HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Date: 22 Jan 1993 13:40:41 -0500
From: "Steven R. Newcomb" <srn@techno.com>
Subject: Documents, please

Dear Friends Who Have SGML Documents,

This is a solicitation for donations of parsable materials.  As you
know, we are bringing MarkMinder out in March, and we have been
counting on Exoterica's long awaited SGML document test suite being
available last month (December 1992) to validate its functionality.

Exoterica negotiated our check in December but now they say there will
be no deliveries of the test suite on CD-ROM until second quarter at
the earliest, because they keep finding more things to put in it.
This is both good (because it will be even better) and bad (because it
will be too late to affect MarkMinder 1.0) for us, but the bottom line
is we won't have the "Compleat Test Suite" in time to validate our
product before its March rollout.

If you have any SGML documents you'd be willing to share with us just
for the fun of making sure that MarkMinder can parse them, we'll
gladly accept them.  The easiest way is for you to put them into some
ftp'able file someplace and then tell us where to find them and how to
log in (don't send passwords through the e-mail, though, please!).  We
can also accept 8mm tape cassettes, 1/4 inch QIC 150 tape cartridges,
and of course DOS format diskettes of all descriptions and vintages.
E-mail might also work; we have received files of up to 100k
successfully.  (I don't know what the limit is on e-mail, but I think
it's pretty high, at least on our end.)

Thanks!

Steven R. Newcomb, President
TechnoTeacher, Inc.                          Voice: +1 904 422 3574
1810 High Road                               Fax:   +1 904 386 2562
Tallahassee, FL 32303-4408 USA               Internet: srn@techno.com
From: detig@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Christine Detig)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Modify SGML declaration conveniently?
Date: 27 Jan 1993 17:48:37 GMT
Organization: TH Darmstadt, FG Systemprogrammierung
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: spleen.iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de

Hello,

I would like to modify an SGML declaration so that everything is 
equivalent to the default except that I want to change a feature, namely
DATATAG to YES.

Is there a way to do this in a more convenient way than re-typing the 
whole declaration? (I use the sgmls parser.)

Thanks, 

Christine
detig@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
From: drmacro@ralvm13.VNET.IBM.COM
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 14:55:53 EST
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM
News-Software: UReply 3.1
            <93018.171821U35395@uicvm.uic.edu>

In <93018.171821U35395@uicvm.uic.edu> C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>Robert Hartman writes:
>> Yes, that's the crux.  What I mean by "exactly" is zero output from
>> diff.  One off-the-cuff way to rate the degree of conformance to the
>> standard is by the ratio of diff output lines to original (text) lines
>> for a large and complicated set of reference documents.
>
>I have *real* problems with the notion that an SGML processor should be
>expected or required (possibly even problems with the notion that it
>should be *allowed*) to preserve distinctions in the input form which
>the standard says quite explicitly do not affect the processing of the
>document.  Yes, it's handy in at least some cases (I use SGML comments
>for information I would just as soon keep around for the moment).  But
>the standard says very clearly that an end-tag inferred by the parser
>behaves the same way an end-tag explicitly given in the input stream.
>If we require SGML processors to preserve that distinction from import
>to export, we really are requiring something more than SGML support from
>them.
>
>-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
> ACH / ACL / ALLC Text Encoding Initiative
> University of Illinois at Chicago
>

I think we have to make a distinction, as Michael does, between
the requirements of ISO 8879 and what I will call user requirements.
ISO 8879 does not require, for example, preservation of record
ends caused by markup (e.g., starting each attribute on a new line).
However, as a user, you may have a requirement *on your editor* to
preserve record ends caused by markup.  An editor that does not
preserve markup record ends (and that otherwise conforms) is a
conforming SGML application, but it may not meet your requirements,
which is between you and it.

The idea that a test of conformance would be the degree of
change between input and output ignores the above paragraph and
the specifics of the standard.

I feel well within my rights to state the user requirement that
an SGML editor preserve *all* aspects of the input document,
whether required by ISO 8879 or not, but I cannot condemn an
editor that does not meet those requirements as non conforming.

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: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Introductory Text
Date: 28 Jan 93 22:12:35 GMT
Organization: Oracle Corporation
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.


Could someone please recommend a good introductory SGML text?

Thanks,
Mike Friedman
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 15:20:53 CST
From: C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <U35395@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject:  sgml support and diff return code of 0
 <1993Jan15.192630.4767@informix.com> <93018.171821U35395@uicvm.uic.edu>
 <1993Jan19.023707.18716@informix.com>

Robert Hartman writes (quoting me):
> >the standard says very clearly that an end-tag inferred by the parser
> >behaves the same way an end-tag explicitly given in the input stream.
> >If we require SGML processors to preserve that distinction from import
> >to export, we really are requiring something more than SGML support from
> >them.
>
> If you can write a parser that can do this correctly in all cases, more
> power to you.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'this' -- if you mean 'infer the
existence of an end-tag in the SGML document', then any conforming
SGML parser can do it.  The standard defines quite clearly when a tag
is omissible or not and how a parser can recognize the omission of a
tag.  So it's not magic.  It's not even one of the areas in which
different parsers differ substantially in their interpretations of the
standard.

> From what little I know about parsers, it's would seem to me to be much
> easier to get one to pass the diff test than it would be to verify that
> another makes all the right guesses.

Easy, perhaps:  all you have to do is save the input file.  My argument
was not that it's hard to preserve the input, but that it's logically
inconsistent to insist that an implementation of a standard preserve
distinctions which the standard defines as not having any legitimate
significance.

It's as though one insisted that a C compiler had to produce object code
from which the source code could be regenerated, and the regenerated
source code had to have all the comments, the white space, the macro
definitions, and the newlines of the original source, as well as having
trigrams in exactly the places where the original source had trigrams.
Otherwise we are going to tell all our friends and colleagues that the
C compiler is not fully conformant.

Since the C standard specifies that a parser cannot require a user to
use two spaces where one would suffice, or interpret two spaces
differently from one (outside of literal strings), some might argue
that a *conforming* C compiler *cannot possibly* preserve the information
that one, or two, or seven, spaces were used here, or here, or here.
Even if it's legal for a compiler to retain that information somehow,
it would surely be rather strange to say that *only* a compiler which
did that should count as fully conformant, which is what your
original proposal boils down to for SGML parsers.

-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: amichael@bnr.ca (Arlen Michaels)
Subject: SGML'93- when and where??
Followup-To: comp.text.sgml
Organization: Bell-Northern Research
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 19:19:04 GMT

Will there be an SGML'93 conference?
Could someone please post the details? 

Arlen Michaels       amichael@bnr.ca      (613) 763 2568
Bell-Northern Research Ltd
PO Box 3511, Station C, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  K1Y 4H7
From: thomas@gmd.de (Tom Gordon, I3.KI 2665)
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder and SGML
Reply-To: thomas@gmd.de
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 13:58:05 GMT

In article AA00807@lani.corp.frame.com.frame, hajagos@frame.com (Lani Hajagos) writes:
> 
> 
> 
> There have been some questions raised about FrameBuilder's support for
> SGML and what constitutes "native SGML support". It is hoped that this
> statement clarifies Frame's position.
> 
> SGML is both a methodology for modelling the contents of a set of
> documents, and a syntax for representing the model and identifying
> informational elements within the contents of a document. In developing
> FrameBuilder, Frame Technology Corp. has chosen to concentrate on the
> former. FrameBuilder provides user-friendly tools that create and
> manipulate documents that conform to the SGML model in a WYSIWYG manner
> that bypasses the syntax of SGML.
> 
... 
> 
> So what does "native SGML support" really mean? Frame Technology's
> definition is the ability to represent the document model and
> validate a document instance against that model, and the ability to
> transform SGML syntax into an internal representation and vice versa.
> 

It is nice to see a message from an authority at Frame Technology in this
news group.  Thanks!    

I have no trouble understanding the distinction between syntax and semantics
and agree that semantics is the more important of the two.
But when you write that FrameBuilder supports writing documents that "conform
to the SGML model", what do you mean exactly?   Are you claiming that there
is a one-to-one mapping between FrameBuilder documents and SGML
documents?   Or only that some (or even most) SGML documents can be mapped into FrameBuilder, and vice versa?

If you are only making this weaker claim, which may be fine for many applications,
just what parts of the SGML model of documents are not supported?

Thanks again.

---
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: SGML@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: Modify SGML declaration conveniently?
Date: 27 Jan 93 22:01:31 GMT

[Christine Detig]
:
|   I would like to modify an SGML declaration so that everything is
|   equivalent to the default except that I want to change a feature,
|   namely DATATAG to YES.
|
|   Is there a way to do this in a more convenient way than re-typing the
|   whole declaration? (I use the sgmls parser.)

Unfortunately, no.

Various proposals for the revision of SGML have sought to ease this
particular problem spot, but this won't help you in the short term.

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum                 ISO  8879 SGML                    +47 295 0313
Oslo, Norway                ISO 10744 HyTime          Watch this ^ space
<erik@naggum.no>            ISO  9899 C                 Memento, terrigena
<SGML@ifi.uio.no>           ISO 10646 UCS             Memento, vita brevis
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: yuri@sq.com (Yuri Rubinsky)
Subject: Job Opportunity
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 11:53:07 GMT


On behalf of colleagues with no access to the Internet, I'm posting
the following. Please do not contact the poster.

			  Wanted: SGML Analyst

Minimum Qualifications: SGML development experience and knowledge of at
least one ISO-8879 conforming parser and one autotagging package. DTD
development or maintenance experience.

Desired Qualifications: Experience teaching or public speaking. Technical
writing skills. Consulting experience is desirable.

Job Duties: Development and documentation of SGML Document Type Definitions,
autotagger programs, and SGML filters. Assist in developing SGML 
architectures and custom SGML classes.

Must be willing to move to Washington area.

Contact: B. Tommie Usdin, ATLIS Consulting Group, 6011 Executive Blvd.,
Rockville, MD 20852. Phone: 301/816-4307 Fax: 301/468-6758.

Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
From: relihanl@ul.ie (Liam Relihan - CSIS Dept. - UL)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: FrameBuilder
Date: 20 Jan 93 14:18:16 GMT
Organization: University of Limerick, Ireland

In article <V7aVrAYOBh107h@aescon.com>, aesmoot@aescon.com (Art Smoot) writes:
> In <19930113.113849.111@almaden.ibm.com> wohler@vnet.ibm.com (Wayne L. Wohler) writes:
>>In <9301131516.AA18603@mingus.techno.com> "Steven R. Newcomb" <srn@techno.com> writes:
>>>I disagree.
> 
>>I agree with Steve.
> 
> Clearly there is some disagreement on this thread about whether any
> SGML editor should always store ASCII SGML or an "internal format" and
> then export ASCII SGML as needed.  Whichever format is used for storing
> the SGML, IMHO, depends on how the overall document management system
> handles the data.  
Agreed...

> If the SGML editor uses an internal format which can
> be stored, then then it is incumbant on the "system" to guarantee that
> the SGML file always be synchronized with the internal format file.

Why bother...?

Why not do all updating, editing, additions, etc on the SGML editor
with its own internal "object" format. When there is need for an ASCII SGML
file (eg. to send outside the organisation, to use in a package
incompatible with the internal format, etc), then just "output"
the ASCII-based marked-up file(s). This should be only done on a
similar basis to outputting a PostScript representation from a 
work processor.

> For any complex document created in a multi-author environment this is
> essential.  Imagine one author updating the ASCII SGML file and another
> updating the same document's internal format file.  Never happen?
It *should* never.

Responsibility for updates has to end somewhere.
eg. Are you going to consider a change to a PostScript file
as a valid change to a source ?

---
Liam Relihan,           | Voice:  +353-61-333644 ext. 5015 |
C.S.I.S.,               | Fax:    +353-61-330876           |    W H I T E
University Of Limerick, | E-mail: relihanl@ul.ie           |    S P A C E
Ireland.                |                                  |
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 11:08:14 -0500
From: Susan Yucker <yuckers@mmdis01.hq.aflc.af.mil>
Subject: Autotaggers?

Hi Everyone!
	My company is interested in finding out as much as possible about
Autotaggers.  If any of you have one or have used one your insight would
be greatly appreciated.  Also, any information about who to contact concerning
the autotagger would also be useful.
	My email address is   yuckers@mmdis01.hq.aflc.af.mil

Thanks in advance!  Susan
Date: 21 Jan 1993 18:06:52 -0500
From: David Peterson <xyvi!davep@uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Re: The definition of `DTD' (was: Re: WWW: a HyTime application?)

Joachim Schrod writes:

> Subject: The definition of `DTD' (was: Re: WWW: a HyTime application?)
>
> YEAH!
>
> Now we now, what a DTD ****really**** is, don't we?
>     ``parameter-entity-replacement closure of the
>     	document type declaration's
> 	document type declaration
>     subset.''
> (Please note the nice doubling of the term DTD^H^H^Hdocument type
> declaration. Isn't it almost literate?) This explanation is easy
> readable and immediately understandable. For all those folks out
> there who have always said `SGML is way to complex to grasp, we just
> want to handle our documents in a structured way' -- bah, that is not
> true, we just should tell them!
>
> Really, I'll save this article (Message-ID: <9301192217.AA00521@dylan.local>)
> and will show it everybody who asks me why SGML is not more widely
> recognized and more widely used than today.
>     Hmm, perhaps he or she will know the reason then...
>
> --
> Joachim

Sorry, Joachim.  I didn't invent the vocabulary, I just try to use it as
correctly as I can.  In fact, there is some shorter/easier-to-understand/more-
precise vocabulary (all three at the same time!) being developed and used by
some people (including me), but for the benefit of those out there that haven't
been exposed to the new jargon but do know the old, that's the way I wrote it.

	o  I didn't try to define or even to explain "what a DTD
	   ****really**** is".  Once the commment wording is corrected,
	   "DTD" is not involved--only "document type declaration".
	
I've drafted an article on "what a DTD really is"; if it's rejected for
publication, I'll probably post it on the newsgroup.

	o  There are things called "document type declaration subsets";
	   every document type declaration has exactly one.  "Document
	   type declaration subset" has another meaning which precludes
	   its unqualified use in this particular context, since I was
	   trying to avoid ambiguity.  (I'll avoid boring everyone with
	   a discourse on the two meanings of the phrase, unless there
	   is a general clamor for it.  :-) )

	o  Goldfarb doesn't seem to like to distinguish between a character
	   string containing entity references and the character string
	   that results when those references are replaced by the replacement
	   text of the referenced entities.  I do; I find that many people
	   who don't make the distinction consciously get tripped up by
	   faulty intuition.  "Parameter-entity-reference-closure" means
	   the string that results when the parameter entity references are
	   replaced by the content of the referenced entities, any parameter
	   entity references in the resulting string are similarly replaced,
	   and such replacement recursively continued until there are no
	   parameter entity references.  "Closure" used in this way is common
	   mathematical terminology and is usually puzzled out correctly by
	   non-mathematicians; I know of no other concise term.


Dave Peterson

xyvi!davep@uunet.uu.net
From: srn@techno.com (Steven R. Newcomb)
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Apology
Date: 25 Jan 93 15:37:22 GMT

Dear Friends Who Read My Note Requesting Your SGML Documents
In Order To Test MarkMinder,

Evidently the tone of my note regarding the delivery delay of
Exoterica's Compleat Test Suite has been interpreted in some quarters
as combative and as casting aspersions on the business integrity of
Exoterica.  It was not my intention to do any such thing, and I deeply
regret any misunderstanding in this matter.  (I had thought my tone
was clear when I said delaying the release for improvements had its
good points.)

We, too, are in the software business and we too have been forced to
slip past our own deadlines on occasion.  Moreover, the check we sent
Exoterica was only for $95, and (although I personally never received
it, possibly due to a communication failure within our own
organization) I am informed that the delay was explained and a refund
was offered to all those who ordered the Suite, I assume in a letter.
Having no knowledge of this letter, I called Exoterica the other day,
just before writing my note to comp.text.sgml, and I was told that the
Suite was delayed, because "We keep finding more things to put into
it," and because "Our time is being used on other projects right now."
I certainly understand that kind of situation: a public service
project like the test suite must, in any rationally operated
organization, take a lower priority than activities that put food on
the table.  We have had to make the same sort of painful decisions
with regard to the oft-delayed SGML SIGhyper Newsletter -- our own
public service project.

Let me add that, in general, I believe it is in the best interests of
all of us in the SGML technology business, both corporately and
individually, to work together to make the SGML pie grow, rather than
squabble over the (let's face it: still rather small) pie that already
exists.  The last thing I want to do is to have TechnoTeacher be
perceived as such a small-pie squabbler, or to set a bad example by
behaving that way.  (Sorry about the horrendously mixed metaphors --
I am aware that one does not "grow pies".)

Finally, after reading my note, Exoterica's John McFadden has
graciously demonstrated his own commitment to this same philosophy by
offering to send us a pre-release version of the Compleat Test Suite
on tape.  As he rightly points out, it will be interesting to see,
after we have exercised MarkMinder with these reputedly harsh test
materials, whether we will still be able to meet our own deadline for
the release of MarkMinder (end of March, 1993).

Steven R. Newcomb, President
TechnoTeacher, Inc.                          Voice: +1 904 422 3574
1810 High Road                               Fax:   +1 904 386 2562
Tallahassee, FL 32303-4408 USA               Internet: srn@techno.com
From: drmacro@ralvm13.VNET.IBM.COM
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 14:36:40 EST
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml
Subject: Re: HyTime for distributed hypermedia?
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not those of IBM
News-Software: UReply 3.1
            <1jarh4INNqvd@nigel.msen.com>

In <1jarh4INNqvd@nigel.msen.com> Edward Vielmetti writes:
>Dan Connolly (connolly@convex.com) wrote:
>
>: I'm really curious about whether the WAIS, Gopher, WWW, etc.
>: gang could use HyTime to build interoperable architectures for the
>: growing distributed hypermedia infobase on the internet.
>
>HyTime is complicated (nay, obtuse).  Gopher at least is quite simple.
>I doubt that you are going to get the gopher gang to commit to anything
>that you can't write a server for in an afternoon's hacking in Perl.
>
>  Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. emv@Msen.com
>        Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 +1 313 998 GLOB
>

HyTime, taken in total, is, unquestionably, complex, but the base
hyperlinking constructs defined by HyTime are remarkably simple
and can be no more complex than any existing IDREF element in
your favorite DTD.  There is really no excuse for any SGML-based
hyperthinging not being at least minimally conforming with HyTime.
It's just not that hard.  And just because you declare a document
type such that it is HyTime conforming, that doesn't mean your
processor has to be a HyTime engine.

I think the main problem with HyTime is that the simple gets lost
in the details, but the simple is there.  My suggestion for anyone
trying to understand HyTime is to ignore everything except the
location and base hyperlink elements until you feel you understand
those, and then move on to schedules and coordinate spaces.  Take
your favorite DTD and figure out how to modify the declarations of
your hyperlink elements to they conform.  Don't try to absorb it all
at once.

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
Newsgroups: comp.text.sgml