I am shamelessly forwarding this post to Unrev. Many good ideas here, most
of which we have discussed before. But now, it's coming from a well-known
person of the knowledge rep persuasion.
----- Original Message -----
From: John F. Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net>
To: <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>; <cg@cs.uah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 10:49 AM
Subject: SUO: HTML, XML, and DocBook for beginners
>
> In some previous notes, I have made the claim that conventional word
> processors (especially ones that use proprietary formats) are obsolete.
> As a replacement, I recommended that people switch their word (or text)
> processing methods to SGML and its derivatives, including HTML and XML.
>
> Some people have challenged my claim, protesting that not everybody
> is qualified to use such difficult tools. My response is that the
> internal format (whether XML or proprietary) has no effect whatever
> on ease of use. But it has an enormous impact on ease of exchange,
> transmission, flexibility, reproducibility, and especially longevity.
>
> As an example of longevity, I should mention that I have been using
> GML (the predecessor to SGML) for nearly 30 years. And every one
> of my GML files can be converted to HTML or SGML or XML with simple
> global changes with any ASCII editor. (I have also automated
> those changes with a very simple Python program.)
>
> As an example of professional formatting, I would recommend that
> people take a look at my 1984 book on Conceptual Structures, for which
> I produced the camera-ready copy using only a plain-text editor and
> a GML formatter. The quality of formatting on an IBM mainframe in 1983
> is still superior to any commercially available word processor today.
>
> Furthermore, with my handy-dandy Python program, I can convert any
> chapter or page of that text to HTML. As an example, I recommend
> my tutorial on math & logic, which is a revised and updated version
> of Appendix A of that book:
>
> http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/misc/mathw.htm
>
> Has anyone tried to convert any 10 or 15-year old file to MS Word?
> Or has anyone tried to convert any version of MS Word to a version
> that was two years older? Or four years newer?
>
> For an easy intro to HTML, I recommend:
>
> http://kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu/www/doc/htmldoc.html
>
> For the newest version of StarOffice (the forthcoming 6.0), which
> uses XML as its native format, and which can import files from more
> versions of MS Word than any version of MS Word, and which runs on
> many more platforms than MS Word, and which is, best of all, FREE:
>
> http://www.openoffice.org/
>
> And for professional-quality formatting of books and high-quality
> web pages, I recommend DocBook (which also uses XML as its base):
>
> http://www.docbook.org/
>
> This is the formatting system that O'Reilley uses for all their
> books, and it is being widely adopted by many other publishing
> and documentation groups.
>
> And best of all, these systems are all FREE, high-quality, universal,
> non-proprietary, and guaranteed not to become obsolete in two years.
>
> John Sowa
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