Xref: utzoo news.groups:22399 comp.text:7007 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!smunews!txsil!robin From: robin@txsil.lonestar.org (Robin Cover) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.text Subject: Re: call for discussion: comp.text.sgml, standard general markup language Summary: Separate SGML Discussion (Vote "yes") Message-ID: <281@txsil.lonestar.org> Date: 12 Jul 90 14:35:57 GMT References: Followup-To: comp.text Organization: Summer Inst. of Linguistics, Dallas TX Lines: 61 Ed Vielmetti has presented thoughtful and cogent reasons for establishing a distinctive Newsgroup dedicated to SGML. The name "comp.text.sgml" seems defensible to me if we understand the designation to mean ISO 8879 and the related suite of standards which pertain to SGML-conforming documents (DSSSL, SPDL, SDIF). Discussions on ODA/ODIF/ODL and even EDI would be encouraged so long as the relevance to "structured documents" were clear, and so long as the forum did not degenerate into an SGML-ODA battleground. A name like "comp.text.struct" seems equally defensible if we mean all topics related to structured documents (e.g., other standards for descriptive/declarative markup, structured-document editors, retrieval on structured documents). The strength of commitment to SGML in government, industry and education is sufficient to warrant a separate SGML discussion: if anyone wants a dedicated ODA forum, one is already available (from Carnegie-Mellon). I have a strong preference for the name "comp.text.sgml," however, in light of one troublesome reality: I think that a majority of the "major players" in SGML is not tuned to this News channel. An SGML discussion makes more sense on BITNET/Internet, in some respects. But since nobody has organized one, Ed cannot be criticized for trying on UUCP News. If some SGML experts from among the "major players" are to be attracted to the group, the distinctive name "sgml" and focused attention on SGML is a clear desideratum. It will be hard enough to get support from SGML gurus anyway -- they will have neither time nor patience to muck through dozens of postings on unrelated topics. (By "major players," I refer primarily to companies/persons with expert understanding of the relevant standards, or representatives of companies with commercial SGML parsers, authoring systems, etc.) For a healthy SGML discussion, I feel it is imperative to have a couple SGML experts listening in. Those who have actually read the standard, or write DTD's, or build parsers will know what I mean. There is still a lot of confusion about what SGML actually *IS* (and is not), and it's easy for an unmoderated forum to generate unfortunate "mis-information." I would even suggest that several companies or SGML-supporting agencies be contacted (e.g., Software Exoterica; SoftQuad; Datalogics) to see if they would designate persons to help referee the discussion -- at least at moments when mis-information goes unchecked or when technical questions cannot be answered by the forum's regular readers. I intend no offense in these comments (I recall superb contributions by Tim Bray [UWaterloo/Open Text Systems] and David Slocombe [SoftQuad], for instance). But I have seen the mixed results on another electronic forum where it was clear that many contributors did not understand what SGML is (people who think it's a formatting language, or a tagset, etc.). Commissioning a "SGML -- Frequently Asked Questions" document would be a valuable goal in its own right. With these minor reservations -- I say we support Ed's proposal for a dedicated SGML discussion. If the traffic is light to start with, all the better: the distinctive goals Ed Vielmetti outlined can be realized, and that would be a nice beginning. As interest builds, additional SGML gurus and users may be persuaded to fire up News. If the forum needs to move to Internet or BITNET eventually, that's fine too. Robin Cover Member, Text Encoding Initiative (Text Representation) BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 UUCP: texbell!txsil!robin Internet: robin@txsil.lonestar.org | robin@utafll.lonestar.org