Re: tlug: SGML

["Andrew S. Howell" <andy@example.com>]

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

    Matt> Andrew S. Howell writes:

    Matt> I'm running late, so this is a bit hasty, but ...

Thanks for the "hasty" answer :)

    Matt> The DocBook DTD is widely used and often recommended as a
    Matt> basis for deriving your own DTDs. However, it's quite
    Matt> complex and maybe shouldn't be your very first experience w/
    Matt> SGML ... unless you're very brave. You can get it from
    Matt> ... gotta check the bookmark here
    Matt> ... http://www.ora.com/davenport/ .

Went and grabbed that. You're right, its a bit much for a first go. It
does have a fair amount of docs with it, which I'm kinda getting a
handle on.

    Matt> Let's see ... I suppose you are aware of PSGML? It's the
    Matt> Emacs package for SGML editing ... works great, is packaged
    Matt> w/ the XEmacs distribution, but you have to install it
    Matt> yourself on FSF Emacs.

Got that as well. I tried parsing the DocBook DTD. After about 20
minutes of emacs maxing out the CPU, I when home. It finished at some
point. It was fine when I came in the next morning, a which point I
saved the parsed DTD. Didn't want to have to do that again! :)

    Matt> As far as conversion to other formats, hmmm... organizations
    Matt> w/ deep pockets buy expensive SGML systems that take care of
    Matt> everything for them w/out much effort, but good free tools
    Matt> are not all that abundant, I think (though I'm still just a
    Matt> beginner). 

We don't have deep pockets. I'm armed with curiosity and time I would
otherwise spend sleeping :)

I miss-spoke when I said conversion. I didn't really understand what
SGML does ( most likely still don't ). I was thinking it was more like
TeX, in that it takes care of formatting. Now I understand that this
is not the case, that the presentation ( formating, rendering ? ) of
the SGML is quite separate from it, which seems to be where DSSSL come
in.

    Matt> I think CoST, a TCL-based formatting program, is
    Matt> well-regarded; there are a couple of decent Perl-based
    Matt> things which I haven't tried. I've been learning DSSSL,
    Matt> which is a Scheme-based stylesheet language; as a *standard*
    Matt> it seems to be totally cool, but it's not very well
    Matt> implemented yet. Jade is the most widely-used and apparently
    Matt> best free DSSSL engine (see http://www.jclark.com/ ) .

Compiled up jade etc. Still a long way understanding DSSSL. Am I right
in thinking that one would takes an SGML doc, and a DSSSL style
sheet, and feed that thought jade to produce a doc formated the way
you want it? It seems that DSSSL is mechanism to transform SGML into
other formats, possible even between different DTD?  

    Matt> For more info than you can absorb in 5 years, check out the
    Matt> SGML/XML home page at
    Matt> http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html. It's kinda overwhelming,
    Matt> but has some pointers to a few good tutorials.

Actually, this is what prompted my message. It was much more that I could
absorb, so I wanted to find out what tlugers really use. Thanks for
all the pointers.


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