3.1138 EPSIG; SGML (100)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Wed, 7 Mar 90 08:05:16 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1138. Wednesday, 7 Mar 1990.
(1) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 90 15:27:42 PST (58 lines)
From: "[DCGQAL]A0234" <XB.DAS@STANFORD.BITNET>
Subject: [DCGQAL]A0234!SGML and EPSIG
(2) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 90 07:15:00 EST (38 lines)
From: Lou Burnard <LOU@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK>
Subject: New product announcement from Sema
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 90 15:27:42 PST
From: "[DCGQAL]A0234" <XB.DAS@STANFORD.BITNET>
Subject: [DCGQAL]A0234!SGML and EPSIG
Bob Weber asks about EPSIG.
After SGML was being crafted into an ISO and NISO standard, the American
Association of Publishers spent considerable sums of money producing a
subset of SGML for publication texts. This effort, administered by the
Aspen Institute, petered out for dearth of funds, just at the time when
it was ready to be marketed and widely promulgated, causing a kind of
disfunctionality on bringing the AAP standard to the attention of its
constituencies. OCLC (the large bibliographic database provider) took
the standard and its promotion under its wing, and now administers
various publicity and publications efforts intended to bring SGML to the
awareness of its constituents. The person responsible for EPSIG may be
reached at the following address:
Betsy Kiser
EPSIG Manager (MC 278)
c/o OCLC
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin, Ohio 43017-0702
Betsy also has the full text of the Standard (and guides for its
implementation for Authors, Mathematical Applications, and Tabular
Materials) available at an unconscionable price.
----
On a related, though separate topic, I noticed in the March 5 issue of
InfoWORLD that Microsoft intends to incorporate SGML functionality
(presumably an SGML compliant style sheet along with a few user-friendly
capabilities) into future versions of Microsoft WORD. Anything to make
SGML more easily useable ought to be encouraged, and this appears to be
a step in the right direction.
Cordially,
Chet Grycz
Scholarship and Technology Study Project
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------54----
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 90 07:15:00 EST
From: Lou Burnard <LOU@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK>
Subject: New product announcement from Sema
Sema Group recently announced a new structured document editor for SGML.
Called WriteIt, the product operates either as a smart SGML editor,
as a word processor or as a friendly user interface to version 3 of MarkIt
(not yet released). I saw the product briefly demonstrated by Martin Bryan
(its author) yesterday and was quite impressed.
---------------
The blurb says:
---------------
Tags are inserted by selection from the menu. The structure is validated
interactively, so selecting a tag automatically results in a new series
of tag options being presented. This allows local enrichment of the
structure by the use of optional or repeatable elements. WriteIt
supports tag minimisation (such as ShortTag) on loading an existing
document, and Omit tag interactively.
The user interface includes windowing, optional mouse and pull down
menus including extensive Help screens. A comprehensive range of word
processing functions are provided in addition to the SGML
capabilities. Editing functions include cut and paste between
windows with automatic revalidation of the structure. To minimize the
risk of tag errors, cuts containing nest elements must include both
start and end tags for all nested elements within the cut.
WriteIt is available for DOS pcs and requires a minimum of 640K of
memory. Versions for MS-Windows and UNIX will be available later in
1990.
No pricing information is available yet.
For more information, contact Yard Software Systems Avonbridge House
Bath Road Chippenham Wilts SN15 2BB