RE: XML/SGML

["Harrison, Shawn" Shawn_Harrison@xxxxxxxx]

Hi, Russ.
.....
I'm familiar with all this, and i think that it makes sense. My question,
and
maybe you can answer this, is where is the stylesheet defined?
.....

I'm not sure about that with SGML/DSSSL, since I'm just beginning to
learn about DSSSL, although James Clark's DSSSL system (Jade) appears to
use stylesheets to define how SGML is transformed into other formats.
With HTML and even XML, the stylesheet information can be held in a
Cascading Style Sheet (about which also I know very little -- I'm just
now actively exploring these things). In Corel's implementation of SGML
for WordPerfect, the style is held in a "layout." The layout is a
separate document that describes the appearance and formatting
characteristics of the elements in your DTD. You can have as many layouts
as you want for a particular DTD. You just load the layout you want along
with the DTD, and WP will display the document in a WYSIWYG, formatted
manner. Change the layout, and WP will immediately update the appearance.
WordPerfect 7 comes with a separate "layout designer" for easily
designing these layouts. (Editing SGML documents in WP is another story,
though. Ugh.)

> I'm just curious as to when and where I, as
> the author, would go about defining the stylesheet?

That depends on the system you are using. Cascading Stylesheets (CSS's)
have become something of a standard for HTML, and it appears XML may go
that way as well. I suppose any word processing system that separates
stylesheet from DTD would (should!) provide a mechanism for defining and
loading both.

.....
The other question that comes to mind is that if the stylesheet is
totally
removed from the document, and an H1 tag only means that an H1 is here,
according to you and Leslie, it would seem that i would either have to
make
sure that everyone i send stuff to has my DTD's or that i use some other
well
used DTD's, is that correct?
.....

Yes, that's true. But with XML, the tagging system is somewhat
self-describing, so that the DTD can be inferred from the structure
actually used in the document -- that's what XML was designed for, to be
able to be interpreted without necessarily having the DTD. But generally
you would just include your DTD with your files, use a public one, or if
it's a short and simple document put in a DTD at the beginning (which is
certainly possible in XML/SGML). And of course, if you want to "validate"
a document, you have to have the DTD to check it against.

> Well, i feel a little better now!

Great! Thanks for the lively conversation.

S.H.

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shawn_harrison@xxxxxxxx
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