The ISUG has had a busy quarter:
One result of this flurry of activity is our newly opened Website (http://www.sil.org/sgml/isgmlug). Many thanks to our Web manager, Robin Cover, who is also welcomed as an ex officio member of the Executive Council. He has put in untold hours getting the first version of the site ready for public display. Thanks also to Torrey Newcomb for our fantastic new Web logo and other graphical touches. The site has information for both newcomers and current SGML users, with lots of links to other major sources of information on SGML. Major topics include:
Chapters have the option of having a 'home page' as part of this site or a link to their own website.
We hope you will enjoy using this 'public' site and look forward to getting your feedback and ideas.
We are also planning a private website for members only. Work on this is progressing and we hope to open this site soon. We plan to send your password with a future issue of the Newsletter.
Eamonn Neylon of the Thomson Corporation has volunteered to take on the responsibilities of Newsletter Editor. He sees the editorship involving the following activities:
Eamonn Neylon works for The Thomson Corporation on electronic publishing systems, where he has been involved in implementing SGML in scientific, legal, and patent publishing companies with particular interest in the maintenance of online information systems. Currently examining opportunities for distributed content generation over networks, Eamonn also brings experience of editorial management gained in institutional and primary academic publishing.
Eamonn will take over as Editor for the July 1997 issue of the Newsletter. We welcome Eamonn to this position and as an ex officio member of the Executive Council. I hope each of you will participate in the evolution of the Newsletter with ideas, articles, and letters.
Accompanying the next issue of the Newsletter will be our latest addition to the benefits of membership, member lapel pins. These pins, which use our logo and designate the wearer to be a member of the ISUG, will help to raise the visibility of the ISUG. You'll see me wearing mine at upcoming conferences!
In March, I attended the first conference on XML. A report on the conference and some impressions can be found in the dedicated newsletter section.
Our Annual General Meeting is coming up in May. The meeting announcements for the AGM and Executive Council meetings are supplied elsewhere in this newsletter. I hope to see you all there.
March saw the announcement by Microsoft for Channel Definition Format (CDF). The 17 March 1997 issue of Web Week (Volume 4, Issue 5, March 17, 1997) reported that Microsoft, together with a group of partners, used Internet World to launch a new markup language known as Channel Definition Format.
Further, they reported that CDF is an application of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), which Web Week defined as a World Wide Web Consortium project to bring features of SGML to the Web.
Web Week reports: 'CDF creates push channels that are really automated pull from the client. This means a page can tell a browser when it should check for updates to a page, and what parts of a Web site to download. For example, a Web developer can use CDF to mark discrete portions of a site -- such as a "What's New" page -- as likely areas an end user would want to check regularly. The user can then define when the browser should check for updates. When the browser parses the CDF markup, it creates a schedule to download any new information from the site. Pages are stored locally and can be viewed offline. Since CDF depends on the ability of the browser to read this markup, there is no requirement for a dedicated push server. Microsoft plans to build CDF support into the final version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, due out this summer, and CDF has been submitted to the W3C as a proposed standard.'
More than thirty (30) tool, media, and service companies, SoftQuad and mainstream Web providers such as AOL and Compuserve, said they will back the format. However, Netscape was noticeably absent from the announcement and were not able to comment immediately. Web Week stated that Marc Andreessen, Netscape's vice president for technology, characterized the initiative as an example of bloatware, saying "We frankly don't think [CDF] is necessary. . . we think you can do push with HTML and Java. We think it will essentially wither on the vine because it's not necessary."
What does it all mean for SGML users? So far, it is unclear. In SGML parlance, an application of XML (or SGML) would be a DTD, much like HTML is an application of SGML. So, if CDF is an application of XML, it may mean that it is really just another DTD, another hard-wired tag set. However, the fact that XML was mentioned in the press release gives hope that Microsoft et al. are not just creating a new HTML, but rather building in the ability to create new markup languages using XML. Naturally, we'll be watching this closing in the coming months.
Finally, the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation has been very busy working with the W3C and the White House to put forward the Web Access Initiative (WAI). See the special newsletter section for more on this exciting and important work.
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
