ilink, yet it has no IDREF atts at all. Aside from whether this is an RHE, and I see nothing in 9.2.1 to indicate that it is, it's legal SGML; is there any existing validating Hytime parser that will check for any or all such errors? is it free? And if it exists, how do I know that it is in fact a validating parser? The "Conformance" section (12) sets hardly any bounds, as witness 12.3.3: A conforming HyTime system shall be capable of processing a minimal HyTime document. which is satisfied by "rm filename". Regards, Terry Allen (terry@ora.com) -- Terry Allen (terry@ora.com) Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 01:13:26 UT From: Lani Hajagos \ Organization: Frame Technology Corporation Message-ID: <3gk2rm$gjq@frame.frame.com> Subject: Re: HTML: FrameBuilder EDDs and SGML attributes [Matthew Stringer] | Well, when the Frame DTD Reader encounters an attribute bearing element | foo, it creates an container element "Foo" and a container element | "Attributes of Foo". The attribute values are stored in subelements of | "Attributes of Foo". Theoretically, the SGML Writer is supposed to map | subelements of "Attributes of Foo" back into element attributes when it | writes out SGML, but this doesn't always work. A significant part of | the time and for no reason I can discern, the SGML Writer will drop the | attributes entirely or create some strangely invalid SGML by writing a | (clearly illegal) element called "Attributes of Foo" into the SGML | output. In this case it is neccesary to explicitely define the mapping | with read-write rules. Any ideas on why this process, which should be | more seamless, tends to take so much tweaking? The SGML Toolkit has default methods for mapping structures, such as attributes, into and out of FrameBuilder's internal representation. This behavior can be modified with read/write rules. An application configuration file links together all of the pieces: DTD, declaration, read/write rules, template. Incorrect use of read/write rules, or an incorrect application configuration file can cause problems when importing or exporting SGML. The behavior you describe here is not normal or expected for the SGML Writer. It could be caused by a number of things, including problems in the read/write rules file or the application configuration file. I've searched our tech support database, and found no record this problem being reported. If you'll contact our tech support organization, they'll make every effort to help you work through this problem. You can send them email at comments@frame.com (put SGML Toolkit in the subject line to get it routed to the correct queue). Regards -- Lani Hajagos email: hajagos@frame.com FrameBuilder Marketing Manager phone: +1 408 975 6168 Frame Technology Corp. fax: +1 408 975 6600 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 02:31:35 UT From: Juan Rivera \ Message-ID: <3gk7e7$3n0@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> Subject: Is SGML an ATA (Air Transport Association) Standard? Can anyone tell me if SGML is an official ATA standard? I read that the major airlines had accepted SGML as their standard. Thanks, Juan Rivera - NASA Kuiper Airborne Observatory Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 13:06:50 UT From: Glenda Jeffrey \ Organization: Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc. Message-ID: <3glcla$2fr@argo.hks.com> References: <3gk2rm$gjq@frame.frame.com> Subject: Re: HTML: FrameBuilder EDDs and SGML attributes Earlier, I posted a message saying that in order to create attributes in FrameBuilder, you had to create a different element for each possible value of the attribute. This is incorrect -- there are much easier ways, as several people have pointed out. Sorry if I've caused any confusion. -- Glenda Jeffrey Email: jeffrey@hks.com Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen, Inc Phone: +1 401 727 4200 1080 Main St. Fax: +1 401 727 4208 Pawtucket, RI 02860 Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 15:50:32 UT From: Nacia Avera \ Organization: Semiconductor Research Corporation Message-ID: <3glm88$bqa@inxs.ncren.net> Subject: NC SGMLUG Meeting The February meeting of the North Carolina SGML Users Group will be held on Thursday, Feb. 2 at 7 pm at the IBM Recreation Center in Research Triangle Park. This meeting is open to anyone who is interested in SGML, as we will be hosting a special speaker, Mary LaPlante of SGML Open. She will make a non-technical presentation entitled "Perspectives on the SGML Market," including a snapshot of today's SGML market, its industries and applications, as well as requirements for continued growth. Anyone in the Triangle area who wants to learn more about SGML is invited to attend. A $3 meeting fee will be collected at the door. Directions to the IBM Rec Ctr: Take I-40 to Davis Rd. north. Cross Cornwallis Rd. at light, then immediately on your right is the entrance to the IBM Recreation Center. Parking will be on your left around the main building. | IBM Rec | Center |_____ __________________|_______________________________ | Cornwallis Rd. D| a| v| i| s| ==================|=============================== | I-40 | | If you need more information, contact the NC SGMLUG Secretary, see below. -- Nacia Avera E-mail: nacia@src.org Technical Writer/Analyst Phone: +1 919 541 9470 Semiconductor Research Corp. Fax: +1 919 541 9450 P.O. Box 12053, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 + + + \ Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 16:50:04 UT From: Piero Mancino - TX/FD \ Organization: Ericsson Telecom Message-ID: \ Subject: Getting started with ODA (Open Document Architecture) Hello everybody! This is part of the abstract of the report about ODA (ISO 8613:1989) that can be found in PostScript version on the net at: http://www.ericsson.nl/LME/articles/index.html Open Document Architecture is an international standard defining an open architecture for electronic documents. It is a single-contained standard that can be used to exchange documents for further editing, processing, storing, printing and retransmission between different vendors' system. Although there are other standards for markup and interchange of electronic documents, such SGML, ODA is a comprehensive standard addressing the problem of the logical structure of the document, as well as its layout structure. SGML is much more popular than ODA because there are a lot of products that utilize the SGML standard. For ODA there is a lack of applications. Moreover ODA is much more complex then SGML and although it specifies how to form subsets of the total set of features and facilities, the so-called Document Application Profile (DAP)... If you have any question mail me. All the best, /PiErO -- Piero Mancino E R I C S S O N /// Information Technology ST/ETX/TX/FD Tel : + 46 8 719 6004 Ericsson Telecom AB Fax : + 46 8 719 3055 126 25 Stockholm e-mail: piero@stdoca.ericsson.se Sweden Memo: ERI.ETXT.ETXPIMO Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 17:32:40 UT From: Oli Kai Paulus \ Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany Message-ID: <3gls7o$5h1@news.cs.tu-berlin.de> Keywords: SGML DSSSL Subject: SGML Link Sets vs. DSSSL?? I am investigating possibilities to use SGML to render entries in a knowledge base into some format better suited for their display. My current intention is to define some DTD for the entries and to specifiy a transformation procedure from this proprietary format into HTML. At the moment there seem to be two options for the transformation process: SGML Link Sets or some DSSSL specification. I can't really figure the differences between the two, both seem to be applicable to this task. So here are my questions (apart from "Did I get everything wrong?"): - What is the main purpose of SGML Link Sets? - What is the main purpose of DSSSL? - How do these methods differ from each other? - What are the respective (dis-)advantages? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Regards, Oli -- Oli Kai Paulus *** Project KIT-MIHMA email: okp@cs.tu-berlin.de ***** TU Berlin FR 6-10 voice: +49.30.314-73558 ******* Franklin- 28/29 fax : +49.30.314-73622 ********* 10587 Berlin Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml Date: 31 Jan 1995 23:33:10 UT From: Lloyd Rutledge \ Organization: UMass-Lowell Computer Science Message-ID: <3gmhbm$ibi@ulowell.uml.edu> References: <3g1svo$fm6@ruby.ora.com> <3g39fh$34l@ulowell.uml.edu> <3gk0jd$78v@ruby.ora.com> Keywords: HyTime, all-ref, HyTime validating engines Subject: Re: Re Hytime Reftype query [Terry Allen] <3g1svo$fm6@ruby.ora.com> | And as we're visiting 6.5.3, doesn't the last para, 2 after note 109, | beginning "Failure of ID," seem so vague as to preclude the | construction of a standalone validating Hytime parser? Text follows: | | Failure of ID references to conform to the ID reference | resolution control attributes (refrange, reftype, etc.), or to | conform in number or type to other attributes, are RHEs only | when (and if) the application requires the IDREFs to be | resolved sufficiently to recognize the failure. Such failures | are always RHEs, however, if they can be determined from the | markup alone (for example, if the number if IDREFS specified | differs from the number prescribed by a reftype in the form | "number #SEQ"). | | awful lotta room for interpretation there, and some things are errors | only if the application feels blue. Shouldn't I be able to validate my | Hytime so my application stays cheerful? You are able "to validate my HyTime so my application stays cheerful", but you cannot do it for everyone's application. It's impossible to know what all applications find pleasing. That is why you are not required to do so. In this case, load-time validation is put off for one of two reasons: 1) application-specific processing (i.e. notloc) is required to resolve the IDREF through its HyTime locators 2) the IDREF may resolve to different locations at different points in the run For IDREFs to which the first reason applies you can make a validator that goes beyond what conformance requires. Here you can make a validator that acts as the "application" mentioned in the clause and have it "require" the resolution of all IDREFs (which it is able to do because it has the application-specific processing), thus triggering any potential RHEs. However, you cannot expect all HyTime validation engines to have access to this application-specific processing. Of course document authors should avoid application-specific locating whenever possible, but use of such locating should not prevent a document from conforming. Likewise, an engine's lack of such processing should not prevent it from validating documents that use such locations. [Lloyd Rutledge] | There is a world of difference between what a minimally-validating | HyTime engine does and what a useful validating HyTime engine does. [Terry Allen] | Which is more strict? I'd really like a fully validating engine. I regret having been so hard on "minimally-validating HyTime engines". Such creatures actually do a lot of work, which I describe more later in this post. I would consider these "fully validating engines". What I meant it that there are also a number of additional things validating engines can do that are helpful. One is check DTDs for potentially harmful declarations or suggest helpful ones. Another is to do what I described above: use available application-specific locators to check reference controlled IDREFs that use them. We'd all like a "fully validating engine" for all applications, but defining what such a beast does requires assuming particular characteristics of application and presentations. And there are things you can not and should not assume about applications and presentations. You can make validators that validate HyTime in the context of particular classes of applications, as with the IDREF checker described above. [Lloyd Rutledge] | The RHEs that the standard document explicitly defines are small in | number and often small in scope. It seems that RHEs were defined not | as a complete list of errors an engine should recognize but to clarify | particular issues regarding error recognition that may cause conflict | based on different interpretations of the standard. [Terry Allen] | Which is just what the reference quoted above won't do, seems to me. It clarifies what are not RHEs in this context. It makes sure that conforming validators will not require that all IDREFs be universally load-time resolvable. As you state below, it is not necessarily clear what _are_ RHEs in this context. [Lloyd Rutledge] | The HyTime DIS defined this RHE without the condition that it be | checked only at resolution. My guess is that the qualification was | added for the IS because the references HyTime ID reference resolution | control restricts can be unresolvable during a load-time validation or | can vary between load-time validation and run-time use. Validated | references can occur indirectly through HyTime location addresses. | That is, if an IDREF attribute references (through SGML ID referencing | only) a location address element, then the restriction from reftype | applies not to that location element by to what it locates (assuming | the appropriate values for the other all-ref attributes). Some | location address forms such as notloc and nmquery can require | extra-HyTime processing to be resolved. There is nothing in the | standard that restricts these types of locations from depending on | dynamic run-time characteristics for their resolution. Such references | can not be checked except in the context of their active use. There | may be other characteristics of location addressing that preclude | load-time validation. [Terry Allen] | I can see that you can't validate that something exists if you can't | touch all the targets of all your pointers in a reasonably short span | of time. However, here an International Standard is talking here about | "number and type" of undefined "other attributes" and of errors "if | they can be determined from the markup alone." One wants an exhaustive | list of these latter. Further, it would help to clarify whether the referred-to markup is in the element's attributes only or in the entire document. If it is in the entire document, then that would mean (to me) that all IDREFs that can be resolved universally and at load-time must be checked at load-time. That would allow more powerful (conforming) validation but would suggest the need, as you say, of the exhaustive list. Just checking the attribute for that element, and only those that either relate to reference control or are the affected references, would be a much shorter list. Perhaps the larger list could be summarized as "an IDREF that can be completely resolved with only SGML and HyTime processing". This would disclude any application-specific locating, which in turn discludes any run-time locating. If there are HyTime locators that are run-time dependent (any HyQ gurus care to comment on this one?) then IDREFs including those can be excluded from this load-time RHE checking too. [Lloyd Rutledge] | Perhaps HyTime RHEs in the IS are so few, so small in scope, and so | vague in order to avoid creating an RHE that may produce a conflict | that prohibits the use of some aspect of a HyTime facility (such as | run-time location resolution). Perhaps also by the time of HyTime's | review there will be enough of an understanding of HyTime's use to | allow a more complete and precise list of RHEs to be confidently made. [Terry Allen] | I don't see why that shouldn't have been done earlier, but I confess I | didn't think about it while Hytime was in its DIS stage. What gave me | pause about the passage I quoted from 6.5.3, a pause your thoughtful | response hasn't ended, is that this all sounds like "if it runs | correctly then there were no errors," which is kinda like "if it looks | right in Mosaic then there were no errors." If that's the prime | criterion we don't have much assurance that Hytime applications will | interoperate without error. While most RHEs are small in scope, one is very large in scope: the one that says the parsed document must fit the syntax described by the meta-DTD. Checking this RHE is the primary job of a conforming HyTime validator. There are a large number of "sub-errors" that fit under this RHE, and thus are checked by a validator. There is a lot that conforming validators check for, because of that one big RHE. Checking for that RHE is analogous to parsing an instance with a DTD to check its conformance to the DTD. I don't agree that this quantity and complexity of syntax checking is analogous to that which Mosaic provides, as I'm sure anyone working on a conforming validator can attest to. All that quote from 6.5.3 says to me is that you don't have to check reference controlled IDREFs at load-time because you may not be able to. And there are good reasons why an engine may not be able to check for that particular error at load-time. | But consider another aspect of validation: the Hytime fixed atts that | are supposed to go in the DTD (re my Observation above, I now think | they should go in some associated entity that points into the | DTD---after all, you can't always touch the DTD, and Hytime *is* about | pointing). Consider the following: | | \ | \ | \ | ]> | \\Do\Re\ | | Here the element quartet is called an ilink, yet it has no IDREF atts | at all. Aside from whether this is an RHE, and I see nothing in 9.2.1 | to indicate that it is, it's legal SGML; is there any existing | validating Hytime parser that will check for any or all such errors? | is it free? I can't find your "Observation", but I'll try to answer you anyways. First, to address your aside, this code is not valid HyTime. The linkends attribute of ilink is required by the standard, as specified in 9.2.1 by the meta-DTD's "#REQUIRED" keyword in the linkend attribute's default value. Its specification (or default value assignment) must appear in any ilink. Second, HyTime fixed attributes are not "supposed to go in the DTD" any more than any other attribute is supposed to. Each value of a HyTime fixed attribute must be the same as that of the same attribute in other elements of the same GI (but not necessarily the same form). Making the attribute declaration in the DTD be "#FIXED" in terms of SGML will enforce this requirement. But if the declaration were defined otherwise it would not be a HyTime validation, but the attribute specifications for that element type in the instance would have to be consistent. The HyTime standard makes no direct and explicit requirements on the DTD code. Of course the DTD must enable instances that parse with the DTD into conforming HyTime documents; otherwise it would be useless as a DTD for HyTime documents. But DTDs are not required to be "conformance-enforcing". Besides, there are aspects of HyTime conformance that are not restrictable by DTD code. IMO, a "useful HyTime validating engine" would go beyond conformance by checking the DTD for section of code that either prevent instances from conforming to HyTime or miss an opportunity to restrict instances (in the context of their SGML parse with the DTD) to HyTime-conformance. Finally, I'd imagine TechnoTeacher's HyMinder engine would check for such errors. I am not aware of any free validators. | And if it exists, how do I know that it is in fact a validating parser? | The "Conformance" section (12) sets hardly any bounds, as witness | 12.3.3: | | A conforming HyTime system shall be capable of processing | a minimal HyTime document. | | which is satisfied by "rm filename". Keep in mind that 12.3.3 describes conformance of a "HyTime system". The conformance of a "validating HyTime engine" (what you called a "validating parser") is described separately, in 12.4. A HyTime system is not required to have a validating engine. The conformance restrictions of a validating engine are stricter than that of a system. Hope this helps, Lloyd -- Lloyd Rutledge Distributed Multimedia Systems Laboratory Computer Science Department University of Massachusetts One University Avenue Lowell, MA 01854 USA voice: +1 508 934 3554 fax: +1 508 452 4298 email: lrutledg@cs.uml.edu