🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello -- I became aware of SGML this fall.  The folks who market SGML had an
exhibition booth at EP '90 (Electronic Publishing Conference held this year at
the National Institute of Standards in Maryland).  I am not working with SGML,
yet, but it may be that I will in the future.  I would appreciate it if someone
could take the time to respond to the following questions I have:

1.  SGML has been described as a context-free markup.  In a recent posting I
think I read someone refering to TeX as a context-specific markup.  Could
someone enlarge on this thread for me?

2.  Latex (I believe I also read in a recent article) is a more suitable
SGML environment than is TeX.  Is this because Latex is a macro-based 
markup while Tex is more a control-word type markup.  In other words, a markup
that describes what the text looks like vs. what document element the text is
being assigned to?  Would this analagy hold also, for say, SCRIPT vs. GML?
GML is a fore-runner of Bookmaster.  An intermediate step was ISIL (which never
did make it past internal use at IBM) but there are some very significant
bloodlines here and if someone can frame their answers to my questions around
these IBM products, it will greatly add to my understanding.  In fact, I
read someone's comment that Bookmaster is a suitable SGML environment.  
Unfortunately, I have never seen or gotten my hands on Bookmaster.  Does 
Bookmaster have something that GML or ISIL does not??

3.  I have read references to some word-processing environments being more
suitable for SGML than others.  Could someone enlarge on this?

4.  Is it likely that we will see SGML front-ends on future word-processors? 
Or, will document authors need to directly apply the markup themselves?

5.  As I currently understand it, SGML is a two-step process:

	a) define a structure for the document
	b) write the document
	c) run the document through the SGML software (?) and see if the 
	  document adheres to the structure.

three, three steps, as I understand it, SGML is a three step process
no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, shades of Monty Python :)

6.  I assume it is OK for SGML documents to be broken into chapter files?

Thank you very much in advance for any and all kind persons who respond to this
post.  I hope that these questions make some sense.

FYI, my interest in all this comes from the fact that I perform technical
writing services for a company that develops a text-retrieval program.  The
growing popularity of SGML is making the developers scurry to permit not only
the input of an SGML document, but the retrieval of said document by 
permitting the user to specify search parameters that are unique to the 
hierarchical structure of an SGML document.