Re: XML/SGML

["Russ W. Urquhart" urqurw@xxxxxxxx]

On Thu, Jul 29, 1999 at 04:56:47PM -0400, Leslie Bialler wrote:
> >
> > As far as the whole Stylesheet issue goes, i have only run into one problem,
> > and i'm
>
> Why this fetishistic use of l.c. "i" for first-person-singular
> references? Are you reading "The Adventures of Archy and Mehitabel" or
> something? I regret to have to say this, but it is danged annoying in
> this context. I would plead with you to cease and desist.

While, coincidentally, I did read and enjoy Archy & Mehitabel and it was one of
the few books that i went and fished out of storage recently, and I often find
myself feeling like the adventurous vermin, please let me state that my use of
the "i" for first-person-singular reference is merely a proclivity inherited
from reading/writing email and NOT in league with my fetishes. :)

Sorry. And to quote our hero


  boss i am disappointed in
  some of your readers they
  are always asking how does
  archy work the shift so as to get a
  new line or how does archy do
  this or do that they
  are alwats interesyed in technical
  details when the main question is
  whether the stuff is
  literature or not


my stuff obviously is not!





>
> > going to run the risk of embarassing myself here by explaining it, but
> > I found that when i tried to us a style i had created, after using that style i
> > could no longer count on my default style controlling all the formatting
> > variables i had set before. It appeared that i would have to define a style for
> > use, as kind of a body or default style.
> >
>
> Let us say you define a style for a block quotation: ≪SSQUOTE≫. Let us
> say further that you wish to have a left margin of 15 and a right margin
> of 65, and, to make this interesting, you want the typeface to be sans
> serif, let's say CGOMEGA just for fun, and you want a point size of 10.
> Thus:
>
> ≪SSQUOTE,LM=15,RM=65,UF=CGOMEGA,PT=10≫
>
> You will get this value every time you enter a ≪USQUOTE≫ in your
> document. But: any style that is not defined, or only partly defined,
> will pick up the default settings from SETTINGS.DFL and/or STARTUP.INT.
>
> If, say, you have a style ≪SSTEXT≫ and put in no parameters, and your
> default left margin is 10, and your right is 70, and your default font
> is Garamond, and your default size is 11pt, then this is what you will
> get when you invoke USTEXT. I think, but I can't say for sure, that you
> might well be better off by defining SSTEXT completely. Then your system
> defaults will be overridden whenever you invoke USTEXT. I would be
> interested to know if you will find this to be the case. Since, as I
> think my correspondence with Rene made reasonably clear, I put
> everything in a styles file and merge it in, it's been quite some time
> since I have examined each of the elements therein to see how they
> operate. And quite truthfully I'm not really all that concerned since,
> as I have also indicated, XyWrite is merely used as a front end for
> Quark XPress. Because of this, I could actually define none of the
> styles and they would still come out the way the book designers wish
> when filtered through to Quark.
>

I'll give this a try!


> > This, to me, ran counter to what i am used to when using a FrameMaker or
> > Interleaf, or Ventura for that matter.
>
> Whatever. This is XyWrite, and that is FrameMaker or Interleaf or
> Ventura. XyWrite was never meant to be a sophisticated desktop
> publishing program.

i hope i didn't imply that i thought it should be. I was trying to understand,
for myself the paradigms these programs use with regard to paragraph and
charcter styles as compared to Xywrite. For me, sometimes i need to think in
terms of other examples.

>
> 
>
> > Outside of that portion of text having the character style, the text
> > should look and format at the original paragraph style. Or at least this is
> > what i'd expect.
> >
>
> Again, see if you can validate what I have blathered on about above.
> This should happen if I'm right.
>

we'll do

> > For whatever reason, when i tried to get Xywrite's styles to do this, i
> > couldn't get it to work that way. As i said earlier, this is more than likely
> > pilot error on my part, but if anyone could confirm yay or nay on this for me,
> > i'd appreciate it.
> >
>
> I believe I have.
>


Thanks

> > i would think or i would want my wordprocessor
> > to be able to have some control over the actual layout portions of my document,
> > in a precise manner. That includes, but not limited to, font size, paper size,
> > leading, precise graphic placement, etc. The capabilities to do some of these
> > things in HTML is kind of kludgy IMO and suggests limited capabilites in HTML
> > to display these attributes. As i've said, i haven't yet gotten into XML, but,
> > i would want to be able to control these things in my wordprocessor/publishing
> > system. If later, i could then output this to XML, for someone else's benefit,
> > that would be fine.
> >
>
> The point of SGML is that the file not be specific to a word processor
> or an op. sys. The idea of an SGML file is that the file can be
> postscripted and sent to a printer for a traditional book, or equally as
> well be put up on the Web. The point is, 
 means "There be H1!" In a
> book it might be 14 point bold, centered Times Roman; on the web it
> might be 12 pt italic, flush left, Palatino.

I'm familiar with this aspect of SGML. I'm just curious as to where the
specifics of the layout for my instance of my document is retained?


>
> You are correct about the limitations of HTML. It is essentially a
> stripped down version of SGML. XML is, or so I have been told, expected
> to remedy the issue.
>

I guess that i'll need to get more into XML, if only to find out what is and
isn't!



thanks again!


Russ