[Mirrored from: http://www.emc.dk/emc/Euromath/EmAbout.html]

About the Euromath Editor

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
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
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:

<!DOCTYPE letter [ <!ELEMENT letter - - (reciever , sender , opening , body , closing) > <!ELEMENT reciever - - (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT sender - - (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT opening - - (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT body - - (paragraph)+ > <!ELEMENT paragraph - - (#PCDATA) > <!ELEMENT closing - - (#PCDATA) > ] > Now a document can be written that conforms to the DTD for a letter. First there is a reference to which DTD is used, and then the document: <DOCTYPE letter SYSTEM "letter.dtd"> <letter> <reciever> Jarre Leibnitz Dept. of Mathematics University of Greenland 1. Bd. of Ice Nauuk Greenland </reciever> <sender> Euromath Center </sender> <opening> Regarding your interest in the Euromath Editor </opening> <body> <paragraph> Thank you for your interest in the Euromath Editor. I enclose in this letter, a folder describing all the features of the Euromath Editor, along with the latest copy of the Euromath Bulletin, which you will recieve free of charge if you choose to become a Euromath licensee. <paragraph> Should you require further information, feel free to contact me via email. My adress is: hansen@emc.dk </body> <closing> Peter Lau Hansen, Euromath Center. </letter>

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

The Euromath Editor

The Euromath Editor combines the best features of SGML and WYSIWYG editing. The main characteristics are:

Full SGML-compatibility The most important advantage of the Euromath Editor.
Structured editing of mathematical and other documents in WYSIWYG fashion. You edit directly in the screen view. Not necessity to deal with an iterative procedure (generating source code + previewing)
Automatic housekeeping by the system (updating of numbering for theorems, footnotes, bibliographical and cross-references etc.)
Intelligent navigation through documents, via the table of contents view.
National Language Support (keyboard input for ISO Latin 1 characters, like ö, ø, å etc.)
Powerfull Search and Replace in several modes; ordinary textstrings and regular expressions.
Export to LaTeX to exploit the typesetting qualities of the TeX system.
Import from LaTeX into the Euromath Editor.
And many other things.......

To find out even more about SGML read the FAQ on the subject. Click here to read it.

Should you wish to learn even more about the Euromath Editor and it's many features and advantages, please contact us, at emc@emc.dk

Last updated: April 15, 1996 by Peter Lau Hansen