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From: msa@clinet.FI (Markku Savela)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Netnews message presentation
Message-ID: <507@clinet.FI>
Date: Sun, 25-Oct-87 06:02:39 EST
Article-I.D.: clinet.507
Posted: Sun Oct 25 06:02:39 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Oct-87 02:13:50 EST
References: <7526@g.ms.uky.edu> <4756@oberon.USC.EDU> <21357@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: msa@clinet.UUCP (Markku Savela)
Organization: City Lines Oy, Helsinki, Finland
Lines: 51
Keywords: SGML, Text formatting, Netnews presentation
Summary: Let's define Usenet Tagging System (SGML way)!

<quote>
In article <21357@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes:
	[...]
	2. Netnews presentation
	[...]
The second issue is a bit more thorny. Taken to logical extreme,
we need to write articles in some formatting or page description
language, which the user interfaces interpret for whatever display
the user is using. SGML, anyone? Or perhaps {n,t,dit}roff? Maybe
PostScript?
</quote>
	I would think the SGML is the best bet. It is should not be
	a very hard problem to define a "USENET Tagging System"
	which wouldn't require much change to the normal article
	writing style. (This article is an example of tagged article,
	kind of -- don't take this too literally.)

	Empty line(s) (whether they contain spaces/tabs or not) are
	defined as paragraph separators. I don't know enough of SGML
	to say whether the standard quoting style (">"-marks) could
	be defined for SGML (preserving the format tags of the
	original quoted text). Also, the signature (usually a work of
	art?) should begin with some specific tag (perhaps a "--"
	alone on the line?).

	SGML wouldn't much clutter up the normal article. It would be
	quite readable even without the formatter. PostScript is not
	suitable, because it's an output description language -- you
	cannot reformat it. (nt)roff like codings are hard to read
	without formatting them first and would require too much
	trouble from the article writer.

	With universal usenet tagging system (is it UUTS? :-) any
	newsreader program could adjust to the requirements of the
	current terminal (or any output device: photocomposer,
	laserwriter, etc).

	And what about archieving? With tagging the archiver program
	would know which parts of the message are quote, body text,
	signature and any other types we care to invent.

<btw>		In which news group should we start discussing about
		full text retrieval programs? I tried a while ago
		to post a message into comp.sys.databases, but the
		responce was a silence. I see the issues discussed
		in this message and archiving very closely related.
--
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