10.0794 C programming; markup

WILLARD MCCARTY (willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Wed, 19 Mar 1997 09:43:24 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 794.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Nico Weenink <noki@worldonline.nl> (28)
Subject: RE: 10.0783 C programming

[2] From: Mavis Cournane <cournane@curia.ucc.ie> (57)
Subject: Re: 10.0783 C programming? anything since Coombs &al.?

--[1]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 16:29:21 +0100
From: Nico Weenink <noki@worldonline.nl>
Subject: RE: 10.0783 C programming

Dear collegues,

In reply to message '10.0783 C programming' I recommend the books published
by QUE. I teached myself JAVA (_Using JAVA, second edition_) and we are now
using _Using SGML_ by Martin Colby and David Jackson in class. QUE books
are very clear and easy to understand. Maybe you can contact the Product
Director of QUE and ask if there is a C or C++ version available too. The
address:
Benjamin Milstead
Product Director
QUE Corporation
201 W. 103rd Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46290
United States of America
fax: (317) 581-4663
e-mail: bmilstead@que.mcp.com
http://www.mcp.com/que

Good luck and best regards,

Nico.

Nico Weenink
Student at the University of Utrecht
The Netherlands
Department of Literature
Department of Linguistics
noki@worldonline.nl

--[2]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 18 Mar 1997 10:54:40 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mavis Cournane <cournane@curia.ucc.ie>
Subject: Re: 10.0783 C programming? anything since Coombs &al.?

I found Leo's remarks on DeRose, Renear and Coombs article on markup
quite interesting. I hadn't realised that it was ten yrs old! At the
moment I'm busying myself creating a taxonomy of markup. Many
different writers (Alschuler, Maler to name but a few) have very
interpretations on what Prescriptive, Descriptive, Procedural,
Declarative etc mean. With the help of Mike Sperberg-McQueen we have
worked out the following and I'd be interested in some comments.
Any gross errors are my own not Mike's.

1. Prescriptive v Descriptive works better when applied to Document
Grammars as opposed to individual pieces of markup. I think the
linguists might share this perspective. A prescriptive document
grammar would reject the following on the grounds of being
ungrammatical: <q>To boldly go where nobody has gone before</q>,
whereas a descriptive DG, merely seeking to state this split
infinitive exists would have no problem with it. A descriptive DG
tends to be used when encoding things created in the past, whereas a
prescriptive one is used when you are encoding a future creation.

2. Procedural (imperative) v Declarative markup.
This refers to how we interpret information.
Procedural markup would be instructions like:
skip 2 lines, indent 3 columns
declarative markup would be : <chapter>

However, there is a subcategory here, ie. markup which can sustain both
a declarative and a procedural interpretation e.g \skip (a TeX macro).
It is procedural if you take it to mean "leave a blank line". It can
be declarative if you interpreate it as "there is a blank line here"
There is a second subcategory in markup where within some markup
systems some individual pieces of markup are solely procedural and
some solely declarative. I'm probably stretching it a fair bit, but
within TEI perhaps <step> and <state> could be seen in this way. If
anyone has examples to fit this I'd be interested.

3. Logical (analytic) v Visual (presentational). This refers to types
of information.
Visual markup can again have either a declarative or procedural
interp. e.g \bd foo could be entirely visual with a procedural interp if
taken to mean "output foo in bold", again it could be declarative if
taken to mean the following "word foo is in bold"

Another grey area is the following:
\Chapter {intro}
while it doesn't directly express the document structure, it could be
interpretated as logical.

4. Metamarkup
The best example for this that I can come up with is SGML declarations
ie. markup in the metalanguage which defines that language.

In the DeRose article there was a mention of Referential markup. I
haven't chewed on that one yet.
Here is a table of examples

Logical Visual
Decl <placename> <hi rend="italic">

Proced ? \bd

One of the most interesting articles I've read on markup recently is
in the SGML '96 Conference Proceedings. It is by Liam Quin
<title>Suggestive Markup: Explicit Relationships in Descriptive and
Prescriptive DTD's</title>
Has anyone any comments on suggestive markup?

Apologies for the length of this

Mavis