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From: bobs (Bob Stayton, Yoyodoc)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: SGML question
Keywords: SGML, ambiguity
Message-ID: <9847@scorn.sco.COM>
Date: 8 Sep 90 01:24:39 GMT
References: <555@helios.prosys.se> <146@thor.UUCP> <582@helios.prosys.se> <141829@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Sender: news@sco.COM
Reply-To: bobs@sco.COM (Bob Stayton)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 50


In article <141829@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> tut@cairo.Sun.COM (Bill "Bill" Tuthill) writes:
>In article <582@helios.prosys.se>, ath@prosys.se (Anders Thulin) writes:
>> 
>We investigated SGML two years ago, going so far as to send several people
>to high-priced conferences.  Our conclusion was that SGML doesn't solve
>the main problem we need solved, which is document portability.  Excuse the
>baseball metaphor, but SGML has three strikes against it:
>
>1. It originated at IBM, a company not renowned for software prowess.
>
>2. The spec is bloated, bogus, pretentious, and incomprehensible.
>
>3. It doesn't deal with graphics, tables, or equations (is that 5 strikes?).
>   It only provides text portability, which ASCII does more elegantly.

I won't touch your first two strikes, but the third requires
a response.

The most thorough implementation of SGML to date appears to
be CALS, the emerging Defense Department standard for
documentation.  If you haven't looked at SGML for two
years, then you probably missed CALS.

CALS does address graphics, tables, and equations.
It sort of cheats on graphics by choosing three formats
from among the many, but hey, why invent another format?
The tables spec has gone through a major revision and
appears to address most of the needs of describing
complex tables.  The equation part was adapted from ISO TR
9573 written by Anders Bergland.

The latest CALS spec also provides a method for identifying
a default format for each text element.  That way you
can have your text and format it too |).

The baseline tag set of CALS provides actual tag names and
definitions that will become some kind of standard merely
by the weight of the DoD.  Several vendors of publishing
software are providing CALS compliance, which will also help
make it a defacto standard for document interchange.
Of course, I don't know of anybody that is actually doing
this yet, but it is certainly feasible now.

bobs
Bob Stayton                                 425 Encinal Street
Technical Publications                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.              (408) 425-7222
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