emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (07/07/90)
(a copy of this posting has been forwarded to news.announce.newgroups) this is a call for discussion for the newsgroup 'comp.text.sgml', to discuss the ISO 'Standard General Markup Language' and systems which use it. SGML promises to be an important player in the market for electronic texts, either the kind where you browse through the OED, maintain a reference document which is presented in both paper and electronic forms, or write a thesis. Several commercial products use SGML internally to store the form of the document (though most are not capable of dealing with an arbitrary set of SGML tags). the immediate prompting for this was a message that I received asking if I was going to the SGML-TeX conference in the Netherlands, and realizing that there was not a recognizable spot on the net that I could forward the question to in the hopes of finding someone who was. the newsgroup idea has come up before; the hope is that there's enough interest to make it go. the group is expected to have an international audience; the initial query yielded positive replies from Norway, Sweden, the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, and (oh by the way) the U.S.A. It looks like the initial trolling for interest picked up a mix of gurus, users, academics, and commercial interests, so I'm pretty sure things will work once they get started. so to the details. the name: comp.text.sgml. seems reasonable. the discussion: one initial task to get everyone who is on the net that is doing software development to know and recognize each other, and to take stock of what resources are available. This discovery phase should yield tangible products like references to bibliographies, software available or under development etc. another goal is to bring together people who have texts that they have marked up, or are in the process of marking up, and to discover and share appropriate strategies for same. this is my interest; I have a large mass of textual data and some powerful text searching software, but I need a sensible markup strategy to retrieve appropriate pieces of this thing. why not just post to comp.text? there's so little discussion, why a group? why not just a mailing list? indeed, why not take over comp.text? It has been tried. The number of SGML experts on the net (compared to users) is small, and they don't have time to time to wade through troff, psfig, Word Perfect etc. The last 30 or so articles of comp.text, I see one or perhaps two which are relevant to comp.text.sgml. so where are people going with questions? well to me. or to one or more other scattered lists, including INFO-NETS, GOVDOC-L, comp.editors, soc.college, maybe a few others that I don't read or haven't found. No single group has the quantity of expertise or the focus of readership. mailing lists are evil and rude, esp. those that cross international boundaries; given that I expect fully 2/3 of the discussion to originate in Europe, a newsgroup is the only sane way to propagate the discussion around. The vote: Not yet, to play by the books there must be a period of discussion preceding the vote, and it must be announced in news.announce.newgroups. The entire procedure top to bottom takes more than a month. 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.archives moderator
koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) (07/09/90)
I would very much like to see more discussion of SGML and available SGML software. If a comp.text.sgml news group would help promote this, then it would be a good thing. I wonder, however, if the problem isn't really a lack of hot software packages that use SGML.
enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) (07/10/90)
Hi, Ed! Finally the call for discussion! My interest in SGML has not waned, but it has been difficult to find people to discuss it with. I have written a few small SGML-like parsers that take care of a lot of previously troublesome things, such as using the information in an invoice to print payment forms, writing articles for both paper and several kinds of electronic media, etc. Another topic is storing information from existing documents to make them easier to search, and make way for hypermedia applications. I hope there are people out there with whom I can discuss some of the language theory underlying SGML, as well. So I'm all for comp.text.sgml. Discussions up to now have been rather scattered. -- [Erik Naggum]
spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) (07/10/90)
In article <EMV.90Jul7000337@urania.math.lsa.umich.edu> emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes:
this is a call for discussion for the newsgroup 'comp.text.sgml', to discuss
the ISO 'Standard General Markup Language' and systems which use it.
I found Ed's summary of `why comp.text.sgml' clear and convincing. It
is clear to me that discussion of troff and Word and LaTeX *is*
substantially different from discussion of SGML, so lets have the
group as he suggests it
--
Sebastian Rahtz S.Rahtz@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET)
Computer Science S.Rahtz@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bitnet)
Southampton S09 5NH, UK S.Rahtz@sot-ecs.uucp (uucp)adrian@mti.mti.com (Adrian McCarthy) (07/10/90)
In article <4165@alpha.cam.nist.gov> koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) writes: >I would very much like to see more discussion of SGML and available SGML >software. If a comp.text.sgml news group would help promote this, then >it would be a good thing. I wonder, however, if the problem isn't really >a lack of hot software packages that use SGML. I too would like to see such discussions, but I think that this newsgroup (comp.text) is an appropriate place for now. If the SGML traffic becomes heavy, then we should consider a separate group. Now that the TeX discussions have moved on to comp.text.tex, the traffic in this group is really just a trickle. I'd like to see a need before we create yet another group. Aid. (adrian@gonzo.mti.com)
robin@txsil.lonestar.org (Robin Cover) (07/12/90)
Ed Vielmetti has presented thoughtful and cogent reasons for establishing a distinctive Newsgroup dedicated to SGML. The name "comp.text.sgml" seems defensible to me if we understand the designation to mean ISO 8879 and the related suite of standards which pertain to SGML-conforming documents (DSSSL, SPDL, SDIF). Discussions on ODA/ODIF/ODL and even EDI would be encouraged so long as the relevance to "structured documents" were clear, and so long as the forum did not degenerate into an SGML-ODA battleground. A name like "comp.text.struct" seems equally defensible if we mean all topics related to structured documents (e.g., other standards for descriptive/declarative markup, structured-document editors, retrieval on structured documents). The strength of commitment to SGML in government, industry and education is sufficient to warrant a separate SGML discussion: if anyone wants a dedicated ODA forum, one is already available (from Carnegie-Mellon). I have a strong preference for the name "comp.text.sgml," however, in light of one troublesome reality: I think that a majority of the "major players" in SGML is not tuned to this News channel. An SGML discussion makes more sense on BITNET/Internet, in some respects. But since nobody has organized one, Ed cannot be criticized for trying on UUCP News. If some SGML experts from among the "major players" are to be attracted to the group, the distinctive name "sgml" and focused attention on SGML is a clear desideratum. It will be hard enough to get support from SGML gurus anyway -- they will have neither time nor patience to muck through dozens of postings on unrelated topics. (By "major players," I refer primarily to companies/persons with expert understanding of the relevant standards, or representatives of companies with commercial SGML parsers, authoring systems, etc.) For a healthy SGML discussion, I feel it is imperative to have a couple SGML experts listening in. Those who have actually read the standard, or write DTD's, or build parsers will know what I mean. There is still a lot of confusion about what SGML actually *IS* (and is not), and it's easy for an unmoderated forum to generate unfortunate "mis-information." I would even suggest that several companies or SGML-supporting agencies be contacted (e.g., Software Exoterica; SoftQuad; Datalogics) to see if they would designate persons to help referee the discussion -- at least at moments when mis-information goes unchecked or when technical questions cannot be answered by the forum's regular readers. I intend no offense in these comments (I recall superb contributions by Tim Bray [UWaterloo/Open Text Systems] and David Slocombe [SoftQuad], for instance). But I have seen the mixed results on another electronic forum where it was clear that many contributors did not understand what SGML is (people who think it's a formatting language, or a tagset, etc.). Commissioning a "SGML -- Frequently Asked Questions" document would be a valuable goal in its own right. With these minor reservations -- I say we support Ed's proposal for a dedicated SGML discussion. If the traffic is light to start with, all the better: the distinctive goals Ed Vielmetti outlined can be realized, and that would be a nice beginning. As interest builds, additional SGML gurus and users may be persuaded to fire up News. If the forum needs to move to Internet or BITNET eventually, that's fine too. Robin Cover Member, Text Encoding Initiative (Text Representation) BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 UUCP: texbell!txsil!robin Internet: robin@txsil.lonestar.org | robin@utafll.lonestar.org
drlewi1@PacBell.COM (D. R. (Dave) Lewis) (07/21/90)
I agree that increased discussion and exchange of resources related to SGML and text mark-up is needed. I also agree that comp.text.sgml will help recognition and participation of those with expertise without excluding discussion of alternative markup. I therefore support the creation of comp.text.sgml. I agree with a previous follow-up that 'document' markup should be discussed and thus comp.doc.markup or comp.doc.sgml makes some sense also. At some later point a move to multi-media doc markup discussion should occur. Still, I support creation of comp.text.sgml as a near term move. Dave Lewis Pacific Bell drlewi1@PacBell.COM 415-551-3427