SGML and the Web

SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language, is an enabling technology used in applications such as HTML. (see: Toward a Formalism for Communication on the Web).

W3C Activity: Generic SGML

Our investment in SGML to support HTML should be taken one or two steps further and leveraged to support other SGML applications. Much of the world's information is managed as SGML, and more and more of it is assuming this form every day.

Learning and Using SGML

The HTML specifications assume a working knowledge of SGML. The SGML standard itself is not available online, but there's plenty of code to read if you're a hacker, and a few introductory documents for everybody.

Gentle Introduction to SGML: from the TEI guidelines. A must-read for folks new to SGML
SGML Bibliography: Robin Cover's extensive (700 item) bibliography on SGML
Erik Naggum's SGML archive
Yahoo's SGML section: Probably includes most of the stuff below, plus all the stuff I don't have time to chase down.
Lycos search for SGML: Full text search for SGML on the whole web.
SGML on the Web: by NCSA and SoftQuad

Specs, Drafts, and Reports

See also: abstracts of MIMESGML drafts

In reverse order, by publication/revision date:

A Proposal for Delegating SGML Open Catalogs

James K. Tauber
University CWIS Coordination Officer
The University of Western Australia
jtauber@library.uwa.edu.au
1996-3-13 (Revision 4)

A Lexical Analyzer for HTML and Basic SGML

W3C Tech Report on SGML low-level parsing details. Includes flex spec, test file, change log, and source distribution:

-rw-rw-r--   1 connolly 69          50650 Feb  7 11:59 sgml-lex-19960207.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 connolly 69          57182 Feb  7 12:00 sgml-lex-19960207.zip
21f7b70ec7135531bc84fd4c5e3cdf3d  sgml-lex-19960207.tar.gz (pgp sig)
083e21759d223b1005402120cdbf8169  sgml-lex-19960207.zip (pgp sig)

HTML 2.0 Specification Review Materials

Toward a Formalism for Communication on the Web)

unpublished draft by Dan Connolly

HTML to the Max

TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

Why Validate Your HTML

SGML

ISO 8879. Information Processing -- Text and Office Systems - Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), 1986.

HTML to the Max

In WWW2 proceedings

Groups and Discussion Forums

comp.text.sgml: USENET newsgroup for SGML
WG8: This is the working group for such ISO standards as SGML, HyTime, and DSSSL.
SGML Open: a consortium of SGML vendors convened to promote interoperability and market growth
IETF mimesgml wg: And abstracts of their drafts
TEI: Text Encoding and Interchange
DSSSL-Lite
Davenport Group

SGML Tools and Software

I know from first-hand experience that producing multi-purpose technical specifications (e.g. IETF plain text, online hypertext, and postscript) is tricky and tedious. I try to keep track of tools that might provide solutions to the problem of document management for web specs.

SP: a new C++ based SGML parser by James Clark, the author of SGMLS
DTD Fragments: Another SGMLS/Perl formatter, DTD Fragments. It's not DTD specific and does output to HTML, ASCII and TROFF, it does require a DTD to generic element mapping in Perl for any specific DTD and comes with DocBook and Linuxdoc mappings. The next version will have RTF output, Snafu DTD mapping and better support for applying different styles to the output.
Ken MacLeod
SGMLSpm: Another perl5/ngmls toolet. Includes some support for DocBook->LaTeX, HTML conversion, though that part of the code looks like a one-time shot, not a complete implementation.
DTD2HTML: An SGML DTD documentation/navigation tool by Earl Hood
This tool translates an SGML DTD into HTML, providing hypertext navigation of the document structure. Handy for learning SGML.
PSGML: A GNU Emacs mode for SGML files
Getting HotMetaL by FTP
SoftQuad Inc. Panorama Press Release
Linux Doc/SGML: These guys have taken a very practical approach to SGML for technical documentation. They started with SGMLs from James Clark and the QWERTZ DTD, which mirrors LaTeX structure. Then they added down-translators for groff, HTML, and others. Looks promising.
Hmmm... on closer examination, this is something of a hack. They hacked the DTD, hacked the down-translators, etc. I like the idea of using a LaTeX-like DTD, but I think I'll wait till this matures a little more. also: distribution archive.
GF: General SGML Formatter: another SGMLs based SGML to HTML converter supporting a few sophisticated DTDs
Setting up PSGML and sgmls for HTML
Remote file ftp.jclark.com/pub/sp
CoST: Copenhagen SGMLs Tool -- SGMLs meets Tcl
maintained by Joe English