SGML: DSSSL DRAFT AVAILABLE IN ELECTRONIC FORM

SGML: DSSSL DRAFT AVAILABLE IN ELECTRONIC FORM



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From: novlepub@netcom.com (Novell CPS)
Subject: DSSSL draft available
Message-ID: <novlepubDL1yFD.9F3@netcom.com>
Organization: Novell Corporate Publishing Services
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 05:11:37 GMT
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Sender: novlepub@netcom23.netcom.com


FINAL DSSSL DRAFT AVAILABLE IN ELECTRONIC FORM

The final committee draft of the DSSSL standard is now available in
electronic form.  Instructions for obtaining the draft standard are
given below.


Background
----------

DSSSL (Document Style Semantics and Specification Language) is an
International Standard, ISO/IEC 10179:1996, for specifying document
transformation and formatting in a platform- and language-independent
manner.  DSSSL can be used with any document format for which a
property set can be defined according to the Property Set Definition
Requirements of ISO/IEC 10744 (HyTime).  In particular, it is designed
to specify the presentation of documents marked up according to ISO
8879:1986, Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

DSSSL provides four distinct areas of standardization:

(a) A transformation language for specifying structural
transformations on SGML documents.

(b) A style language for associating formatting characteristics with
SGML documents.

(c) A Standard Document Query Language (SDQL) for identifying portions
of an SGML document.  SDQL is used by both the transformation and
style languages.

(d) An expression language used to create and manipulate objects in
the transformation language, the style language, and SDQL.  The DSSSL
expression language is based on a functional, side-effect-free
subset of the Scheme programming language.

DSSSL also defines a subset of the expression language called the core
expression language and a subset of SDQL called the core query
language.  Many features of DSSSL are designated as optional.  The
core expression language, the core query language, and the other
required features of DSSSL constitute a "core DSSSL" designed to meet
the needs of applications like online browsers that do not require the
complex data manipulation and page layout capabilities of complete
SGML-based publishing systems.

By defining a comprehensive and extensible language for applying
presentational semantics to structured documents, DSSSL completes the
international standardization of text processing begun in 1986 with
the release of the SGML standard.


Obtaining the Draft Standard
----------------------------

The final committee draft of the DSSSL standard is available in three
electronic distributions.

1. The draft standard is available over the World Wide Web from the
   Novell Publications Server at

   http://occam.sjf.novell.com:8080/dsssl/dsssl96

   For suggestions on how to use the underlying SGML tag structure of
   the draft standard for searching, see

   http://occam.sjf.novell.com:8080/docs/howto_search_dsssl.html

2. The same document is available in DynaText form together with a
   runtime DynaText browser for Windows.  To obtain the draft and the
   browser, log in via anonymous ftp to

   ftp.netcom.com/pub/no/novlepub/dsssl/dsssl-dt

   and, in binary mode, download the four files dsssl96.zip,
   dtwin23.zip, readme.txt, and unzip.exe. Note that you must use
   unzip.exe to unpack the two zip files; you cannot use
   pkunzip. Directions for installing the draft and the DynaText
   browser will be found in the file readme.txt.  These files may be
   freely distributed.

3. The SGML source files used to generate the DynaWeb and DynaText
   versions of the draft are available by anonymous ftp from

   ftp.netcom.com/pub/no/novlepub/dsssl/src

   These files may be freely distributed and used to generate other
   electronic versions of the draft.


========================================================================
Jon Bosak, Novell Corporate Publishing Services            jb@novell.com
2180 Fortune Drive, San Jose, CA  95131                Fax: 408 577 5020
A sponsor of the Davenport Group      (ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/davenport/)
Member ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 DSSSL Rapporteur Group (ISO/IEC 10179:1996)
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