The Investigation of an implementation of SGML based publishing of an graduate thesis

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) has been the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) published standard for text interchange for nearly a decade. Since 1986, SGML based publishing has been successfully implemented in many fields, notably those industries with massive and mission-critical publishing operations such as the military, legal, medical, and heavy industries. SGML based publishing differs from the WYSIWYG paradigm of desktop publishing in that an SGML document contains descriptive, structural markup rather than specific formatting markup. Specific markup describes the appearance of a document and is usually a proprietary code which makes the document difficult to re-use or interchange to different systems. The structurally generic markup codes in an SGML document allow the fullest exploitation of the information. An SGML document exhibits more re-usability than a document created and stored in a proprietary formatting code. In many cases, workflow and production are greatly improved by the implementation of SGML based publishing. Historical and anecdotal case studies of many applications clearly delineate the benefits of an SGML based publishing system. And certainly, the boom in Web publishing has spurred interest in enabling a publishing system with multi-output functionality. However, implementation is associated with high costs. The acquisition of new tools and new skills is a costly investment. A careful cost-benefit analysis must determine that the current publishing needs would be satisfied by moving to SGML. Increased productivity is the measure by which SGML is adopted. The purpose of this thesis project is to investigate the relative benefits and requirements of a simple SGML based publishing implementation. The graduate thesis for most of the School of Printing Management and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology was used as an example. The author has expanded the requirements for the publication process of a graduate thesis with factors which do not exist in reality. The required output has been expanded from mere print output to include publishing on the World Wide Web (WWW) in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and to some proprietary electronic browser such as Folio Views for inclusion in a searchable collection of graduate theses on CD-ROM. A proposed set of tools and methods are discussed in order to clarify the requirements of such an SGML implementation

Academic writing and publishing beyond documents

Research on writing tools stopped in the late 1980s when Microsoft Word had achieved monopoly status. However, the development of the Web and the advent of mobile devices are increasingly rendering static print-like documents obsolete. In this vision paper we reflect on the impact of this development on scholarly writing and publishing. Academic publications increasingly include dynamic elements, e.g., code, data plots, and other visualizations, which clearly requires other tools for document production than traditional word processors. When the printed page no longer is the desired final product, content and form can be addressed explicitly and separately, thus emphasizing the structure of texts rather than the structure of documents. The resulting challenges have not yet been fully addressed by document engineering

Preservation of Word-Processing Documents

Word processing documents are a major problem for digital repositories. As I will explain below, they are not suitable for long-term storage, so they need to be converted into an archival format for preservation. In this report I will address the following questions: • What file formats are suitable for long-term storage of word processed text documents?; and • How can we convert documents into a suitable archival format? I also address the related non-technical question: • How can we get authors to convert and deposit their work? While the vast majority of material generated by universities is text, most research on digital preservation concentrates on images, sound recordings, video and multimedia. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is because text is simple, but unfortunately that’s not so. Even relatively short text documents (like this one) have complex structure consisting of sections (parts, chapters, subsections etc) and also of indented structures like lists and blockquotes. A significant part of the meaning is lost if that structure is ignored (for example by saving as plain text)

Preservation of word processing documents

Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositorie

XML: GATEWAY FOR DATA MOBILITY AND UNIVERSAL CONNECTIVITY

Extensible Markup Language (XML) started as an effort to simplify the standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which was the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) standard for defining data vocabularies. This study investigates XML technology as a substitute to SGML that would be Web friendly, and easy to learn and use while supporting a variety of applications for faster and more efficient data mobility on the Web. It describes several compelling reasons why XML is a useful technology for representing structured data mobility. XML is a markup language used for data structure in a textual form. A specific goal of XML is to keep most of the descriptive power of SGML, while removing as much of the complexity as possible. This article includes an overview of XML and its specifications and corresponding components, development of schemas for defining industry standards data definitions, potential problematic impact on information systems and recommended solutions for developers and practitioners

Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture (SGOAA) reference model technical guide

This report presents a full description of the Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture (SGOAA). The SGOAA consists of a generic system architecture for the entities in spacecraft avionics, a generic processing architecture, and a six class model of interfaces in a hardware/software system. The purpose of the SGOAA is to provide an umbrella set of requirements for applying the generic architecture interface model to the design of specific avionics hardware/software systems. The SGOAA defines a generic set of system interface points to facilitate identification of critical interfaces and establishes the requirements for applying appropriate low level detailed implementation standards to those interface points. The generic core avionics system and processing architecture models provided herein are robustly tailorable to specific system applications and provide a platform upon which the interface model is to be applied

Overview of a Guide for Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This chapter provides an overview of a guide for electronic theses and dissertations that is being prepared as requested by UNESCO to help with the expansion of ETD activities around the world. It roughly follows the outline developed through discussions involving the many partners working on that guide, coordinated by Shalini Urs. It builds upon experiences related to the evolution of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, a federation of groups interested in ETD programs. It introduces key concepts, explains matters according to the interests of students and universities, highlights technical issues, recommends a scheme for expanding training, and suggests likely future activities

eXtensible Markup Language: A Tutorial

SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) is mother of all the markup languages. eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a derivative of SGML. In the Internet arena Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is found to be unsuitable particularly when it comes to attach semantics to the data. That is why XML was developed. XML is still not a completely matured technology and more and more specifications are coming up. Currently XML version 1.0 is released by W3C. This paper is written to give an overview about the designing of a XML based solution for library science professionals