emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (09/07/90)
In article <141829@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> tut@cairo.Sun.COM (Bill "Bill" Tuthill) writes:
Is there a newsgroup comp.text.sgml somewhere? Not where I work.
comp.text.sgml has just been created a few minutes ago, you should see
it soon. This should be the first message in it.
I hope to come up with a more reasonable introduction to the group in
the next few weeks. In the interim if you're on the internet the
site "sgml.math.lsa.umich.edu" has a directory /pub/sgml with some
stuff in it.
--Ed
Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv@math.lsa.umich.edu>allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan) (09/11/90)
Well, asl ong as this newsgroup exists, I suppose I might as well post a question. I'm doing a little bit of work with an encyclopedia which was given to us for research work in SGML format. There are a couple of things in the text which I don't have any documentation for and am not totally sure of. Some articles in this encyclopedia contain cross references to other articles and they use some SGML syntax to do that. Are those commands part of SGML or extensions? How can I find out what the "base" SGML is (if it exists)? Thanks for any help. -- james allan allan@cs.cornell.edu
ath@prosys.se (Anders Thulin) (09/11/90)
In article <45617@cornell.UUCP> allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan) writes: >Some articles in this encyclopedia contain cross references to other articles >and they use some SGML syntax to do that. Are those commands part of >SGML or extensions? How can I find out what the "base" SGML is (if >it exists)? 'Base' SGML is defined by the ISO 8879 (?), and isn't by itself very useful for text markup. It doesn't contain any markup commands - those are provided by separate document type definitions (DTDs). The DTD used by your encyclopeadia should be declared by a <!DOCUMENT name ...> clause close to the beginning of the file. The file specified by this clause is where you're likely to find the definition of those cross reference commands. Hope this is of any help, -- Anders Thulin ath@prosys.se {uunet,mcsun}!sunic!prosys!ath Telesoft Europe AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
scjones@thor.UUCP (Larry Jones) (09/11/90)
In article <45617@cornell.UUCP>, allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan) writes: > > Well, asl ong as this newsgroup exists, I suppose I might as well post a > question. I'm doing a little bit of work with an encyclopedia which was > given to us for research work in SGML format. There are a couple of > things in the text which I don't have any documentation for and am > not totally sure of. > > Some articles in this encyclopedia contain cross references to other articles > and they use some SGML syntax to do that. Are those commands part of > SGML or extensions? How can I find out what the "base" SGML is (if > it exists)? SGML is a syntactic standard, not a semantic standard. That is, it describes what the markup should look like, but not what it means. If you want to know about SGML, it is ISO standard 8879 which is available from ANSI, 1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018 212-354-3300. If you want to know about the markup in your encyclopedia, you need to ask the author or publisher. ---- Larry Jones UUCP: uunet!sdrc!thor!scjones SDRC scjones@thor.UUCP 2000 Eastman Dr. BIX: ltl Milford, OH 45150-2789 AT&T: (513) 576-2070 Ever notice how tense grown-ups get when they're recreating? -- Calvin
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (09/12/90)
In article <45617@cornell.UUCP> allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan) writes: >Some articles in this encyclopedia contain cross references to >other articles and they use some SGML syntax to do that. Are >those commands part of SGML or extensions? How can I find out >what the "base" SGML is (if it exists)? James, It would be interesting to see an excerpt from this encyclopedia, to show the format of what they are using for cross references. I can't imagine anyone putting byte offsets into the file as cross references; perhaps they are (page no, line no) offsets, but that would be problematic for electronic text. Better would be some sort of unambigous reference to where the reference is (however you would say "paragraph 3 of the 'Publishing' reference in the Macropedia"). --Ed Edward Vielmetti, U of Michigan math dept <emv@math.lsa.umich.edu> moderator, comp.archives
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (09/12/90)
From: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) >I can't imagine anyone putting byte offsets into the file as cross >references; perhaps they are (page no, line no) offsets, but that >would be problematic for electronic text. Better would be some sort >of unambigous reference to where the reference is (however you would >say "paragraph 3 of the 'Publishing' reference in the Macropedia"). Actually, it's less unimaginable than you might think. Remember that texts are a lot less changeable than other types of documents you might be accustomed to. I doubt anyone is editing the bible tho (and if they do something like that then they better make a *copy* and call it something else!) Better would probably be to insert unique-reference tags into the text and then compile a look-aside table of byte offsets for quick reference which can be rebuilt easily if needed. Meaning, you'd insert things like this: <refid 123347 "fnords"> into the text (the number just being an increasing integer to ensure uniqueness) and then compile a table (with a program) that might have entries like: ref as appears in text filename byte-offset fnords <refid 123347 "fnord"> foo.txt.1 2366 Something like that. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs@world.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan) (09/12/90)
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes: >It would be interesting to see an excerpt from this encyclopedia, >to show the format of what they are using for cross references. Each article starts with "<fw.art id=XXX>" where XXX is a unique identifier the article (the article ends with "</fw.art>"). The cross references then look like <xr type=see syntax=sep><x id=AARE></x>Aare</xr> which, I believe, means "see also Aare, which is a separate document with id AARE". So the format isn't as restrictive as explicit byte offsets. Thanks for the information about DTD's; now I just have to track one down! -- james allan allan@cs.cornell.edu