From: craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley)
Subject: list of SGML products / vendors
Organization: UTCS Public Access
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 06:39:58 GMT



Hi,

I am looking for a current list of SGML products and vendors,
and hoping to find a regularly-updated source of reviews of
SMGL and HyTime products, including freely-redistributable tools.

has someone got such a list online somewhere, or FTP-able
someplace ?  I am fairly ignorant of the FTP resources on
this subject, so if there is a FAQ I can dig up someplace
that would be much appreciated.

I am also interested in getting the opinions of others who
have problems similar to mine:  I need to turn a lot of text
resources, written for many different purposes and audiences,
into a database of notes on each distinct topic, including
or referring to diagrams, examples, glossaries, etc..  Each
note would have its own structure and have attributes, some
of which would be hardcoded (e.g. my idea of the subject matter
and a set of headers that introduce each key idea in the text)
and others would be emergent (e.g. the vocabulary level and
technical terms introduced, which might change as the text is
edited) - an updating program might have to run on the text
to keep these emergent tags up to date.  Finally, a user's
query would draw out the appropriate "boilerplate" to address
the right topics for the right audience, and order them to
generate a rough draft of a report or appendix to a report.

Some more intelligence would be involved in generating the
glossary, index, and possibly a preface summarizing the key
ideas drawn from each note, but this could be shared by
tools and humans.  My fondest wish would be to keep it in
one format from start to finish, so that after final editing
the changed notes could be re-incorporated into the database.

I am not naive about these problems, I have been working in these
areas for eight years and am very familiar with the hypertext tools
(I was a NoteCards beta tester!). However, everything I have seen 
has been oriented towards the presentation side of the problem and
for the organizing of notes I have not yet been tempted to abandon
good old raw ASCII files and emacs and Unix tools like perl.  I
am hoping the SGML world can offer something that can take it all the
way to camera-ready copy.  Right now this sort of thing is wasting my
life.

I was hoping that something like FrameBuilder would be able
to help, and I would really appreciate some reviews of that tool.
Ultimately I am really looking for functionality more like
Symbolics' Concordia, which has a real cradle-to-grave process
but unfortunately is not really a portable markup like SGML.
I figure I will also eventually need HyTime as more multimedia
data forms get included, and as I start to generate hypertexts
for specific readers (e.g. HyperCard) instead of just linear docs...

Regards, and thanks in advance for any pointers you can offer,

  Craig Hubley
  craig@gpu.utcs.Utoronto.CA   UUNET!utai!utgpu!craig   craig@utorgpu.BITNET
  craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.EDU     {allegra,bnr-vpa,decvax}!utcsri!utgpu!craig

-- 
  Craig Hubley -- Consultants in object-oriented technology & techniques, --
  Craig Hubley & Associates -- user interface design & user productivity  --
  craig@gpu.utcs.Utoronto.CA   UUNET!utai!utgpu!craig   craig@utorgpu.BITNET
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