XML/SGML

["Harrison, Shawn" Shawn_Harrison@xxxxxxxx]

Hello, XyWriters!

Some time ago, we had a lively discussion about "XyWrite replacement"
efforts. In addition to insisting that such an effort would take at least
fifteen years, R. Holmgren suggested (if I recall correctly) that the
best approach would be to move to an XML file format. I agree.

For those of you who don't know about XML, it's a document markup
language that (1) is straight ASCII/Latin-1; (2) describes the structure
of a document rather than its appearance; (3) is the future of the
internet; (4) is a simplification of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup
Language), which is the standard for descriptive and structural document
markup (in fact, HTML is defined as an SGML document type). XML stands
for "Extensible Markup Language" because, unlike HTML, you can define
your own document structures and markup.

No need to wait 15 years. There's a very robust, deeply functional
SGML/XML editor available. It mirrors many of the greatest advantages of
XyWrite -- you can even get rid of the toolbar (yay!) and use a command
line (yay yay!), the built-in programming language apparently gives
access to all of the functionality of the program, the user-interface is
intuitive, and the program is fully customizable (keyboards, menus,
etc.). The name of the editor is ADEPT, from Arbortext, at

	www.arbortext.com

Or, to get right down to business (skip the animations and so forth):

	www.arbortext.com/Products/products.html

I would encourage any of you who are interested in this to visit their
website. The Adept editor is apparently pricey ($1600 for a single-user
license), but they have a unique licensing arrangement where you can buy
up to 9 scaled down versions for every 1 full-scale version. The
scaled-down version can be used by "contributors" (which is why they call
it Contributor, I suppose), and it apparently costs a whole lot less
(exactly how much less, I don't know -- we'll be finding that out). It is
clearly intended for organizations rather than individuals. More
information to come for those who are interested.

Shawn

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shawn_harrison@xxxxxxxx
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