[rescue] FrameMaker

[N. Miller]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:29:01 +0000, "Lionel Peterson"
<lionel4287 at verizon.net> said:

> O'Reilly has very particular requirements for their authors w/r/t
> properly "marking" their text (see previous citation on ORA website), 
> and MS Word and FrameMaker support that marking (or "tagging"), 
> while nroff/troff are PAGE LAYOUT programs. All directives in nroff/
> troff (based on my minimal exp. with them) relate to presentation, 
> not content.
> 
> O'Reilly wants to index and link to the text in ways that require certain
> tags to be useful, nroff/troff don't have that info, so someone would 
> have to add it after the fact.
> 
> Anyway, that is my thought...

You could teach SGML classes, Lionel. :-)  

nroff/troff are derivative of early stand-alone computer based
typesetting
systems that required the operator (not the content producer) to add
mark-
up which formatted the content for the printed page (the electronic
equiva-
lent of putting lead type in frames, really).

XML, SGML, MIF, and to some extent, RTF (a moving target) and TeX are 
all mark-up languages that require/allow you tag content based on it's 
function in a structured document.  (I say require/allow, because it
depends
on the focus of the people building the process--any of them can be more
or less structured depending upon how you use them.)

The advantage of a document marked up with structural tags is that it 
can then be processed for use in a variety of ways--from page layout
and traditional printing, to ebooks, other electronic storage (think
technical
repair manuals/processes databases for military equipment, mil/civil
airplanes,
etc.)

Having information in a non-proprietary form, with standardized mark-up 
also allows you to re-use your data later without the limitations imposed
by legacy proprietary formats.  Example: think about "ebooks" now, as
they are currently envisioned.  Now think about "ebooks" if "digital
paper"
comes to fruition.  

(another example: I still have all the 5.25" floppies from my early
writing 
career that have Wordstar documents on them--how the heck am I going 
to get them into a modern word processor without a lot of work?  Hell, I
think I even have CPM Wordstar data disks.  That oughta be
interesting...)

Structured mark-up languages happen to be things for which we can 
actually thank the US federal government--they were the ones to get 
the ball rolling in this arena.

=Nadine=
-- 
  N. Miller
  vraptor at promessage.com