[Mirrored from: http://www.dcs.fmph.uniba.sk/~emt/EmSystem.html]

At the beginning a short quotation from Practical SGML (Eric van Herwijnen):

"In areas of professional computer use the emphasis on portability through standardization has existed for a relatively long time.

SGML is rapidly becoming the future standard for publishing and for full text databases.

The EUROMATH system consists of full SGML-compatibility EUROMATH editor and EUROMATH applications, which are based on this editor. It is designed to provide tools and information to assist mathematician in several ways.

• Basic informations about SGML
• About the Euromath Editor
• Euromath applications

Basic informations about SGML

The Euromath Editor is a structured SGML WYSIWYG editor. Most people these days knows that WYSIWYG means "What You See Is What You Get". However, A staggering small amounth of people knows about SGML, and even fewer knows about the great number of advantages of SGML. It's important to know about SGML to fully realize the strengths of the Euromath System.

What is SGML

SGML is an abbreviation for Structured Generalized Markup Language. It is defined as an International Standard (ISO-8879) from 1986. SGML explains how documents may be spilt up in a part describing the contents of the document and a part describing the structure. Since SGML only uses ASCII characters it's highly portable, and can be used on any platform and with any SGML system. Furthermore, SGML uses semantic markup istead of presentation related markup. This allows SGML encoded data to be indexed more effectivly.

What's better than an example. Imagine that you often write letters. First you should analyse the documents in general. A letter could consists of the following items:

Letter

The letter itself

Reciever

The person(s) who are to recieve the letter

Date

Date, when letter is writing

Sender

The person who are sending the letter

Opening

An opening

Body

The body of the letter. The again consist of any number of paragraphs

Paragraph

Paragraph containing text

Closing

The authors signature

The above information about the structure would be gathered in a DTD (Document Type Definition). The DTD for a letter like above would look like this:

Now you should have a very basic knowledge of SGML, and we should be able to move on to talk about the Euromath Editor.

About the Euromath Editor

Basic editing in Euromath editor:

• The Euromath editor affords the same basic editing functions as standard text editors:

  • File functions: new, open, close, save, save as, autosave, print, ...

  • Edit functions: undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, delete, find/replace, ...

  • Format functions: character - size, font, style, underlying, ...,
    pa - line spacing, indentation, alignment, justification, ...

  • Spellchecker for English, French, German and other languages

• The Euromath editor offers also some additional functions:

  • The incorporation of graphics of various standards (Bitmap, Idraw, PostScrip Screen dumps, TIFF, etc.)

  • Easy creation and manipulation of the tables

  • Easy generation of commucative diagrams

The benefits of the structure editing in Euromath editor:

• The structure and the layout of the document is given, the user has only to care about the contents of the document. You edit directly in the screen view. Not necessity to deal with an iterative procedure (generating source code + previewing)
• More different presentations (layouts) can be available for one document.
• Automatic housekeeping by the system (updating of numbering for theorems, footnotes, bibliographical and cross-references, ...)
• Intelligent navigation through documents (using the table of the contents, references,...)
• The possibility to manipulate with logical parts of the document (for example copying of whole sections, etc ...)
• Interactive translation of mathematical formulae between LaTeX and WYSIWYG format in Euromath editor.

• Export to other formats (for example LaTeX, HTML, ASCII, ...)

• Import from LaTeX into Euromath editor.

• The possibility to change attributtes (for example the type of the list item marking - stars, bullets,...) of some parts of the structure in the simple way.

At present Euromath offers the following document types:

• Article - for scientific articles
• Letters - for private or business letters or FAX
• Slides - for overhead slides
• Sheet - for brief notes
• Html - for preparing HTML pages
• Questions and answers - for writing, for example FAQ in SGML format.

Euromath also gives a possibility to define arbitrary new document types with several presentations.

Euromath applications

The EUROMATH applications extend EUROMATH editor and provide tools to help mathematician in several ways.

Personal File System (PFS) offers:

• automated on-line access to remote databases the Zentralblatt MATH at STN (FIZ Karlsruhe)
• the possibility to use the PFS system with a local CD ROM containing the Zentralblatt in TeX format
• input of the data from the online STN MATH (or CD ROM) into local personal files, by `Converting' transcripts of sessions with the online host
• menu-guided assistance for searching local or remote databases
• output of data from the personal files in a format that it is readily usable

Euromath Network Information Service (EMNIS):

With the Euromath system it is possible to retrieve files across a network. The combination of SGML and WYSIWYG makes Euromath an ideal editor for viewing remote SGML files. Formulae, tables and diagrams which are difficult to represent in plain ASCII text are shown immediately in Euromath; there is no need for any processing as opposed to, e.g., download TeX documents which need TeX'ing and previewing.

The Euromath system supports references to remote documents - just by double clicking on the reference in your document the remote document is opened on your screen.

Now the Euromath system has, on experimental basis, set up a Euromath information server which is intended to contain documents of interest to Euromath users. These include Euromath News and Frequently Asked Questions with answers.

Gopher:

As another example of document retrieval an embedded Gopher client has been implemented in the Euromath system. Currently, it is possible to follow directory entries and retrieve text files.

It is possible to make reference to a Gopher entry from a Euromath document.

E-mail sender allows:

• to send an opened Euromath document by electronic mail
• to choose the format of the outgoing document to: ASCII, LaTeX, HTML or SGML (original Euromath's format)
• to edit the outgoing document by hand before sending
• to specify parameters of e-mail message: Subject, To, Copy and Blind Carbon Copy
• easy work with aliases

X.500:

The Euromath system provides the convenient interface to two directories based on the X.500 standard. One is a directory of European mathematicians and the other is worldwide Paradise directory (which is intended to cover all higher education, research and development organization in all countries.

The interface provides access to the directories via searching or browsing.

Idraw:

The Euromath system provides an interface to graphical editor IDRAW. In Idraw it is possible to create and edit pictures, which can be included into an Euromath document.

Edit and open HTML files:

In the Euromath system you have possibility to create and to open HTML files.

Should you wish to learn even more about the EUROMATH editor and it's many features and advantages, please contact us: emt@fmph.uniba.sk