Re: Well-formed documents and analyzing software (fwd)
FYI
--
Martin Wheeler - StarTEXT, Glastonbury, Somerset, England - BA6 9PH
mwheeler@startext.co.uk http://www.startext.co.uk/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 15:27:55 -0600
From: C M Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@acm.org>
To: TEI-TECH@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Subject: Re: Well-formed documents and analyzing software
>Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 13:26:26 -0600
>Reply-To: TEI Technical Review discussion list <TEI-TECH@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
>Sender: TEI Technical Review discussion list <TEI-TECH@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU>
>From: William Fietzer <fietz001@TC.UMN.EDU>
...
>What I want to know is how well such an analyzed encoded document conforms
>to the XML standards of a well-formed document. Put simply, would XML be
>able to "read" such documents as it would be able to do with documents
>encoded in Author/Editor or Dynatext? Does anyone know about this or is
>familiar with the capabilities of these two brands of software? If you
>could direct me to a site or a guru in this area I would appreciate it.
I'm not sure I understand the question. XML is not a piece of
software, so one answer is No, XML cannot "read" such documents, any
more than it can read A/E files.
Whether the files created with NUDIST and ATLAS are well-formed
XML or not depends on the file format. At a rough guess, if these
programs were created before the publication of the XML 1.0 spec,
the chances are strongly against the files being well-formed XML
as they sit. Whether they can easily be translated into well-formed
XML depends on how they look.
Tutorials and introductory information about SGML and XML can be found
in a number of places, including the TEI's home page at
http://www.uic.edu/orgs/tei and Robin Cover's SGML/XML Web page at
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/ -- it is the single best place to get
information about XML and SGML. From that address you will also find
links to Steve Pepper's Whirlwind Guide to SGML & XML Tools and
Vendors, which is at http://www.infotek.no/sgmltool/guide.htm and
which may provide some useful information about the kinds of things
Author/Editor and DynaText do, and the way they use SGML.
I hope this helps.
-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Senior Research Programmer, University of Illinois at Chicago
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