Re: tlug: SGML

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Gushee <matt@example.com> writes:

    Matt> Stephen J. Turnbull writes:

    >> sp and jade are excellent, and pretty much all that you need.

    Matt> "All that you need"?

That's available freely, and, if your statement

    Matt> Jade is probably the best available implementation of the
    Matt> DSSSL standard,

is meant to be as broad as it seems, available, "period".

    Matt> you don't have a whole lot of things that you might want in
    Matt> a formal, published document.

No, you have them in SGML---you just have to write replacement code to
get them, and you have to rewrite that code and possibly the API
between that code and the DTD if you want to change it.  DSSSL will
make it possible to do that portably (across different backends as
well as different system platforms).

Or instead you (somebody out there, anyway) could write the
generalized code and contribute it to jade ;-)

    Matt> Okay ... but I don't see what was wrong, in practical terms,
    Matt> with Andy's understanding. And I don't see how an SGML
    Matt> element is a method. Seems to me that a DSSSL stylesheet:

    Matt> * uses primitive objects defined by the DSSSL standard and
    Matt> implemented in the DSSSL engine (Jade or whatever)

    Matt> * possibly defines higher-level objects based on those
    Matt> primitives

    Matt> * defines and implements methods for representing SGML
    Matt> elements ... which is the main point for most people.

But AFAIK what comes out the other end is normalized SGML.  Not a
bitmap of the printed page, HPGL, Postscript, TeX, or LaTeX, but a
highly retargetable markup stream.

    >> Another application would be to have a browser display
    >> stylesheet for HTML, and a print style sheet for the same
    >> html.dtd.

    Matt> Note the "would be." This usefulness of this excellent idea
    Matt> depends, of course, on the browser-makers supporting it. And
    Matt> given their half-hearted support for the very simple CSS
    Matt> standard, DSSSL support may be too much to hope for in our
    Matt> lifetimes.

If you (or somebody out there with the skills and the time to
contribute) want it, do it yourself; Mozilla is free now, and so is
w3.el.  Or Arena, which has the best style sheet support of all
(reputedly).

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