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Excerpts from netnews.comp.text: 27-Jul-90 software tools for SGML Anita
Eijs@tnoibbc.UUCP (1197)

> 1)	Are WYSISWYG-wordprocessors available which can read and write
> 	SGML ?
> 2)	Are any translators available to convert SGML to troff, TeX,
	MSWord, etc., and vice versa ?
> 3)	Is an SGML to PostScript converter available ?

These questions illustrate a common misunderstanding of SGML. WYSISWYG
[sic], troff, TeX, MSWord and Postscript all provide imaging models for
a document, that is, what the document looks like on paper. SGML
provides *no* such semantics. ISO SGML does not even define possible
structures of a document, only ways to specify structure. For example,
you can use the tags definitions defined by AAP or CALS, but they are
not interchangable. Of course, you can make your own tags (like, I'm
told, HP did for their documentation) and be unlike everyone else. AAP
and HP specifically excluded implied imaging semantics from their tags,
since they wanted different formating at different times. I believe that
the CALS tags are supposed to be associated with a specific kind of
imaging to match Mil Std 28001, but I'm not up on such things.
Regardless, the question of imaging semantics is outside of SGML.

One can define imaging semantics to be associated with SGML. The program
AuthorEditor from SoftQuad is quite nice in that regard. But its
conventions are parochial -- an "SGML" system knows nothing about AE's
semantics, unless the exchanging parties agree to information outside of
the standard.

> 4)	Does SGML support drawings (illustrations) ? How about tables,
> 	mathematical expressions ?

Yes and no. SGML only supports marked up bytes streams. (That means you
place a special marker at the beginning and ending of some bytes, like
\my-tag{ <insert bytes here>}.) SGML defines how to write tags, and the
ways that tags can be inferred when missing. Now, you and I can make a
side agreement that whenever we use the tag "my-CGM-byte", the marked
bytes will be in CGM-compliant format. However, that is an agreement
outside of the standard and only usable by our local cabal. Ditto for
tables, mathematical expressions.

> 5)	Is it possible to use SGML and CGM in combination ? How about the
> 	availability of CGM-translators ?

See above.

> 6)	Are parsers available to check an SGML-document on syntax ?

I believe SoftQuad sells them. Quality, functionality and price unknown
to me. There are probably more around, although I recall an article by
Larry Welsch from NIST (ACM document processing conference) claiming
that some parts of SGML were exceedingly difficult to implement, so you
should watch out for how much is implemented when someone makes a claim.

> 7)	Are the software tools public domain ? What are the prices of the
> 	software tools ? What kind of software tools are available ?

A group at Ohio State led by Sandy Mamrak was trying to organize a
consortium on related things. I do not know the outcome.

		-Mark