Markup: SGML, cont. (73)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Thu, 9 Mar 89 20:33:14 EST
Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 698. Thursday, 9 Mar 1989.
(1) Date: Thu, 9 MAR 89 11:47:46 GMT (33 lines)
From: ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
(2) Date: 8 February 1989 (21 lines)
From: Willard McCarty <mccarty@utorepas>
Subject: your wish is my command
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 MAR 89 11:47:46 GMT
From: ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
The book on SGML referred to is probably
'SGML: an author's guide to the standard generalized markup language'
by Martin Bryan, published by Addison Wesley in 1988,
isbn 0-201-17535-5; price in the UK: Outrageous (but slightly less so if
you join the SGML Users Group)
As to conversion - it all depends on what you mean! The SCRIPT type notation
will probably include lots of procedural tags for which there may not be any
SGML equivalent and others for which you will have to make an interpretative
decision - e.g. 'I went into italics there because it was a book title but
there because it was an embedded quotation' - so I doubt if there will be
a general purpose solution to the problem of an automatic x-to-AAP-approvd-
SGML converter. Of course, if the system you use has descriptive markup
in which (to quote a famouus Humanist example) all <blurt>s appear as
<blort> the conversion is a trivial problem. But I bet it doesn't. That's
one of the reasons SGML is a better way of marking up a document in the
first place, as we all know.
Since the topic has been raised, can I ask the Humanist readership generally
to keep us informed about SGML software as it emerges through the grapevine?
I know of 3 (all very expensive) packages: AuthorEditor, Avalanche and
Sobemap. DEC (and any other vendors wishing to deal with the US Governments)
keep muttering about new office automations system based on SGML but I have
no details.
Another thought: there was a lot of discussion about SGML here on this
network about a year ago. Would it be worth repackaging that in some way?
Lou Burnard
Associate Editor, Text Encoding Initiative
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 8 February 1989
From: Willard McCarty <mccarty@utorepas>
Subject: your wish is my command
By popular demand, the following topical collection has just been placed
on our file-server:
MARKUP TOPIC-1 All issues of markup
through including, of course,
MARKUP TOPIC-3 SGML
I was in fact waiting for the current discussion to go dormant before
issuing this collection, but Lou has persuaded me otherwise.
Other collections will follow as time permits.
May I point out, however, that valuing the past can indicate either the
wisdom of the present or its poverty. Sharpen your wits and fall to, o
my colleagues!
Yours, Willard McCarty