[DOC-SIG] Comparing SGML DTDs

[Bill Janssen]

Just a few notes...

Excerpts from ext.python: 12-Nov-97 Re: [DOC-SIG] Comparing SGM..
Michael McLay@smtp.erols (21835*)

>   3) TIM was written in Python:-) (only about 820 lines of code)

TIM itself is just a macro front end to Texinfo that provides generic
markup, picture support, and URL support.  That's what's written in
Python.

>   4) It looks like a markup that would be much easier to convert to
>      XML than Latex.  (My guess is that XML will eventually become the 
>      standard for WYSIWYG editors so the ugly tagging issue will go away.)

Yes.  The current Perl script timdif2html provides HTML output; a
variant of that, or another Python script, would be used to produce XML.

>   1) Heavy dependance on external programs which may not be on every platform
> 	MAKEINFO = '/usr/bin/makeinfo'
> 	TEX = '/usr/bin/tex'
> 	TEXINDEX = '/usr/bin/texindex'
> 	DVIPS = '/usr/bin/dvips'

`makeinfo' and (I believe) `texindex' are part of the GNU Texinfo
package.  TeX is freely available from Stanford (I think).  `dvips' is a
commercial product used to convert TeX DVI to Postscript -- I'm not sure
if there's a freely available version.

>   3) Restricted set of tags, which makes it fairly hard to extend
>      (except by using macros.)

You are restricted to the base tag set supported by the Texinfo tools. 
However, arbitrary TIM renamings for these are available.

>   4) Mixes macro language with markup.  Is this really a problem?
>      The TIM macros seem to primarily be used to declare context names
>      which are then translatable to generic typographic codes.  This 
>      should make it easier to move the tagged text to meaningful XML
> tags.

That's correct.  At some point a TIM parser should be written which
provides a parse tree that preserves the generic markup.

Bill



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