SGML Assessment: SGML Acronyms Explained

AAP

Association of American Publishers

ANSI

American National Standards Institute

ANSI/NISO Z39.59-1988

American National Standard for Electronic Preparation and Markup — the formal version of the original AAP guidelines, that has itself been replaced by ISO 12083 (see Annex A)

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

ASIS

American Society for Information Science

ASN.1

Abstract Syntax Notation One (specified in ISO 8824, and ISO 8825)

BSI

British Standards Institute

CADE

Computer Aided Design and Engineering

CALS

Continuous Aquisition and Life-cycle Support, previously Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistic Support — the major project of the US Department of Defense that provided the initial impetus to SGML.

CAP

Computer Assisted Publishing

CApH

Conventions for the Application of HyTime

CCITT

International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, now known as ITU

CD

Committee Draft (standards community)

CEN

European Committee for Standardisation

CENELEC

European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation

CERN

Organisation Europénne pour la Recherche Nucléaire

comp.text.sgml

Usenet News group about SGML

CONCUR

An SGML feature for specifying multiple DTDs and associated tagging on a single document instance — the feature is not supported in most products, but may be required for detailed tagging of complex and large scholarly documents

CoST

Copenhagen SGML Tool

CTI

Conformance Testing Initiative

DAP

Document Application Profile (ODA term)

DAPHNE

Document Application Processing in a Heterogeneous Network Environment

DIS

Draft International Standard

DISP

Draft International Standardised Profile

DSSSL

Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (ISO/IEC DIS 10179)

DTD

Document Type Definition

DTR

Draft Technical Report (standards community)

ECMA

European Computer Manufacturers' Association

EPSIG

Electronic Publishing Special Interest Group

ESIS

Element Structure Information Set

EWOS

European Workshop for Open Systems (an ODA group), not to be mistaken for ...

EWS

European Workshop on SGML (a group of STM publishers that developed MAJOUR)

FAME

FORMEX Applied to Multilingualism in Europe

FIPS 152

Federal Information Processing Specification 152 — a US government standard that specifies how SGML should be applied in US Federal government applications

FORMEX

FORMalised EXchange of electronic publications — a development and use of SGML by EU, developed 1984 to 1986.

FOSI

Format Output Specification Instance — a type of output specification developed by CALS for use with documents tagged according to MIL-M-28001

GCA

Graphics Communications Association (see Annex A)

GCARI

GCA Research Institute

HTML

HyperText Markup Language — a very simple application of SGML that is supported by WWW

HyTime

Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (ISO/IEC 10744) — HyTime describes a language for the structured representation of hypertext multimedia information. HyTime is an application of SGML

ICA

Integrated Chameleon Architecture (see Annex B)

ICADD

International Committee for Accessible Document Design — they have developed additional SGML attributes which have been included in ISO 12083 to provide additional information for software producing output to be read by the blind and partially sighted

IEC

International Electrotechnical Commission (standards body)

IEPRC

International Electronic Publishing Research Centre (an offshoot of PIRA)

IETF

Internet Engineering Task Force, nothing to do with SGML, but don't mistake for ...

IETM

Interactive Electronic Technical Manual

IFIP

International Federation for Information Processing

IRV

International Reference Version — a character set term from ISO 646

ISO

International Organisation for Standardisation (see Annex A for standards relevant to SGML)

ISOBOOK

The DTD for books defined in ISO 12083 (see Annex A)

ISOxxxx

where `xxxx' is a lower case abbreviation, for example `tech'. ISO recommended special character entity sets which are defined in parts of ISO/IEC TR 9573 (see Annex A for more details)

ISP

International Standardized Profile

ITU

International Telecommunications Union (previously known as CCITT)

J2008

SGML application standard for the automotive industry

JPEG

Joint Photographers Expert Group — this group are responsible for the ISO continuous tone colour still image representation and compression standards

JTC1

Joint Technical Committee 1 — a joint committee of ISO and IEC that is ultimately responsible for SGML (developed by JTC1/SC18/WG8)

MAJOUR

Modular Application for Journals, developed by EWS (see Annex A)

MHEG

Multi- and Hyper-media Experts Group — this group is developing representation and compression standards for hypermedia `pages' that can then be linked and interchanged using HyTime

MIL-M-28001

A CALS SGML application standard for technical manuals

MPEG

Motion Picture Experts Group — this group is responsible for the ISO compressed video and audio standards

NIAG

NATO Industry Advisory Group — extensively involved in European adoption of CALS principles

NISO

National Information Standards Organization (US)

nroff

An early text formatting language

OCLC

Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

ODA

Open Document Architecture, previously Office Document Architecture (ISO 8613) — an attempt to define everything anyone could ever want to do with a document, strongly supported by the EU, not supported to any extent elsewhere

ODIF

Office Document Interchange Format (part of ODA)

ODL

Office Document Language (part of ODA) — an application of SGML

OMITTAG

An SGML to allow tags to be omitted where such omission would be contextually un-ambiguous

OPOCE

Office for Official Publications of the European Communities

PDL

Page Description Language (see SPDL)

PDTR

Proposed Draft Technical Report (standards community)

PIRA

Printing Industries Research Association

POEM

Portable Object-orientated Entity Manager

PPP

Point-to-Point Protocol

Reference Concrete Syntax

The `default' SGML declaration, provided in ISO 8879

Reference Delimiter Set

The set of delimiters defined in ISO 8879 and used in the Reference Concrete Syntax.

RUNOFF

An early simple typesetting program; variations were nroff/troff.

SDIF

SGML Document Interchange Format (ISO 9069)

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO 8879:1986)

SGML-B

Standard Generalized Markup Language - Binary version — this version, which will include the ability to jump to any element within a document and understand the structure at that point, will be developed following the review of SGML currently being undertaken

sgmls

a public domain parser (see Annex B)

SHORTTAG

An SGML feature for shortening tags wherever possible

SMDL

Standard Music Description Language (ISO/IEC CD 10743)

SOFABED

Davenport Standard Open Formal Architecture for Browsable Electronic Documents (or so we are told!)

SPDL

Standard Page Description Language (ISO/IEC 10180)

STM

Scientific, Technical and Medical — a term used to describe publishers who specialise in such works

SUBDOC

An SGML Sub-document — an important SGML facility which most systems do not include because it was not included in FIPS 152, but one which you'll need if dealing with complex and large documents

TAS

Tag Abuse Syndrome — An acronym coined by the OSF Documentation SIG in their Recommendations for the OSF DTD, that means "A case where a writer has applied the wrong semantic component to information because the writer feels that the markup is more convenient than the correct markup, or prefers the appearance that formatting applications apply to it" — most authors of WWW documents appear to suffer from TAS

TC

Technical Committee (standards community)

TEI

Text Encoding Initiative — an SGML application for scholarly research (see Annex B for information on accessing the TEI DTD, and final report (P3))

Unicode

A multi-byte character set developed by a group of American computer companies which they have forced on the international community although it contains innumerable errors. It is reported that use is banned in Japan because it contains so many errors!

URL

Uniform Resource Locator (Internet/HTML)

WG8

Working Group 8 — short form of JTC1/SC18/WG8 - the people you have to blame for SGML

WWW

World Wide Web