SGML vs other standards

[Kim Lester <kim@dfusion.com.au>]

Dear all,

	Haven't been around for a while, but I noticed some comments
	about why is SGML the standard? Why not others too.

	I'm sure we aren't going to get into the great debate again
	but I thought I'd share the following thoughts...

	Once upon a time there was plain old text.
	Then came basic systems that permitted words to be
	made in bold or italics (if our daisy wheel
	or dot matrix driver supported such things - for the older ones 
	amongst us remember EPSON FX80 codes etc)
	
	Then WYSIWYG came along - brave new world stuff.
	We all jumped on the band wagon (in the PC world at least)
	and had all manner of fonts everywhere.
	[You've seen the results of someone new to word processors
	 a different font on every line...]

	When the web came about the natural extension was for a
	simple wysiwyg system, hence HTML (based on the foundation of
	SGML).

	Meanwhile in unix land they stuck with nroff, troff etc
	then came tex and latex. Only recently (eg StarOffice etc)
	have we gone all gooey.

	The problem is that there are now millions of pages on the
	web and on corporate intranets. Sure they're all pretty and
	individual but that really doesn't contribute to the
	problem of turning data into information and thence knowledge
	and understanding.
	Almost none of this mass of info is properly indexed. The
	results of search engines demonstrates some of the issues.

	And yes I do have a point :)...	

 <soap box>
	We now have too much data. We need data mining to sift
	through it all. To do this we need structured data.
	PRESENTATION IS ALMOST IRRELEVANT (I'm not saying unimportant
	I'm saying irrelevant to this problem. given a well structured
	document presentation is realtively trivial and will look better
	than a hand crafted solution. IMHO most latex documents look
	more uniform and elegant than any Word document, and you don't
	spend hours agonising over tab stops etc).

	We are all now just starting to move down the path of
	structured information content. A relatively simple extensible
	system that is human readable is required. SGML provides
	a good environment to do this.

	Now we can really start filtering and indexing data properly
	and presenting in an appropriate manner on anything from a 
	TV set to a computer screen to a mobile phone. Why because
	we know what the data is about, so we can be more intelligent
	about how we present it.

	This technology although reasonably well understood is still
	in its infancy. Sure SGML editors seem like a step backward
	because they don't focus on looks, but the power is greater.
	It is a bit like windowing system vs command prompts, the latter
	tend to be uglier but a re far more powerful.
	Things will improve, we'll get good (free) SGML tools running
	that strike a balance between structure and looks. A little bit
	of visual aid and indentation is of benefit as a visual
	cue to structure.

	The last thing we need is to have another input format.
	Sometimes democracy is bad. IMHO this one of those times.
	One input standard is best for now whilst we develop this
	technology. Multiple standards in this case will only hamper us.

	BTW IMHO I disagree with someone's earlier comment that pictures
	are bad. Pictures are good, very very good. If you have ever
	tried describing something even simple like typing a bowline
	without pictures you'll know what I mean. Computer things tend
	to be much harder. More pictures. Sure maybe we restrict
	ourselves to B&W vector formats for now. But we should be
	pursuing some good drawing standards.

	</Soap box>

	best regards
	
		Kim

-- 
	Kim Lester

	Senior Engineer,
	Datafusion Systems Pty Ltd
	http://www.dfusion.com.au/


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