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| 53 | <H2><A NAME="SECTION0001010000000000000000"></A><A NAME="structured"></A> |
| 54 | <BR> |
| 55 | 9.1 Structured Documentation |
| 56 | </H2> |
| 57 | |
| 58 | <P> |
| 59 | Most of the small changes to the <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span> markup have been made |
| 60 | with an eye to divorcing the markup from the presentation, making |
| 61 | both a bit more maintainable. Over the course of 1998, a large |
| 62 | number of changes were made with exactly this in mind; previously, |
| 63 | changes had been made but in a less systematic manner and with |
| 64 | more concern for not needing to update the existing content. The |
| 65 | result has been a highly structured and semantically loaded markup |
| 66 | language implemented in <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span>. With almost no basic <span class="TeX">TeX</span> or |
| 67 | <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span> markup in use, however, the markup syntax is about the |
| 68 | only evidence of <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span> in the actual document sources. |
| 69 | |
| 70 | <P> |
| 71 | One side effect of this is that while we've been able to use |
| 72 | standard ``engines'' for manipulating the documents, such as |
| 73 | <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span> and <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span>2HTML, most of the actual transformations have |
| 74 | been created specifically for Python. The <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span> document |
| 75 | classes and <span class="LaTeX">LaTeX</span>2HTML support are both complete implementations |
| 76 | of the specific markup designed for these documents. |
| 77 | |
| 78 | <P> |
| 79 | Combining highly customized markup with the somewhat esoteric |
| 80 | systems used to process the documents leads us to ask some |
| 81 | questions: Can we do this more easily? and, Can we do this |
| 82 | better? After a great deal of discussion with the community, we |
| 83 | have determined that actively pursuing modern structured |
| 84 | documentation systems is worth some investment of time. |
| 85 | |
| 86 | <P> |
| 87 | There appear to be two real contenders in this arena: the Standard |
| 88 | General Markup Language (SGML), and the Extensible Markup Language |
| 89 | (XML). Both of these standards have advantages and disadvantages, |
| 90 | and many advantages are shared. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | <P> |
| 93 | SGML offers advantages which may appeal most to authors, |
| 94 | especially those using ordinary text editors. There are also |
| 95 | additional abilities to define content models. A number of |
| 96 | high-quality tools with demonstrated maturity are available, but |
| 97 | most are not free; for those which are, portability issues remain |
| 98 | a problem. |
| 99 | |
| 100 | <P> |
| 101 | The advantages of XML include the availability of a large number |
| 102 | of evolving tools. Unfortunately, many of the associated |
| 103 | standards are still evolving, and the tools will have to follow |
| 104 | along. This means that developing a robust tool set that uses |
| 105 | more than the basic XML 1.0 recommendation is not possible in the |
| 106 | short term. The promised availability of a wide variety of |
| 107 | high-quality tools which support some of the most important |
| 108 | related standards is not immediate. Many tools are likely to be |
| 109 | free, and the portability issues of those which are, are not |
| 110 | expected to be significant. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | <P> |
| 113 | It turns out that converting to an XML or SGML system holds |
| 114 | promise for translators as well; how much can be done to ease the |
| 115 | burden on translators remains to be seen, and may have some impact |
| 116 | on the schema and specific technologies used. |
| 117 | |
| 118 | <P> |
| 119 | XXX Eventual migration to XML. |
| 120 | |
| 121 | <P> |
| 122 | The documentation will be moved to XML in the future, and tools |
| 123 | are being written which will convert the documentation from the |
| 124 | current format to something close to a finished version, to the |
| 125 | extent that the desired information is already present in the |
| 126 | documentation. Some XSLT stylesheets have been started for |
| 127 | presenting a preliminary XML version as HTML, but the results are |
| 128 | fairly rough. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | <P> |
| 131 | The timeframe for the conversion is not clear since there doesn't |
| 132 | seem to be much time available to work on this, but the apparent |
| 133 | benefits are growing more substantial at a moderately rapid pace. |
| 134 | |
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