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Re: sgml vs xml


On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 04:32:30PM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:28:58PM -0800,
>  Ben Hratshorne <docbook at green dot hartshorne dot net> wrote 
>  a message of 43 lines which said:
> 
> > I was wondering a while ago whether to start my docbook project stuff
> > using dsssl or xml. 
> 
> They are not incompatible. Unless this is a typo, you compare apples
> and oranges.
> 
> XML or SGML are markup meta-languages.
> 
> XSL or DSSSL are stylesheets languages.
> 
> You can (I do) use DSSSL for XML documents. The choice of a markup
> meta-language is partly independant of the choice of the stylesheet language.

I was confused by this.  Though I understood the difference between
SGML/XML and DSSSL/XSL (you're right it was a typo), I thought that if
you use SGML, you must use DSSSL, and if you use XML, you must use XSL.
I was unaware you could use DSSSL with XML.  Is the converse true - can
you use XSL with SGML?

I also could not find a good description of equivelancies between XML
and SGML in terms of how to crunch documents, how to use entities, and
so on.  I learned by looking at examples from the linux documentation
project.  

For example, I know that the first line (where you cite the DTD to which
you are conforming) is different for XML vs. SGML, but that is about the
extent of the documentation I could find for the difference.  

Can any of you suggest a web page that might have the same document in
XML and SGML, and show differences in both the document and in how to
compile it?  

(if any of you would like to forward specifics on tool tips to me, i'm
using debian and docbook-utils v0.6.12-3.  ;)

> 
> > Lurking on this list for a bit it seems that 90% of the questions are
> > answered with XML syntax.  Is it the case that though nobody really
> > seems to say so everyone actually uses XML?   
> 
> It is clear that SGML is slowly dying in favour of XML. For a new
> project where there is no legacy, I believe there is no question: use
> XML.

ok.  This confirms my impression, I will do so.  

But...  at this point I have one (mostly) complete manual in SGML.  Any
tips on what I might need to change to switch it over, besides the first
line?  I think the only tricky part is that I have a couple of
conditionally compiled sections:

<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [

<!-- change INCLUDE below to IGNORE and none of the sections marked
  %internal / versoin2 will be included when you compile the document.
-->
<!entity % internal "INCLUDE">
<!entity % version2 "IGNORE">

]>

<book>
 ...
 ...
<![%version2; [
  <section id="installtunnel">
  ...
  ...
]>


I have also made a few changes to
/usr/share/sgml/docbook/utils-0.6.12/docbook-utils.dsl.  I didn't want
to figure out how to create a proper customization layer so I just
changed that one.  (this is the .dsl that is used when I type
'docbook2{html,pdf} mydoc.docbook'.) Most of the changes are just
switching variables from #t to #f, but a couple are more interesting,
such as preferring pdf imagedata objects in print, and suppressing <p>
tags within <ul> tags by redefining the (listitem para
itemizedlist) element.  

Will those have to be completely redone in XSL?  Though I conceptually
understand the XML/XSL/DSSSL thing now, I'm still fuzzy on
implementation details.

Thanks for your comments so far!

-ben

-- 
Ben Hartshorne
email: ben at hartshorne dot net
http://ben.hartshorne.net

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