Given the enormous expressive power of SGML, what tools are needed to allow publication of SGML? All too often we publish SGML by converting into a proprietary format to take advantage of the features of a particular pagination system or multimedia authoring tool. Rendering of SGML produced data is often a task for a down converter than removes some of the structural information from carefully crafted data in order to squeeze it into an easily packaged format. In this issue of interChange, we focus on the novel capabilities of SGML document collections and consider what we are throwing away when we limit the use of SGML to a storage medium for future formatting. Two excellent articles from Steve Finch and Helena Ahonen examine the potential of SGML in this light.
Also in this issue we reprint an article by Norm Walsh on 'A Technical Introduction to XML'. This article first appeared in the World Wide Web Journal issue on XML - it is a concise introduction to XML for those us us with little time to read the standard. If this article whets your appetite, you may want to investigate Tim Bray's annotated XML on the new xml.com website. Finally, Mladen Damjanov reports on how SGML has been used to manage multiple language versions of large European Community documents.
Much of the rest of this issue is devoted to the increasing volume of news that is being generated about the standards and XML in particular. Although this publication shall continue to bring you a digest of what is happening in the world of SGML, we cannot be as timely as the websites. Rather we are looking to build on the number of contributed articles for the newsletter. So if you have an experience of implementing SGML or XML that you are willing to share, an insight into a complex topic or a question that you would like to see addressed within this newsletter - please contact me with your idea. There is always someone who can benefit from your experience; especially when it comes to practical implementation issues.
Eamonn Neylon
Email: editor@isgmlug.org.
Contact Robin Cover with corrections and updates, or to submit contributions to the ISUG online document database.
