Mainstream SGML
Write Once. Right Anywhere.

You've been there before...

You already know that the information contained in documents you create is likely to end up in print, on the World Wide Web, in electronic manuals, perhaps even a custom hypertext database. You know that managing the content of documents published to multiple destinations can be a nightmare. You know that your business is paying to have that same content re-edited and re-formatted every time you build a new information product. You know that Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is technology that allows an organization to manage the content of its documents in ways that make automated publishing and re-use of important information easy and affordable

You also know that SGML has been difficult to implement.

Now you can get there from here

Some software vendors and consultants will tell you that implementing SGML is supposed to be difficult. They're the ones with only one solution: a painful one. Microstar Software and other vendors of Mainstream SGML tools have another solution -- the one that's just right for your business.

Mainstream SGML helps companies reap the benefits of content management without re-inventing the way people produce information. By making it simple for authors to create and maintain SGML-savvy documents, Mainstream SGML is a powerful approach that organizations can actually use.

What Mainstream SGML is not: another standard.

What Mainstream SGML is: an open architecture for implementing SGML in a way that makes business sense.

Mainstream SGML, backed by a broad spectrum of partnerships in the SGML and document-management industry, is the fastest way to get your organization where it wants to go with its information-publishing efforts.

The Mainstream SGML tour

In the past, adopting SGML properly meant organizations had to invest in extensive training so that employees could master new -- and costly -- tools. Staff familiar with user-friendly, off-the-shelf word processors now had to navigate proprietary authoring software. Productivity took a nose-dive as writers struggled with complex SGML tagging systems. The fact is, in many companies, the implementation of traditional SGML applications has had little impact beyond a core of power users who now spend their days converting and tagging documents created by other employees.

Mainstream SGML allows these organizations to roll out sophisticated content-management solutions that actually work They work because they're solutions that are accessible to everyone involved in authoring important information. With Near & Far® Author from Microstar, anyone who can use Microsoft® Word can easily create structured, SGML-based documents and publish to industry-standard document models without having to understand SGML's complexities. Mainstream applications for tracking document updates -- such as Documentum's^TM Enterprise Document Management System -- offer a low-cost way to manage Mainstream SGML files. Flexible transformation tools like HTMLTransit^TM from InfoAccess automate the process of turning uniformly-structured Mainstream SGML content into hypertext information on the Web, electronic documents on CD-ROM, or desktop publishing-ready data.

You could be going places

Mainstream SGML makes businesses more competitive by helping them publish faster to more destinations.

Write it once, and it's right anywhere.