ANNOUNCE: erlguten

["Gösta Ask (EAB)"]

Ulf Wiger wrote:
 > [ ... ]
>, I would _love_ to see a shift towards writing simple XML
> documents and then transforming XML -> HTML, and XML -> PDF.
> 
> Not all documents we write need to be pretty (some do), but
> all of them should be eminently searchable. Also, they need
> to be version-controlled (and version control systems tend
> to like text best of all.)
> 
> What I guess is needed to convince those of my colleagues
> who are not vi or emacs fanatics, is some input tool that
> gives at least a decent approximation of what the output is
> going to look like (WYSINWYWGBCEFW*) and some simple
> graphical aide that hides those scary XML tags. (:
> 
> /Uffe
> (*) What You See Is Not What You Will Get, But Close Enough
> For Government Work.
> 

There is actually a good foundation for XML-based document handling 
inside the Big Company, although it has fallen from grace lately; the 
Powers that Rule seem to view MS Word as the end of the development 
ladder. And I suppose it is (turned upside down). Quite a few Customer 
Documents are still being written using Docware (the internal name for 
SGML/XML-based documentation). The key is the XSEIF DTD.

 From the internal Big-Company page I cut:
    "The new XSEIF-DTD was first released in the STD environment in
    TaGtool R8/R3 (released fall 2000).
    XSEIF is a modification of SEIF which is being phased out.

    Here is some of the highlights for the XSEIF-DTD.
    For more information we refer to the XSEIF User Guide and the
    Developer's Guide.

     * XML Compliant DTD
       XSEIF can be used both in SGML and XML tools.
     * XLink based linking system
       XSEIF provides a powerful linking system, designed to scale
       with emerging XLink based tools and infrastructures.
     [...]"

The Xlink thing is in http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/

I used to write quite a few documents using SEIF; always preferred it to 
Frame and the other alternatives. Version handling was good and the 
filters to produce html were straightforward. Easy to link in pictures 
from IslandDraw. Platform independence. The licensing from ArborText was 
the scary part.

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