🚀 go-pugleaf

[Paul Prescod]
|
|   I really don't know much about sgml except what it's for.  I *DO*
|   however know what I would use it for.  But i need to know one thing:
|
|   Is there any standard for SGML wherein the text is seperated from the
|   formatting codes, so that for those that have no interest in SGML the
|   text is not mangled?

There are no _formatting_ codes in SGML documents to begin with.  (OK,
so I'm being pedantic, but it's an important point, often overlooked.)

Those who have no interest in SGML should use an SGML-aware editor that
doesn't display the markup, but instead uses some locally meaningful
form of presentation for the individual elements.  Note that formatting
is not in the scope of SGML, although formatting is certainly one of the
things to which you could subject an SGML document.

If you wish to separate the markup from the text completely, you will
need to establish a means to identify the start and end of all elements
in the separated text.  This is certainly _possible_, but you wouldn't
want to do it, because you would end up with more things to take care of
than writing an SGML-aware editor from scratch.

Some of us don't think text is "mangled" by SGML-type markup, but that
may be because we actually know the language, and use it to keep markup
at the level where it is still informative to us.  (It follows that I,
at least, don't use any SGML-"aware" editor, either -- they invariably
know less about SGML than I do and that's frustrating, especially when
they're wrong and being _very_ stubborn about it.)

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum                 ISO  8879 SGML                    +47 295 0313
                            ISO 10744 HyTime
<erik@naggum.no>            ISO  9899 C                 Memento, terrigena
<SGML@ifi.uio.no>           ISO 10646 UCS             Memento, vita brevis