172 lines
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172 lines
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<h1>Re: SGML tools aren't so great</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><em>To</em>: LDP <<A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org">ldp-discuss@lists.linuxdoc.org</A>></li>
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<li><em>Subject</em>: Re: SGML tools aren't so great</li>
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<li><em>From</em>: Gary Lawrence Murphy <<A HREF="mailto:garym@canada.com">garym@canada.com</A>></li>
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<li><em>Date</em>: 05 May 2000 17:06:22 -0400</li>
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<li><em>Organization</em>: TCI: Business Innovation through Open Source Computing</li>
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<li><em>References</em>: <<a href="msg02232.html">391070BC.ECBE2128@inreach.com</a>></li>
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<li><em>Reply-to</em>: Gary Lawrence Murphy <<A HREF="mailto:garym@canada.com">garym@canada.com</A>></li>
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<li><em>Resent-date</em>: Fri, 5 May 2000 17:07:29 -0400 (EDT)</li>
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<li><em>Resent-from</em>: <A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org">ldp-discuss@lists.debian.org</A></li>
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<li><em>Resent-message-id</em>: <H6rwZ.A.lj.JgzE5@murphy></li>
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<li><em>Resent-sender</em>: <A HREF="mailto:ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org">ldp-discuss-request@lists.debian.org</A></li>
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<li><em>Sender</em>: <A HREF="mailto:garym@maya.linux.ca">garym@maya.linux.ca</A></li>
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<pre>
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>>>>> "G" == Gary Preckshot <garrell@inreach.com> writes:
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G> ... I've dealt with commercial publishers, and they
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G> usually want you to use Word with a macro package of their
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G> devising. However, the impetus for doing so is you get paid.
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Not if you hold out ;) All the publishers know SGML is their future.
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MCP will accept DocBook if you make the same case we've made here.
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They want to stay in the dark ages because it is cosy and familiar,
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but they also know that if they don't wrap their heads around SGML
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today, they will be yesterday's business by tomorrow.
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G> Kevin Turner is the only one who correctly perceived that I was
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G> objecting to having to learn SGML just to write a doc. He
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G> understood the two points that if you place barriers in the
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G> way, you only get volunteers of a particular sort, and that the
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G> concerns of some posters about the capabilities of SGML
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G> vis-a-vis other formats are best addressed internally.
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As with the publishers, my advice to young programmers is to learn
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DocBook as a survival skill. In my younger days, it was ROFF and
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then LaTeX, today it is DocBook.
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G> ... If Stein had had a good GUI SGML editor, it would have
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G> presented him with a choice, and he wouldn't have to ask the
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G> question he did.
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Oh, like the way GUI HTML editors intelligently ask you if you want a
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<MENU> or a <UL>? :) When was the last time you saw a <MENU> tag on
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a webpage menu?
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The parallel with HTML is very apt. Do we expect to see pure ASCII
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webpages or do we pretty much tune out such a page as not credible?
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When was the last time you encountered a pure ASCII webpage? Who does
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all that HTML coding? Did the HTML requirement for the web stop
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people from creating the 800 million+ webpages out there?
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DocBook is not that much more complicated for simple documents.
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Quick: What is the HTML entity for the French c used in francais?
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What is the entitity for registered-trade-mark?
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G> If you can't conceive of a way of either accepting input in
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G> other formats, or providing SGML tools that don't require three
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G> Hail Marys and rigorous adherence to an easily violated
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G> instruction book, then SGML isn't so great.
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By this reasoning, the world wide web will never catch on either.
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If I check sources of webpages, I find a lot of META tags for keywords
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and descriptions. That's pure meta-information, and as soon as page
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authors heard the first rumours that it may make their work easier to
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find, even long before that was true, we found meta tags everywhere.
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And the situation is the same for GUI tools. You can get GUI HTML
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editors, and a lot of people use them, but their pages are largely
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inferior (there are exceptions) and most create pages that rank poorly
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in search engines.
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G> Human beings are for doing things computers can't - like
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G> authoring.
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800 Million pages of HTML. Gee, it had me fooled. Are they all
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turned out by the same robot? I didn't realize that machines could
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actually pass the Turing test yet. Now, I know Veronica-2 has indexed
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one or two million existing gopher pages so I guess that's where the
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real people write ... ooops, no, scratch that: gopher pages have
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markup too. So where do these human beings publish? Slashdot?
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--
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Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@linux.ca>: office voice/fax: 01 519 4222723
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TCI - Business Innovations through Open Source : <A HREF="http://www.teledyn.com">http://www.teledyn.com</A>
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Canadian Co-ordinators for Bynari International : <A HREF="http://ca.bynari.net/">http://ca.bynari.net/</A>
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Free Internet for a Free O/S? - <A HREF="http://www.teledyn.com/products/FreeWWW/">http://www.teledyn.com/products/FreeWWW/</A>
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</pre>
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<ul><li><strong>References</strong>:
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<ul>
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<li><strong><a name="02232" href="msg02232.html">SGML tools aren't so great</a></strong>
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<ul><li><em>From:</em> Gary Preckshot <garrell@inreach.com></li></ul></li>
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</ul></li></ul>
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<strong><a href="msg02285.html">Re: if SGML is so great...</a></strong>
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<strong><a href="msg02287.html">Re: SGML, or Texinfo ?</a></strong>
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<strong><a href="msg02267.html">Re: SGML tools aren't so great</a></strong>
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<strong><a href="msg02238.html">Re: SGML tools aren't so great</a></strong>
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