🚀 go-pugleaf

Alasdair Grant <ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:
|
|   Strange. I read "Practical SGML" after "an author's guide" and kept
|   thinking "Is he going to mention LINKs, SGML declaration, data tags
|   etc."  (answer usually "no") and "this is explained rather
|   confusingly". It did offer some perspectives on CALS & EDI etc., and
|   listed a few products (probably out of date by now) but it is rather
|   sketchy. It is unfair, but having once had to deal with large
|   amounts of Eric's Rexx code, I was perhaps overly conscious of a
|   lack of rigour in his book. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a
|   first book, and it's probably unnecessary altogether if one has read
|   lots of <TAG>s (which I _still_ haven't got hold of...)

Yes, it's sketchy.  It can tend to gloss over many things, and it
doesn't really take you into the "realm of SGML".  I think the title
says so, however.  "Practical SGML" doesn't suggest an elucidation of
each and every feature, nor does it suggest a thorough treatment of the
matter.  Overall and over time, I have come to appreciate the approach,
especially the tables.  As Deborah Lapeyre wrote in the summary to her
review in <TAG> #16, October 1990:

    This book is not a perfect book.  This is not the general SGML
    introduction that explains everything that all SGML users are still
    looking for.  This book is a very personal volume, sort of "Travels
    Through the Land of SGML Software and What I Found There".  You will
    want to read it for the same reason that you read any other travel
    volume: to acquire vicarious experience before trying out the real
    thing; to act as a guide to unfamiliar and uncharted territory; to
    compare another traveler's impressions with your own.  This book
    packs a lot of SGML application experience into one volume.

    Along the way, the author describes some fascinating SGML
    application, details some of the very real problems an SGML'er is
    likely to face, provides some useful pointers and DTD samples, and
    provides a good programmer-oriented introduction to SGML.


Still, I would recommend this over a book which includes everything, and
made my brain go "ALARM! OVERLOAD!" on page 30.  Which author cares
whether things are called "stago", "tagc", "mdo", etc?  It confused the
hell out of me, anyway.  Matter of fact, I found the "raw" standard
easier reading.  I didn't understand "entity" for a long time because I
got a bad start from reading "An Author's Guide -- NOT!" first.

Unfortunately, there are no other introductory books than the three
mentioned.  Of course, there's the comp.text.sgml archives.  The only
thing I'm sorry about is that I started archiving this thing so late.

Best regards,
</Erik>
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