Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!nuug!ulrik!ifi!skakke.ifi.uio.no!enag From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: SGML Spec Message-ID: Date: 13 Jul 90 05:01:45 GMT References: <2999@tellab5.tellabs.com> Sender: usenet@ifi.uio.no (News Poster) Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 50 In-Reply-To: etan@sunEc.tellabs.com's message of 12 Jul 90 17:38:48 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: svarte.ifi.uio.no Etan, SGML is not a "set of tags". It's a language for defining the inter- relationship between abstract or general markup units, with the aid of tags. (An SGML application would have a set of tags, though.) You define a Document Type Definition by specifying the interrelation- ships, and then use the tags after specifying that you're going to use that particular DTD. Some DTD's are standardized, such as ODL (Office Document Language with the Office Document Architecture) and a set of tags "comes with" 8879. The Technical Report is well worth reading, and gives additional input on choice of tags, etc. I recommend getting the following for starters, if you're seriously interested: ISO 8879: Standard Generalized Markup Language ISO TR 9573: Techniques for using SGML Martin Bryan: "SGML: An Author's Guide", Addison-Wesley ISBN 0-201-17535-5. (Martin Bryan works for Quorum Technical Services, Ltd, Gloucestershire, as Software Documentation Manager according to one of the example letters in the book, and the book is pretty good, although it tries to be a little too complete, and suffers from brevity. I recommend reading it twice to get the jargon right.) Joan M Smith, Robert Stutely: "SGML: the user's guide to ISO 8879", Ellis Horwood Limited (in the UK) ISBN 0-7458-0221-4, John Wiley & Sons (the world in general) ISBN 0-470-21226-1. (Dedicated "To Charles, but for whom this book would have been unnecessary." A perfect in-joke to those who can lay hands on the commentaries to the draft versions. Charles (whose last name I have forgotten) chaired the ISO committee which wrote the standard, and Joan Smith wanted the information in this book to be part of the standard, which is a most sensible demand. The book is a must, and covers both the first version of 8879 and Amendment 1. Joan Smith is an independent consul- tant and President of the SGML User's Group. Robert Stutely is assistant head of technical servies at Her Majesty's Stationery Office.) I hope you won't be overwhelmed by this. Good luck. I refuse to say anything about FrameMaker, as it would only start a flame-fest. You could probably make an SGML parser which wrote Eroff or troff or whatever output. A product called The Publisher from ArborText (I think) uses TeX as the output language. Seems like that's a good choice. -- [Erik Naggum]