HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wohler@vnet.ibm.com (Wayne L. Wohler)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 10:10:46 MST
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Useful SGML Information and more FrameBuilder
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM
News-Software: Usenet 3.1

ANOTHER USEFUL SGML INFORMATION DEFINITION
Dr. Goldfarb mentioned to me offline that the HyTime properties found in
the HyTime standard are another "public" definition of useful SGML
information.  It would be an interesting exercise to build a matrix of
all the public definitions and the types of information they allow
access to.  It would also be interesting to add to this matrix the
information that the products that are available support access to
(although this will be a very subjective judgement in some cases).
Anyone willing to do this and publish the result?

FRAMEBUILDER
<tongue-in-cheek>I must confess some disappointment that no one took me
to task for my comments on FrameBuilder.</>  I think the SGML technical
community has a tendency to try to eat its young before the "child" has
a chance to grow to maturity.  I recall complaints similar those being
leveled at FrameBuilder when other products were first released;
products that have grown in function and feature coverage.  I haven't
seen written claims that FrameBuilder is fully conforming to the SGML
standard, it sounds as if others have (I wouldn't count the white paper
since that talks about future directions, Frame may quite correctly
claim that they haven't fully implemented their strategy as articulated
there).  If Frame did claim conformance, then they are wrong.

On the other hand, with a little ingenuity, an application designer can
go a long way toward supporting many of the parts of SGML that are not
supported by name in the product.  Just to give another example,
external entities containing SGML data may be supported using empty
components to mark the limits of the entity.  The author may enter them,
delete them, etc. as long as they are dealt with as a pair and nest
properly.  Some application code can be written to enforce this using
the Frame API.  The import can create them and the export can use them
to create the files.  I know its a lot of work but it can, and probably
will, be done.

Wayne L. Wohler                   Internet:  wohler@vnet.ibm.com
Dept G82/910M                     IBMMAIL:   USIB29WX@IBMMAIL
Publishing Solutions Development             Phone: 1-303-924-0470
IBM Corporation
Boulder, Colorado  80301-9191

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: lab@gdstech.grumman.com (Larry Beck)
Subject: Re: DTD desgin for forms
Reply-To: lab@gdstech.UUCP (Larry Beck)
Organization: Grumman Data Systems-Woodbury
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 14:25:06 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.091326.14930@nuscc.nus.sg> bernd@melon.iss.nus.sg (Bernd Nordhausen) writes:
>
>I am in the process of writing DTD's for forms, eg. tax forms, application
>forms, etc.  I think SGML is ideal for representing forms as form in SGML 
>will be more structured, and can be better queried. However, there are some 
>interesting questions that arise.
>
>For example,  when one designs several forms, should each form have a 
>separate DTD, or should you have one general DTD with each separate 
>form an instance of that DTD?
>
I've had the same idea, as a matter of fact, an RFP came out last year where
using SGML to answer the forms design part would've been perfect. Unfortunately
we decided not to bid the thing.

Anyway, I think you wouldn't need a DTD for each specific form. A single DTD
could support a whole group of related forms. The thing I'm curious about is
what software you'll use to process the SGML encoded forms. I don't know of any
COTS package that does this, so you'll probably have to write something.

If you know of COTS software that'll support SGML based forms, I'd like to hear 
about it.

 
Larry Beck
From: aesmoot@aescon.com (Art Smoot)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 11:11:58 -0700
Organization: AES Consulting, Boulder, Colorado

At a meeting in November of the Front Range SGML Entities, the Colorado
SGML users group, a representative from Frame demonstrated FrameBuilder
in its current state.  While he indicated that they were working on
additional features and what we were seeing was only prototype code, he
indicated that it didn't handle external entities nor attributes, and
that both would be added "at a later date".  SGML without either of
those isn't really SGML.


  

-- 
*  Art Smoot, AES Consulting                 Internet: aesmoot@aescon.com *
*  1177 Wildwood Road               Voice: 303-499-3837, FAX 303-494-3107 *
*  Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA                                           *
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: bglenden@colobus.cv.nrao.edu (Brian Glendenning)
Subject: Re: SGML
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 03:25:35 GMT


Still, if one wanted to try an "sgml" aware editor (for free!) - what
are the options?

Brian
--
       Brian Glendenning - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
bglenden@nrao.edu          Charlottesville Va.           (804) 296-0286
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: thomas@gmd.de (Tom Gordon, I3.KI 2665)
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Reply-To: thomas@gmd.de
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany.
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 15:08:38 GMT

In article 28407@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com, lange@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Alex Lange) writes:
> 
> As for "native SGML support," I realized that was an untruth when I was
> told that documents are stored in Frame's binary format.

Although I too would prefer that SGML editors store documents in SGML,
rather than some binary format, this is not uncommon.  Well, at least
SoftQuad's Author/Editor product also does this.    I don't think this
should be one of the required features for a "fully conform" SGML editor.


---
Thomas F. Gordon
GMD, FIT; Artificial Intelligence Research Division
5205 Sankt Augustin 1 / Germany
email: thomas.gordon@gmd.de;  phone: (+49 2241) 14-2665
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: SGML for data querying
Date: 7 Jan 93 18:01:36 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

In article <19930107.090654.710@almaden.ibm.com> drmacro@ralvm13.VNET.IBM.COM writes:
>But it's not that simple.  If you define "SGML import and export" as
>being able to import a document and then immediately export, byte for
>byte, the original document, then what you are storing in your
>database is SGML, even if the internal representation is proprietary.
>Thus you must support SGML features like entity references, SDATA,
>NDATA, etc., etc.  This support can be added to hierarchical,

Thanks for your reply.  I just want to pick up on something - what do
you think about including features like comments, tag minimization,
and data tagging in a database?  If you don't, you aren't really storing
the "real SGML", but I honestly can't see the point of remembering that
tag of item X was minimized while tag of item Y wasn't.  Seems to me
that there is at least one level of SGML which gets in the way of
database applications, and ought to be stripped out in any importation
of SGML into a database.
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: hardiman@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Paul Hardiman)
Subject: Helmsman inquiry
Organization: Boeing
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 19:46:27 GMT


I am  interested in knowing in any feedback anybody may have
regarding Helmsman text retreival system from Nortern
Telecom.


Flames and e-mail welcome.

-- 
Ciao 4 Now ---
  Paul Hardiman  (206) 728-8843  hardiman@bcstec.boeing.com
From: murata@lark (Makoto Murata)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: References to the CONCUR feature?
Date: 4 Jan 93 07:06:12 GMT
Organization: Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Yokohama, Japan


I am interested in storing a source and a result document in the 
same file.  For this purpose, SGML has a feature called CONCUR, 
but it is poorly explained in "SGML Handbook".  Are there any 
other documents about this feature?  Is this feature really used?

MURATA Makoto
Systems and Communications Research Lab
Fuji Xerox
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: kaykit@iti.gov.sg (Chan Kay Kit (KSL))
Subject: Fax number of ....
Reply-To: kaykit@iti.gov.sg
Organization: Information Technology Institute, National Computer Board, S'pore
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 05:18:22 GMT

Hi,

	I would like to know the fax number of Zandar Corp. which produces
TagWrite for Windows. 

	Please email replies to kaykit@iti.gov.sg. Thanks in advance.



---
Kay-Kit CHAN    			| Internet: kaykit@iti.gov.sg
Knowledge Systems Lab			| Bitnet:   kaykit@itivax
Information Technology Institute	| Tel:      (65) 772-0920
National Computer Board of Singapore    | Fax:      (65) 770-3043
From: neumann@dec4.wu-wien.ac.at (Gustaf Neumann)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Proceedings of SGML 92
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 23:41:13 MET
Organization: WU-Wien
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: dec4.wu-wien.ac.at

Does anybody have a pointer how to obtain the Proceedings of the SGML92?
Publisher, ISBN or whatever (SGML-document)?

Many thanks in advance,
-gustaf
--
Gustaf Neumann          neumann@dec4.wu-wien.ac.at, neumann@awiwuw11.bitnet
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration 
Augasse 2-6,  A-1090 Vienna, Austria		
Tel: +43 (222) 31-336 x4533  	Fax: 347-555
From: drmacro@ralvm13.VNET.IBM.COM
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 14:33:13 EST
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: SGML for data querying
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM
News-Software: UReply 3.0
            <1993Jan7.180136.236@infodev.cam.ac.uk>

In <1993Jan7.180136.236@infodev.cam.ac.uk> Alasdair Grant writes:
>
>Thanks for your reply.  I just want to pick up on something - what do
>you think about including features like comments, tag minimization,
>and data tagging in a database?  If you don't, you aren't really storing
>the "real SGML", but I honestly can't see the point of remembering that
>tag of item X was minimized while tag of item Y wasn't.  Seems to me
>that there is at least one level of SGML which gets in the way of
>database applications, and ought to be stripped out in any importation
>of SGML into a database.
>

It's certainly technically possible to preserve all of that in
a database if the needs of your system require it, but I wouldn't
loose sleep over a system that didn't preserve comments.  Tag
minimization can be re-applied algorithmically since the minimization
rules are defined in the DTD, and features like shorttag and
datatag are best left alone, since they are primarily concesions
to the problems of data entry, not information identification or
structuring, and therefore shouldn't enter into the equation.

Most of the folks I've talked to do not seem to consider the requirement
that SGML source be normalized for database storage to be a problem
in practice, and we know we can unnormalize it if we ever want to.
You can get around the problem of preserving comments by providing
elements whose defined semantic is to contain descriptive comments
about the elements that contain them or define explicitly-descriptive
elements for the sorts of things you normally use comments for,
such as "file headers" that contain author information, change
tracking info, copyrights, etc.  That is the approach we've taken
within IBM.  I will not accept any arguments for preserving comments
based on the needs of applications that use the data in comments
for their own purposes.  SGML provides better places for such
information, such as processing instructions, the APPINFO statement
in SGML declarations, extra-SGML mechanisms unique to the
application, and so on.  Since comments are, by definition, not
part of the document content, and are not carried by the ESIS
information, there is no strict requirement to preserve them.

Eliot Kimber                      Internet:  drmacro@ralvm13.vnet.ibm.com
Dept E14/B500                     IBMMAIL:   USIB2DK9@IBMMAIL
Network Programs Information Development     Phone: 1-919-543-7091
IBM Corporation
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
From: "David Herron" <david@twg.com>
Subject: SGML for data querying
Sensitivity: Personal
Encoding:  32 TEXT , 4 TEXT 
Conversion: Prohibited
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Conversion-With-Loss: Prohibited
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 22:16:17 GMT

bernd@melon.iss.nus.sg (Bernd Nordhausen) writes:
> I am in the process of writing DTD's for forms, eg. tax forms, application
> forms, etc.  I think SGML is ideal for representing forms as form in SGML 
> will be more structured, and can be better queried. However, there are some 
> interesting questions that arise.

There's a couple of things I'm interested in doing for which structuring
and queryablility would be cool.  I've been reading comp.text.sgml
for some time to get an inkling of how that might be done.

As I understand it, SGML's tagging is not necessarily for laying things
out on a page, though this is one of the uses.  Instead an SGML tag has
whatever meaning the DTD and processing software wishes to assign.

Taking the `forms' example.  A tag might be `<NAME>' and the value at
that tag is the persons name.  Or a purchase requisition form might
have <AMOUNT-REQUIRED> <ITEM-DESCRIPTION> <CATALOG-NUMBER> <UNIT-PRICE>
and <PRICE> tags, with associated values.  Is there a concept wherein
some `tags' have `values'?  Or does a tag only create a context, and the
data within that context is interpreted in a particular way?

In any case it appears that for `querying' type applications the
SGML parser must build up some data structure, and that the application
program must then be able to probe the data structure at its leisure.
For a normal text processing application (SGML -> TeX -> PS conversion)
you can get away with creating and destroying the data structures on
the fly.  But to be consulted at the applications leisure the data
structures must stay around for a long time.

So... Are there any SGML programming toolkits available which allow
for this sort of thing?  Is the ARCSGML/JClark suitable in this way?
(I'm on a small budget)

<- David Herron <david@twg.com> (work) <david@davids.mmdf.com> (home)
<-
<- "As near as I can tell, only selected dinosaur systems that lurk mainly inside
<- the US DoD won't be MIME-capable soon." - Ran Atkinson <atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil>
From: lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Les Carr)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: SGML
Date: 6 Jan 93 10:08:56 GMT

In <19930105.004@erik.naggum.no> SGML@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) writes:

>|   Is there any standard for SGML wherein the text is seperated from the
>|   formatting codes, so that for those that have no interest in SGML the
>|   text is not mangled?
>If you wish to separate the markup from the text completely, you will
>need to establish a means to identify the start and end of all elements
>in the separated text.  This is certainly _possible_, but you wouldn't
>want to do it, because you would end up with more things to take care of
>than writing an SGML-aware editor from scratch.

Doesn't HyTime provide this with its CONLOC facility?
Mind you, I'm not suggesting that there are any HyTime editors out there!
-- 
L.Carr@ecs.soton.ac.uk               Les Carr
Tel: +44 703 593649                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton SO9 5NH England
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 03:19:21 GMT
Organization: The Instrumentality
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In article <ROBIN.93Jan10111434@utafll.utafll.uta.edu> robin@utafll.uta.edu (Robin Cover) writes:
>The description of FrameBuilder's "SGML support" by Peter Cash is a
>major stunner, if it is accurate.  The Fall issue of <title>Frame
>Focus</> had a lead article "Frame Joins Forces with Datalogics" which
>said, among other things:
>
>     FrameBuilder provides full, native support for Standard
>     Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a widely adopted ISO
>     standard for document interchange.
>
>Nobody doubts that Datalogics does "real" SGML, I assume, but the
>truth about (current, projected) FrameBuilder deserves to be
>clarified immediately.

Well, I should mention (if I didn't in my original post) that my
impressions are derived from witnessing the FrameBuilder demo at the SGML
1992 conference (in November), and from discussions I had with Frame reps
there.  Since this was beta software, it's (just) conceivable that Frame
thoroughly transmogrified the product before releasing it. However, I would
think that the Frame reps would have mentioned something about any such
planned enhancements.

I think Frame definitely has the expertise to do this right--I just don't
think they've done it yet.

>I thought that "full, native support for SGML" would mean a true
>SGML editor that would read any SGML DTD + document instance and
>get right to work.

Yes, that's what those words mean to me, also.
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: SGML
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 10:41:43 GMT

I really don't know much about sgml except what it's for.  I *DO*
however know what I would use it for.  But i need to know one thing: 

Is there any standard for SGML wherein the text is seperated from the
formatting codes, so that for those that have no interest in SGML the
text is not mangled?

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: Erik Naggum <SGML@ifi.uio.no>
Date: 09 Jan 1993 00:20:10 +0100
Subject: Re: Separation of text and markup

[John D. Burger]
:
|   We're developing a text understanding system that marks up the source
|   with semantic information in SGML (e.g. <VIOLENCE victim="...">).  What
|   we will eventually have is a SUITE of such processors, from simple (but
|   fast) to sophisticated (but slow).  Different users may run different
|   processors on the same source document, and may eventually wish to
|   merge or compare the results.
|
|   What this seems to require is exactly what you describe, namely,
|   keeping track of where every element (or at least every tag) is, in
|   terms of the original document.
|
|   Since processors might treat white space differently (e.g. two blank
|   lines vs. indentation for paragraphs), it even seems that we have to
|   index the SGML down to the individual characters, not just words or
|   other tokens.

I've thought a little more about this, and maybe someone out there can use
an idea I had.  It goes like this:

Assume that we have text files that do not contain any markup, i.e. so that
we won't need to parse their contents in any way if we refer to and extract
text from them, and, as a corollary, element contents are not split across
files (entities).

Assume that we have a document type which does not have both elements and
data in element contents.

Assume that we have an entity manager that can extract portions of an
entity given an entity, a starting point and a length, however specified.

For each element that contains PCDATA in the DTD, define three attributes

	contents ENTITY   #CONREF
	start    NUMBERS  #IMPLIED
	length   NUMBERS  #IMPLIED

(with the understanding that _start_ and _length_ are REQUIRED if
_contents_ is specified).

The start and length are both NUMBERS because we might have a record-based
storage system that must address a given character by record and position
within a record, as well as one that can address characters individually.

Then, the element structure can be kept in a "regular" SGML document, which
in the document type declaration subset identifies the entities to which
references are made in the start-tags in this document, and the application
can request the element contents from the entity manager while receiving
the element structure from the parser.

I know of no entity manager that allows this flexibility, but that doesn't
mean none exist, or can't exist.  (I also imagine that this kind of data
extraction service will be required by an entity manager to be used with
HyTime engines.)

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum                 ISO  8879 SGML                    +47 295 0313
                            ISO 10744 HyTime
<erik@naggum.no>            ISO  9899 C                 Memento, terrigena
<SGML@ifi.uio.no>           ISO 10646 UCS             Memento, vita brevis
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: lange@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Alex Lange)
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Reply-To: lange@lmsc.lockheed.com
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space, Sunnyvale CA USA
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 13:17:50 GMT

jrutledg@cs.ulowell.edu (John Lawrence Rutledge) writes:
: In article <ROBIN.93Jan10111434@utafll.utafll.uta.edu> robin@utafll.uta.edu (Robin Cover) writes:
: >The description of FrameBuilder's "SGML support" by Peter Cash is a
: >major stunner, if it is accurate.  The Fall issue of <title>Frame
: >Focus</> had a lead article "Frame Joins Forces with Datalogics" which
: >said, among other things:
: >
: >     FrameBuilder provides full, native support for Standard
: >     Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a widely adopted ISO
: >     standard for document interchange.
: 
: I got the some line from a sales rep at UNIX EXPO back in September.  So I
: arranged to become a beta test site.  Unfortunatity I found out after 
: getting the product and the manuals, this "full, nativbe support" only 
: means it incorperates the concept of structure, but nothing more.  
: 
: FrameBuilder allows the user to define, in SGML like sematics, the structure
: of the document.  This structure definition contains all the basic operators
: including inclusions and exclusions.  

The demonstrations at the Seybold Expo in San Francisco last Fall
emphasized FrameBuilder's rules as "content models," but "better than SGML."

:                                       But even this violates the standard
: in minor ways.  

The concept of "required elements" is not enforced, merely "noted"
by red lines (as opposed to black) in FrameBuilder's presentation
of a document's structure. This was justified by the representative as
in keeping with the way documents are written.  For example, you wouldn't
want to force someone to compose the introduction to a paper before
the body was written, would you?

As for "native SGML support," I realized that was an untruth when I was
told that documents are stored in Frame's binary format.

Alex Lange                               |    Everyone spoke of 
UNIX Technical Publications              |    an information overload,
Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.  |    but what there was in fact was
Sunnyvale CA USA                         |    a non-information overload.