Author/Editor comes with a variety of precompiled industry-standard DTDs, such as CALS (Department of Defense), ATA (Air Transport Association), docbook (documentation), HTML, helptag (help systems), ISO 12083 (books and articles), and j2008 (automotive manuals). Softquad plans to include other DTDs in future versions, including TEI (Text Encoding Initiative).

Author/Editor can handle advanced SGML features, such as marked sections. It can edit and display tables, and it can display external, non-SGML files using the NOTATION mechanism.

Trouble spots. Author/Editor is the first SGML product created specifically for the Mac, and it is easy to use. It does have some drawbacks, though. Some of its problems are a direct result of its strengths. For instance, some people find it difficult to work within its controlled and structured editing style.

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Tip:  
Unless you have a top-of-the-line machine, Author/Editor runs slowly. This will remain a problem until the next update, because version 3.1 is not native to the PowerMac.

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Changing a DTD. If you want to use a DTD not provided with Author/Editor, you must purchase a separate program called RulesBuilder. This is primarily because Author/Editor separates the roles of author and document designer in its work model. To make changes to a DTD, you must open RulesBuilder, make the changes, recompile the DTD, and reload the SGML document. This is time-consuming. On the other hand, you can download precompiled DTDs for common formats from many World Wide Web and FTP sites. Although the separate work steps are not a significant problem, the need to purchase two software licenses makes using custom DTDs or modifying standard ones expensive.

Importing. Author/Editor’s import uses the validating SGML parser. It expects to see documents that do not contain fatal SGML errors. In fact, the best way to use Author/Editor as an SGML validator is to import a document. Because an import uses the validator, it’s not always easy to import partially tagged documents, especially if they’re tagged incorrectly. The biggest problems typically are elements not defined in the DTD, overlapping elements, and elements that are never closed. These problems cause Author/Editor to refuse to import your document. If they are bad enough, they can crash the system.

Which DTD? Another drawback of Author/Editor is that you cannot see which DTD a document is using unless you export the document as an ASCII SGML document, in which case, you get a DOCTYPE declaration at the top of the file. This is not a problem if you aren’t developing DTDs. It is often important, however, to know which DTD a document is using.

Editing with Another Program. The final drawback—or advantage, depending on your point of view—is that Author/Editor files, because they are essentially WYSIWYG SGML files, are not stored as ASCII files in their native format. Therefore, you can read them only with Author/Editor. You can export them to a standard ASCII SGML format. That takes time, and it is inconvenient if you’re using multiple tools to enter, tag, and clean up documents, or if you need to move documents between tools frequently. On the other hand, the WYSIWYG format makes it much easier to read and edit files.

SoftQuad, Inc

56 Aberfoyle Crescent

Toronto, CANADA M8X 2W4

(416) 239-4801 or (800) 387-2777

(416) 239-7105 FAX

http://www.sq.com

SoftQuad RulesBuilder 3.0

RulesBuilder is the companion program to Author/Editor. You use it to create, edit, and compile DTDs. It consists of a bare-bones ASCII editor with a regular expression find and change feature. The main purpose of RulesBuilder is to compile your DTD into a binary file that Author/Editor can read, as shown in figure 27.4. After you write a DTD, you build the rules file. You move this file into the Author/Editor Rules directory and select it when you edit or import a new document.

Fig. 27.4  Use RulesBuilder to edit and compile your DTDs.

Unfortunately, RulesBuilder does not provide templates for the basic DTD formats, such as <!ELEMENT … > and <!ATTLIST … >, to help you as you type your DTD. You have to remember all the SGML syntactic details on your own.

http://www.sq.com

For full contact information, see “SoftQuad Author/Editor 3.1.”

SoftQuad Sculptor 1.0

Sculptor 1.0 is an application builder for Author/Editor based on the Scheme programming language. It’s an expensive commercial version of the toolkit that SoftQuad uses to customize and enhance its products. You use Sculptor to customize Author/Editor. You can, for example, change the menus or menu items to add functionality, incorporate Author/Editor into another program, or make it communicate with the Mac operating system.

Sculptor is a powerful programming tool that requires technical knowledge, but it enables you to redefine almost every aspect of how the editor supports specialized interface needs or document preparation procedures. You are most likely to need it if you are setting up a long-term SGML project that uses uniform data and performs the same tasks repeatedly. In this case, customizing the environment cuts down on training time for staff and allows significant gains by automating repetitive tasks. Customizing is less appropriate for one-time conversion or tagging projects because of the preparation required and the high price of the software.

http://www.sq.com

For full contact information, see “SoftQuad Author/Editor 3.1.”