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From: domo@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: SGML on a Mac?
Summary: SGML is International Standard 8879:1986
Message-ID: <1990Aug7.115024.3160@tsa.co.uk>
Date: 7 Aug 90 11:50:24 GMT
References: <194@sierra.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: domo@tsa.co.uk (Dominic Dunlop)
Organization: The Standard Answer Ltd.
Lines: 33

In article <194@sierra.STANFORD.EDU> siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU
(siegman) writes:
>     I'm involved in a planning effort exploring computerized
> manuscript preparation/typesetting packages for technical manuscripts
> for professional journals, professional societies, book manuscripts,
> and so on.  Prime candidates seem to be TeX and SGML (or is it SMGL?),
> which I gather is IBM's (?) "Standard Graphics Markup Language" (?).
> It's been claimed that SGML is much more widely used "commercially" or
> in "commercial publishing" than is TeX.

Well, I'd take that with a pinch of salt.  It's certainly true that its
proponents would _like_ it to be more widely used, and it is indeed
becoming more...  well, is ``popular'' the word?  Anyway, more and more
people are finding that they have a reason to use it.

Standard Generalized Markup language is in fact an international standard
-- ISO 8879:1986.  As such (surprise, surprise) it's used in the production
of international standards.  I have reason to know this because there has
been a bit of back-chat from the ISO central secretariat in Geneva about
good (?) ole troff being used to produce the POSIX standards, in which I am
somewhat involved.  SGML is also being used in a number of
government-sponsored projects around the world (the Canadians, I believe,
are pretty hot on it) and in (usally biggish) business, where it can be a
component in Electronic Document Interchange (EDI) schemes.

There are two other related ISO standards: 9069:1988 -- SGML support
facilities: SGML Document Interchange Format (SDIF); and technical report
9753:1988 -- SGML suport facilities: Techniques for using SGML.

All this is utter hear-say: I am not a user.  And, after all that, no, I
don't know of a Mac implementation.
-- 
Dominic Dunlop