From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.comp.tex.context/627 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Hans Hagen Newsgroups: gmane.comp.tex.context Subject: Re: DocBook and Context? Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 12:53:30 +0200 Sender: owner-ntg-context@let.uu.nl Message-ID: <377B48AA.49BA0D8F@wxs.nl> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035391479 25692 80.91.224.250 (23 Oct 2002 16:44:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 16:44:39 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Context List Original-To: Matthew.Baker@gmd.de Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.comp.tex.context:627 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context:627 Matthew Baker wrote: > I'd have thought it would be more than just mapping because SGML structure > is so different from TeX. > > There's also the possibility of using DSSSL and parsing it and the SGML > with Jade or something similar. Jade already has a TeX module but the TeX > it outputs is JadeTeX, a TeX format especially for this purpose. It > basically shifts the responsibility of restructuring things to TeX, rather > than Jade. I've looked into that and rejected it for the moment. Actually the manipulation part of jade is ok, but the typesetting part is disappointing (and sort of useless). > Actually, I looked into all this before discovering ConTeXt. My > conclusion was that for anything reasonably complex, the TeX version > invariably comes out not looking very good because by design SGML doesn't > let you do low-level formatting. You would have to write a very good Indeed. A strange mix between structure and typesetting, with typesetting going back to teletype times. > Still, I think there are some good things that can be gained with SGML > support. For example, kOffice plans to store everything as SGML. > Database companies like Oracle are planning to use SGML. SGML support in > ConTeXt would mean being able to use ConTeXt to typeset database output, > spreadsheet output, word processor output, etc. That would be nice :) > Plus, with SGML support automatically comes HTML support. Then we could > typeset HTML pages! Sure. Actually I have a manipulation framework already. Did you pick up the maps bibliography from our site? The source is coded in xml and the records are manipulated by context. The manipulation stuff is still undocumented. The nice thing is that context has quite some manipulative things built in (many unknown to probably many reading this). So, in principle I just have to build an interface. Because we currently are not involved in SGML projects (that is, not in processing them ourselves) the motivation for finishing the module is a bit low -) Concerning database output: we've done that often, even dbase ascii output directly interpretated by tex (some 30K records nicely formatted and crosslinked, an old project, pdf version 1.1 stuff with hundreds of thousands of links, just another of our demo projects). Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------