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From: jxr@thumper.bellcore.com (Jonathan Rosenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: SGML Book?
Message-ID: <366@salt.bellcore.com>
Date: 18 Apr 91 21:17:12 GMT
Sender: news@salt.bellcore.com
Reply-To: jxr@thumper.bellcore.com (Jonathan Rosenberg)
Organization: Bellcore MRE
Lines: 41

A few eeeks ago, I posted a request to this newsgroup asking for a
recommendation of a good book to learn SGML.  (I neglected to mention
exactly why I wanted to learn SGML, so let me rectify that here.  I'm
tying to learn SGML well enough to be able to learn the HyTime standard,
which is an SGML application.  For those of you who don't know, HyTime
is a proposed ANSI standard for the representation of hypermedia &
time-based multimedia.)

I promised someone on the net that I would post a summary of the
responses I received.

It's very easy for me to summarize the responses.  Two books were
recommened with great regularity.  The most heavily recommended was
Goldfarb's book:

  The SGML handbook / Charles F. Goldfarb ; edited by Yuri Rubinsky -- Oxford :
Clarendon Press ; Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1990.
  xxiv, 664 p. ; 24 cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 0198537379 (hard) : $75.00

(Actually, it was $95 from the place I ordered it.)  I have gotten this
book & begun reading it.  It's a monster (big, that is), but so far I'm
enjoying it.  Thanks all for recommending it.

The seond most recommended book was:

Van Herwijnen, Eric.
  Practical SGML / Eric van Herwijnen. -- Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic
Publishers, c1990.
  xviii, 307 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 079230635X (alk. paper)

I haven't gotten this one (& may not), but quite a few people seemd to like it.

Several other books received single recommendations.

Thanks for all of your help.

Jonathan Rosenberg