Viewing and Printing Tools

Once you tag your document with SGML and verify that it’s correct, you might want to do something with it. For example, you might want to display it on the screen or print out a formatted version of it. It is in this area that the Mac is weakest. There are no add-ons for common word processors as there are in Windows, which enable you to import text marked up in SGML and to apply formatting styles to it. SoftQuad’s Panorama Pro, a helper application for World Wide Web browsers, can download and display text in SGML with styles and links. It is not yet available for the Mac, however.

Two publishing solutions available for the Mac are FrameMaker and QuarkXPress. They come from high-end desktop publishing environments and are intended for creating traditional paper products, not electronic editions. EBT’s DynaText, which requires some preparatory steps on a UNIX or Windows computer, can create SGML-based interactive electronic books. Another low-budget, but powerful, solution is to take advantage of World Wide Web browser technology. Convert your SGML source into HTML documents for viewing with a Web browser program.

SGML Enabler

SGML Enabler, from SoftQuad, is a QuarkXPress extension that makes it easy to format and print SGML files. It is a useful tool if you are making SGML on the Mac and want to print it out with a sophisticated page layout program. It requires, however, that you know how to use QuarkXPress and configure its styles.

http://www.sq.com

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

FrameMaker+SGML

Framemaker, from Adobe Systems, is one of the most powerful page layout programs for publishing and editing book-length documents—especially long, structured documents such as technical documentation. It has its own markup language—MIF. FrameMaker+SGML is an option for FrameMaker version 5 that provides fully integrated SGML support. It enables structural editing of SGML documents similar to Author/Editor, and it also provides a high-quality page layout view.

FrameMaker+SGML does not have a graphical DTD browser, but it does provide a graphical context display that shows the elements in a document and can be expanded and contracted like an outline. Like Stilo and Author/Editor, it hides the details of SGML syntax, so structural errors are the only kind possible. Unlike Stilo and Author/Editor, FrameMaker does not prevent you from creating structurally invalid documents. It merely flags structural errors in the context display. This makes editing simple, even when it involves intermediate stages that do not match the DTD.

With its powerful typesetting features, FrameMaker+SGML is overkill for an SGML project that is producing high-quality printed output. It is ideal, though, when print production is the primary delivery medium for the data.

http://www.adobe.com/Frame

1-800-U-4-FRAME

DynaText

EBT’s DynaText is the leading SGML electronic delivery platform. Although EBT does not support publishing on the Mac, its browser works on the Mac (see fig. 27.7), which makes the Mac a possible delivery platform for SGML data. EBT file formats are platform independent. Therefore, the same files can be delivered to Windows, UNIX, or Mac environments.

Fig. 27.7  You can create electronic books that are easy to search and browse with DynaText.

One disadvantage of DynaText is the use of a compilation process. Although this enables you to create full-text indexes for searching document text quickly, it creates a batch-style bottleneck when you publish data.

The latest UNIX and Windows versions of DynaText add the capability to deliver DynaText documents that use uncompiled SGML files. This feature is not suitable for large document applications because it stores the entire document in RAM, but it is ideal for publishing small single documents or collections of interlinked small documents. Unfortunately, a Mac version of the updated product is not available.

Electronic Book Technologies

1 Richmond Square

Providence, RI 02906

401-421-9550

http://www.ebt.com

Document Conversions

Document conversion is a recurring—and often unpleasant—part of document processing. Fortunately, public domain scripting tools, such as Perl and TCL, are available for the Mac.

There are no commercial document conversion tools currently available for the Mac. You can use a variety of public domain tools, however. Some of these are general-purpose tools that can be adapted to the task of converting to or from SGML. Others are SGML-aware tools suitable for more complex conversions. Remember: When you convert from SGML to another format, even a complex SGML-aware tool might be easier to use than a simpler SGML-unaware tool.

The following sections discuss scenarios that you are likely to encounter when you convert documents. They describe some of the tools and approaches that you can use. Unfortunately, document conversion is a messy problem that varies from job to job. It defies generalization—and accurate estimates of time and effort. The documentation available for many non-SGML data formats is poor.

Converting from Plain Text

If you have an SGML-aware editor, such as Author/Editor or Stilo, open the file and use the editing features to tag it as you go. Start with Rules Checking mode turned off.

If you do not have an SGML-aware editor, you can use an ASCII editor, such as Alpha, Qued/M, or BBEdit. The steps are:

1.  Open the file with the editor. Make global changes, using the regular expression features when necessary.

2.  Finish the tagging by hand. You can rarely perform a whole conversion automatically.

3.  Use SGMLS to validate the file. Make any necessary corrections.

If you know how to use a scripting language and have multiple files to convert or will be converting the same file several times, it might be worthwhile to write a program to handle all the conversions that can be automated. The steps are:

1.  Work over your file as though you were going to do the conversion by hand, so that you can see what types of changes are necessary.

2.  Write a program in Perl or TCL to perform the changes as well as others that the programming language allows.

3.  Convert the file.

4.  Put in any final tagging by hand.

5.  Use SGMLS to validate the file. Make any necessary corrections.