Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Near and Far (Was RE: A parentless element that is not the doc
 Kinda. %head.misc isn't exactly "syntax free" and the controls required one to understand what would now be considered "infoset types". All in all, it made an SGML designer's job a lot less labor intensive, but did not liberate one from understanding SGML DTD design. I'm not sure that is possible then or now. A market problem of such products is that they can be used intensively by one or two people in the organization, but seldom across the enterprise, or even frequently by the initial users. They are a great tool for markup consultants who design DTDs more frequently and may even maintain them for the buyers. Yes, when it came out, modular DTDs were THE challenge because of CALS 28001 being such a monster. Not being able to do that properly was a problem but also a DTD design problem in general. One wonders what happened to the source code. Seems to be an issue for many products that get a good run and then fall off the bandwagon. There are at least two VRML editors for which having the source would be useful to some people. I do wonder if companies holding such assets simply put them in vaults and forget about them, or keep up just enough market smarts to dust them off and sell them or repurpose them. len From: W. Hugh Chatfield I.S.P. [mailto:hchatfield@u...] Well I know my very first SGML project was the creation of the first version of the Canadian CALS DTD. I was coming out of a quarter century of IT work and just starting on a new career with SGML?in Microstar. I knew systems analysis, design and data modelling... but did not know SGML DTD syntax very well. The people I was working with knew a little SGML and the customer knew none. N&FD allowed you to create a DTD using drag and drop techniques.. and concentrate entirely on the business task of creating a data model [as opposed to the technical task of expressing that model formally in some syntax]. A rectangle was an element, a tilde on the rectangle represented attributes, connectors showed and/or logic, occurrance symbols could occur on elements or connectors. Tree could be expanded or contracted. Large number of reports (including some standard CALS DTD reports) could be generated automatically if you used the tools to capture the "documentation" as well. The actual DTD syntax could be genereated with a button push (save as DTD). Parsing was done with James Clarks SP inside. The N&FD designer tool was originally meant to be one of a suite of tools to support Computer Aided Document Engineering (CADE).. an engineering process to deal with the entire process of delivering information. The main claim to fame was the ability to "display" and explore the tree structure without having to know a speck of SGML syntax. As B Harvey said... absolutely invaluable for presentations and DTD walkthroughs. A subject matter expert could be shown the basics of the Data Model in a few minutes be talking and contributing to the design process. Latest versions supported XML with wizards to go XML <-> SGML. Announced but unreleased versions supported schemas. After I left Microstar (by then Open Text) I provided support services for N&FD until they withdrew the product. I could produce any screen shot you want. Any particular DTD in mind???? Now I have to admit that for very large complex, and especially very modular DTDs, N&FD ran into problems... the main one being that it would create one big DTD from all the pieces... you could not modify such a modular DTD.. although you could at least display it. 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
