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Subject:Re: SGML and tech. writing courses From:Don Day <donday -at- BGA -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 13 Jun 1995 08:12:54 GMT
In <9506121850 -dot- AA24283 -at- chalesm -dot- austin -dot- ibm -dot- com>, David McMurrey
<davidm -at- austin -dot- ibm -dot- com> writes:
(clip!)
>I'm thinking that students ought to have some experience with using an
>SGML editor, converting a document to SGML, doing a validation, and
>then debugging a document so that it will successfully get through
>that process.
>Do you think this is the right set of tasks students ought to have
>in order to get an introduction to SGML? Can you think of others?
>Are these unrealistic in terms of the training and software that are
>needed?
(clip!)
>Does anyone know of any shareware that might work for this? I don't
>know how naive it is to wonder whether there might be such a thing as
>SGML shareware, but I guess it can't hurt to wonder!
>I'd appreciate an thoughts/ideas/suggestions/get-real's anybody might
>be willing to pass along.
David, SGML shareware is remarkably unglamorous: command-line parsers,
Perl scripts, extensions to EMACS--all useful but bland. The HTML world has
much
more available in shareware, but much of underplays the power features of
SGML. The HoTMetaL freebie browser is based on SoftQuad's Author/Editor, so it
has some merit for introducing SGML concepts. Note that HTML 2.0 is unable to
demonstrate containment of sections, entity declaration and replacement,
notation processing, linking by ID, and other basic SGML strengths. After HTML
3
becomes standardized, it will be able to demonstrate some of these attributes,
but its time has not yet come.
The least expensive real application of full-featured SGML appears to be the
Panorama browser, by SoftQuad. It is touted as an Internet browser in tandem
with Mosaic, but it works fine as a standalone SGML browser. It is able to
support learning activities on SGML features, style sheets, navigation
strategies,
database publishing, hypertext organization, webs, and basic concepts of HyTime.
Students could do part of their work at a regular version of Panorama and then
see their served results on Panorama freebies across a local network.
--
Don R. Day donday -at- bga -dot- com (hobby mail and WWW access)
donday -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com (document systems analyst)
