3. References

That is just a taste of what is available. There is so much more that can and should be precisely described here that one could write a GoodBook and some have. To get a GoodBook:

But First An IMPORTANT Announcement: This is not an advertisement. It is FYI only ... just places to start searching. Opinions are mine, not my company's, not my gang's, not my dog's, not my dear dead grandmother's. Based on this posting, no opinions on products not mentioned should be inferred, made up, or otherwise speculated on to support a particular political objective, mischievous prank or bored malicious act.

Get it?.. |-) "... On with the show, This is IT!"

To delve deeply into SGML, four books and a draft are pertinent:

• Practical SGML -- Eric van Herwijnen, Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN 0-7923-9434-8. This is the easiest book to start with.
• SGML: An Author's Guide -- Martin Bryan, Addison-Wesley Publishing ISBN 0-201-17535-5. A little more advanced. Not hard.
• The SGML Handbook -- Charles F. Goldfarb, Clarendon Press ISBN 0-19-853737-9. The name says it all. This is the most valid reference after the ISO 8879 SGML standard itself. Both were written by The Doctor. Neither are easy because they meet the absolute complexity of the subject. Unless your supply of Foster's is laid in for the winter months, don't start with these but don't neglect them either. In a firefight over who is most legally right, the fellow that quotes these usually is. That doesn't mean what they are defending will work.
• Making Hypermedia Work -- DeRose & Durand, Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN 0-7923-9432-1. The easiest introduction so far to the mysterious magical kingdom of the ISO 10744 HyTime standard that brought hypermedia to SGML. It doesn't describe the use of named queries in name locations and I don't why. Other than that, it's a very good introduction to a new and only barely explored outback of SGML.
• Practical Hypermedia: An Introduction to HyTime -- W. Eliot Kimber PTR Prentice Hall. ISBN ???. This book will be published shortly so watch the CTS for news of its release. Eliot is a well-known expert and lecturer on HyTime as well as contributor to the CTS. He has made a private Jones out of helping others with the subject whenever and wherever he is asked and most of us are in his debt for that. Some areas of the standard are controversial and Eliot offers views that contrast to and compliment DeRose and Durand.

The very best way to learn about SGML/HyTime is like any other language: acquire a system that handles it and start to hack. Here are some descriptions of some commercial systems:

• Author/Editor -- SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada -- a solid editor for compiling DTDs and writing and validating document instances created from them. SoftQuad also sells a range of products for SGML and HyTime for different platforms and budgets. Their Explorer product supports basic HyTime facilities and hyperdocument creation.
• InContext -- InContext Corp. (sorry! Don't have the Canadian city for this one but just ask on the CTS and someone will find it for you). - also a solid editor for compiling DTDs and writing and validating document instances.
• TagWizard -- NICE Tech. chemin des Hutins, Veraz, 01170 Gex France. -- An add-on for MSWord 6.0. This features a parser and a set of WORD macros that let you use your Word software as a source for SGML documents. It fully supports the DTDs for HTML and ISO 12083. "nice approach to WYSIWYG/SGML".
• ArborText -- ArborText Corp. They have a comprehensive range of products ranging from very expensive to reasonable. As a suite, their products are a SGML hacker's wet dream. These products are for the very serious SGML users who need products at the level of a modern 4GL. No support for HyTime yet that I am aware of.
• DynaText -- Electronic Book Technologies -- an electronic book publishing system built around SGML. I'm unsure about the current price on this one or how it supports HyTime, but as Steve DeRose mentioned above is a principal in this company, it's safe to assume it will and will do it very well. These guys and SoftQuad will probably go head to head in providing the state-of-the art in the HyTime applications.
• Near & Far/CADE -- MicroStar Ltd -- This is a DTD design tool that comes as close to true CASE technology as I've seen. For those who do not want to keep typing in the <!ELEMENT etc, and who want to develop DTDs using a groupware methodology that captures design rationale, this is the best there is.
• HyMinder -- TechnoTeacher Inc. -- An object-oriented library in C++ of classes that support the full range of HyTime functionality including parsing. The is for a serious developer of HyTime applications.
• IDE/AS -- Unisys Corporation -- a frame-based SGML hypertext product for MSWindows. This is the parent of the IADS product mentioned below. It is reasonable in price and allows direct editing and update of the SGML document instance. It also features an interactive stylesheet. Easy to use.

There is a lot of freeware out there as well. I will only mention the ones I use:

• SGMLS -- this is a full parser for SGML. It has been integrated into a lot of commercial products, but by itself, is a very powerful tool and a good way to get started with SGML. As we all know, a true SGML hacker only needs a parser and an ASCII editor. |-) The International SGML Users Group distributes this. And if you ask Erik Naggum nicely, he will tell you where to FTP for a copy.
• IADS -- This is a frame-based Windows hypertext product for SGML. You can get it from the same place as the SGMLS parser, and it fact, IADS uses that parser. It's easy to use, and will let you explore hypermedia in SGML. It doesn't support HyTime and does require the use of some fixed element types. Unlike HTML, it doesn't force a particular DTD on you, but also unlike HTML, it has no network support. Still, some very large and very serious hyperdocument databases have been built with it. Best of all, it's FREE!

There's a lot more products out there from commercial full-text retrieval databases in SGML (OpenText) and general transformation languages and parsers (Exoterica) to hacks in perl that you can get from the network if you just keep watching the CTS. I'm only commenting on the products with which I am familiar in enough depth to recommend a look.

But above all, GET A GOOD BOOK!

Cheers,

Len Bullard