cape@npdiss1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Robert Cape) (12/09/90)
I've begun the task of writing an sgml application. We have Sobemap's (aka Yard) SGML parser. In an appendix, they show a small sample sgml application which uses lex and yacc to parse the canonical output from their parser of an sgml instance. The lex and yacc stuff is linked with user code to perform the necessary transformations. What I'd like to see is a discussion by others who are writing sgml applications - What are people using for sgml parsers? - How are they creating their applications? - What design goals do people have in mind? - Portability across platforms? - Portability across OS's? = Speed? - Multiple passes? - Trade-offs between using lex (or flex) and yacc (or bison) and generalized translators? - How do the various sgml parsers differ in their canonical output? - What are the implications? - Etc., etc. Thanks, Bob Cape robert.cape@stpaul.ncr.com
philsp@microsoft.UUCP (Phil SPENCER) (12/29/90)
I have a little trouble figuring out what people mean when they say they are writing an SGML application, but I guess that is what I am doing. I use SGML as an archive format for text databases to be put online. SGML is very useful for this. I can specify a lot of complexity in my Data Dictionary and make it very easy to build a useful online database. I guess my SGML application would be taking this SGML instance and turning into an online database. I use the XTRAN parser from Software Exoterica to turn my SGML into another format. XTRAN is a fairly powerful language for working with SGML. Our first traslation was writen in C, but it quickly became hard to maintain. Any change to the DTD meant rewriting C code. XTRAN is a data driven language and changes to the DTD don't require much change to the XTRAN. I do think that using SGML will help in making products across platorms and OS. The SGML is platform independant. The traslation creates the platform dependancies. Hopefully we will eventually have independant online databases, but not yet. I would be interested in hearing what other people are doing with SGML. I was at SGML '90 and found that a lot of people were thinking about how SGML could help there publishing system. Well, we are doing that now. And overall I think SGML was a smart decision. Phil Spencer Production Eng. Multimedia Publishing Microsoft Corp. Oh, yea IMHO.