emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (08/02/90)
[This has also been sent to news.announce.newgroups]
This is a call for votes for the newsgroup 'comp.text.sgml', to
discuss the ISO 8879 'Standard Generalized Markup Language', systems
which use it, markup languages, and structured documents in general.
The call for discussion was presented in news.announce.newgroups on 13
July 1990 and reaction has been generally positive since then.
Substantive discussions about SGML and related issues are going on in
'comp.text' right now.
Yes votes should be mailed to sgml-yes@math.lsa.umich.edu
No votes should be mailed to sgml-no@math.lsa.umich.edu
Voting will start Wednesday, 1 August, and will continue until Thursday,
30 August. Votes postmarked later than 30 August will be ignored.
If the vote count shows a 100 vote plurality & 2/3 in favor, then
I expect the official "newgroup" message to appear early in the
month of September.
The text of the original call for discussion can be fetched from the
site "sgml.math.lsa.umich.edu" in the directory "/pub/sgml". There's
also a brief bibliography of SGML courtesy of Robin Cover, and I hope
to put more documents & software there as they become available.
Details:
the name:
comp.text.sgml. It will be a challenge to draw in sufficient
expertise in this area to make for good discussion. My sense
is that a group that was concerned just with "structured
documents" in some nebulous sense would not generate the
quality of discussion needed to get SGML experts to be interested.
the discussion:
one initial task, already started, is to figure out who it is
exactly who is using SGML and what purposes they are putting
it it. Somewhat to my surprise, I've discovered an ANSI
committee (X3V1.8M) charged with the missions of creating SGML
document type definitions for hypermedia/time-based documents
("Hytime") and a Standard Music Descrption Language (SMDL).
Who knows what all else is out there, but if the group gets
going I'm pretty sure that SGML stuff will appear out of the
woodwork.
another goal on my list is to bring together people who have
texts that they have marked up, or are marking up, and to
figure out reasonable strategies for doing this. I have a
couple of large collections of text (mostly old netnews
articles and old e-mail) which I'd like to mark up in some
sensible way for further analysis.
the alternatives:
comp.text is more or less the newsgroup of choice these days
for SGML, with roughly one article in 5 referring to SGML in
some way. That's not a great enough density to attract the
small number of SGML experts who don't have time to wade
through postings about troff macros, scanners, or Japanese TeX
and non-linear glue.
there is no mailing list devoted to SGML. Questions about it,
and other information which would be appropriate to
comp.text.sgml, are scattered around in a bunch of different
lists and newsgroups. I expect to selectively quote from
these other lists at the start of the group to try to draw the
discussion in.
I said in the call for discussion that mailing lists were
"evil and rude"; I guess I want to explain that a little bit.
It takes a considerably larger amount of time, energy, effort,
and commitment to keep a mailing list running once it is
started. On the other hand, once a newsgroup gets going, it
tends to stay going with little need for maintenance. I would
hope that at some point the SGML newsgroup would be available
for people who don't otherwise have a newsfeed via email; I am
not going to commit to starting a mailing list if there is no
group.
the scope of the discussion:
there are other standards for encoding structured documents,
including ODA, the ISO Office Documents Architecture. There
is the possibility of a certain tension between proponents of
these two standards. The applications that I personally have
in mind for my needs would seem to fit SGML better than ODA.
So, when I started agitating about this group a few months ago
ODA never crossed my mind. I would hope that 'comp.text.sgml'
would be broad enough to encompass both the picayune details
of SGML and the more general issues of document structuring.
There are limitations to SGML which will be made apparent by
successful uses of ODA, and vice versa. I expect the group to
be able to handle intelligent discussion of both.
the best thing about standards:
there are so many to choose from.
the vote:
yes votes to sgml-yes@math.lsa.umich.edu
no votes to sgml-no@math.lsa.umich.edu
Please include in your comments in the vote what you are doing
(or not doing) with SGML, ODA, or other things dealing with
structured documents.
followups to comp.text (put SGML in the Subject) or news.groups for
procedural matters.
--Ed
Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv@math.lsa.umich.edu>
comp.text.sgml ISO 8879 SGML, structured documents, markup languages
yes votes to sgml-yes@math.lsa.umich.edu
no votes to sgml-no@math.lsa.umich.edurobin@txsil.lonestar.org (Robin Cover) (08/08/90)
Draft version 1.0 of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines
has been published, and is available on request. Chapter 2 of the
Guidelines contains a "gentle" introduction to SGML -- in my judgment
it is one of the best available for explaining the "why, what, how"
of SGML. See the poster below.
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Comments: "ACH / ACL / ALLC Text Encoding Initiative"
From: Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981 <U35395@UICVM.BITNET>
Subject: Guidelines available, at last
To: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1.BITNET>
**** TEI DRAFT 1.0 PUBLISHED ****
The Steering Committee of the ACH/ACL/ALLC Text Encoding Initiative is
happy to announce that its first draft Guidelines for the Encoding and
Interchange of Machine Readable Texts are now available. The Text
Encoding Initiative, which is sponsored by the Association for Computers
and the Humanities, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and
the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, has prepared
these Guidelines over the past two years and will test and revise them
during the next two years.
The Guidelines take the form of a 300-page report containing:
* a description of the TEI project
* a gentle introduction to SGML
* recommendations concerning the representation of divers
character sets for interchange purposes
* proposals for a standard `electronic titlepage'
* tagsets for features common to most text types
* tagsets for features of some specific text types
* tagsets for representing detailed linguistic analyses
* recommendations for ways of extending the guidelines
* examples and SGML Document Type Definitions (DTDs)
Parts of the Guidelines were presented in preliminary form earlier this
year at the annual conferences of the ALLC/ACH and the ACL in Siegen
(Germany) and Pittsburgh (USA) respectively. This is however the first
full publication of the Guidelines, and marks the end of the first phase
of the TEI's work.
The second phase, which will continue until June 1992, will be marked
(it is hoped) by extensive public discussion of the initial proposals
set out in this first public draft, which we expect to distribute as
widely as possible. At least one, and probably two, interim drafts are
likely before the final version of the Guidelines is published in 1992:
we expect to change a lot of what is in the current version, and to add
even more.
What goes in, and what gets changed, will be determined to a very large
extent by the feedback that this draft provokes. The four working
committees of the TEI have taken a year to formulate the proposals it
contains: no one associated with the project is however so immodest as
to believe that our current draft provides an answer for every text
encoding problem. However, we believe that it does provide a set of
basic notions and a viable framework, within which, with your help, the
real work is now about to begin.
The present draft is available on request from the following addresses:
(in Europe) Lou Burnard, OUCS, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford OX2 6NN
fax +44 (865) 273275
email LOU@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
(in North America) C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Computer Center (M/C 135),
University of Illinois at Chicago, Box 6998, Chicago IL 60680
fax +1 (312) 996-6834
email U35395@UICVM (Bitnet) or U35395@uicvm.cc.uic.edu (Internet)
There is no charge for the first copy sent to any one address. Further
copies will be charged at 15 pounds or $30, payable in advance, by
cheque / check to the appropriate institution (OUCS or UIC).
Redistribution of the draft is encouraged, provided that it is
reproduced in full with due acknowledgment and not sold for profit.
For more information and news of all TEI activities, subscribe to
TEI-L@UICVM, by sending a note containing only the single line
SUB TEI-L Your Name
to LISTSERV@UICVM on BITNET or listserv@uicvm.cc.uic.edu on internet.
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