🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan4.200343.20281@texhrc.uucp>, mjz@mjzsgi.Texaco.COM
(Michael Zeitlin) writes:
|> 
|>    Insight is quite nice....i just assume use it for our own
|>    "stuff"

Thanks for the compliment.  Our first release of InSight is meant as
a base level of functionality that we can build on for future versions.
With the InSight Viewer bundled with all machines we now have a base
for putting more documents online.  In the future we will add more 
functionality to the viewer and tools for helping users get documents
into InSight.

The InSight Viewer is based on a 3rd party toolkit from Electronic Book
Technologies, Inc. for displaying the books.  The format of the books 
InSight reads is an SGML file compiled using EBT's SGML compiler.  SGML
stands for Standard Generalized Markup Language and is a language for
tagging the structure of a document based on a DTD (Document Type 
Definition).

Adding books to the current version of InSight is not a trivial task.
Your "stuff" must be converted to SGML then compiled using EBT's tools.
We currently translate our books from Frame to SGML using a translator
from another 3rd party vendor named Avalanche.  Our process is 
semi-automated but specific to the SGI environment.  We have a group in 
CSD that is translating files from ascii to SGML for the Support bookshelf
but the files are semi-structured already.  We do not yet have a general 
purpose tool for incorporating arbitrary ascii text files into InSight.

The translation of a book from whatever format you author it in into 
SGML can either be done by yourself, or a service bureau.  Passage 
Systems, Inc. was formed partially for this purpose.  There also exist 
other companies that build translation filters from various formats to 
SGML.

We do hope that 3rd parties, OEM's, and ISV's will decide to put their 
documentation for their products online in InSight.  There are many 
advantages besides having a common means of accessing all the information,
the ability to query across all books, and the ability to link from one 
book to another.  Another key feature is that 3rd parties can write their 
book once for InSight and then take that same compiled book with EBT's
DynaText browser and deliver the same book on other platforms.  EBT's 
DynaText browser runs on a wide variety of platforms including Sun, DEC,
HP, and Windows.

I realize that this isn't an answer to the question of "How do I get my
documents online in InSight?" But before I write a lengthier reply I'd
like
to find out what kind of information you really want or need.

	Victor Riley
	InSight Engineer
	var@sgi.com