On Thu, Mar 11, 1999 at 02:11:01PM -0800, Henry Kingman wrote:
>
> Besides HTML, two really important DTDs are CAL, used by the US Defense
> Department, and Docbook, used in publishing and elsewhere. There are
> some other important ones that I can't remember.
One is TEI, for sure. At least in Linguistic research.
> Many vertical industries (i.e., small electronic parts industry) will
> standardize on a DTD for the purpose of electronic data interchange (a
> kind of wholesale-level electronic commerce) or other kinds of
> communication. Also the legal industry is a big SGML user.
Isn't SGML used for databases, too? Not all data is stored in SGML directly
as the main format, but SGML can be used as an interim format from your
database to an extract of it (or collection, statistic, dictionary,
whatever).
> One cool thing about SGML is that you can pretty easily <fun
> smile=yes>create your own markup system</fun>. Then you can mark up your
> documents with your own custom tags that make sense to you for your
> purposes. Like if you are creating a menu you have <entree>leg of
> lamb</entree> and it becomes really easy to markup. You leave the
> formatting to the browser, which knows that entrees are supposed to be
> 14-pt Garamond, either because it was programmed that way or because a
> style sheet tells it so.
Yeah, here is where DSSSL comes in. For everyone: DSSSL is just another
standard, which describes how you can layout a SGML document written for one
specific DTD. You can also transform one type of DTD into another.
The problem is that nice performing DSSSL engines are expensive. The only
usable free one is Jade by James Clark.
Unfortunately, there is no free Text Engine (Word processor) which can cope with
the complexity of layout specificable by DSSSL. TeX comes close, but is too
hard to control to be very useful (programming tex is like walking on soap
and eggs, only harder).
If there would be a good layout engine, writing a good DSSSL engine wouldn't
be too hard (in Scheme, preferable).
> People involved in SGML tend to be a little fanatical about thinking it
> is the only proper format for data, and so forth. I recall sitting there
> listening to Charles Goldfarb lecture to our class. He was saying
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Wow!!!
> something like, "Once your data is in SGML, you can easily convert it to
> any other format du jour, such as HTML or the latest Word format. Or you
> can just leave it in SGML." At that point he wrote "Leave in SGML" on
> the board and it struck me that it was an anagram for "Evangelism," as
> long as you write it in a circle so that it repeats infinitely, i.e.
> LeaveInSGMLeaveInSGMLeaveInSGMLeaveInSGML...
*rotfl*
Agreed. What is pretty disturbing is that they are very interested in
stadardization, but when it comes to code, they are somewhat sloppy. I would
prefer a less standardized format if you could get good free software that
supports it. Jade doesn't buy it, as the back ends are too complex and not
flexible enough (or not easily programmable, like TeX).
Thanks for your information, it was interesting to read!
Marcus
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