Just-In-Time-Trees (JITTs)

[Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>]

  Greetings,

I thought xml-dev readers might be interested in the latest proposal by 
myself and Matthew O'Donnell to implement overlapping markup using XML 
syntax. Our presentation for Extreme Markup 2002, Just-In-Time-Trees 
(JITTs), can be found at: http://www.sbl-site2.org/Overlap/ .

Essentially we propose that the declaration of the document root and the 
markup to be recognized should be moved from the syntax layer and made a 
part of the processing of a text. That change in the model for handling 
markup removes the various problems with overlapping markup that have 
been the subject of numerous proposals but few widespread 
implementations since the rise of SGML.

Our latest proposal differs from all prior ones in that it allows the 
use of standard XML software for the processing of texts, while allowing 
extensive experimentation with markup languages for the encoding of 
texts. Our proposal relies upon the notion of markup recognition found 
in ISO 8879 and we are clearly indebted to the entire SAX community for 
making it possible to implement this proposal and allowing the use of 
standard XML software. (The use of non-specialized software or parsers, 
seems to us to be an essential part of widespread use of overlapping 
markup techniques. Good idea abound, but to be useful to the markup 
community, good ideas need to be widely implemented.)

A more formal paper and sample code should appear at the location noted 
above by late September, 2002. (Perhaps sooner but that depends upon the 
press of a number of other projects.)

Note that we do not rely exclusively upon XML markup (you can simply 
record overlapping hierarchies in standard XML markup and then separate 
the trees into layers for processing) but the technique should extend to 
traditional SGML and concur files under SGML, LMNL, 
milestone/fragmentation/join, MECS/TexMECS, as well as other file formats.

Comments, suggestions, code(!) and extenstions of this technique are 
most welcome!

As with all SBL projects, you are free to use this research as you see 
fit (but also at your own risk!) but it you find it useful, supporting 
the SBL is one way to encourage its continued support for this sort of 
basic markup research. (Contact Kent Richards, Executive Director, 
Society of Bibical Literature, kent.richards@sbl-site.org , if you are 
interested in contributing to support this research. Contact the 
undersigned on the technical aspects of this work.)

Thanks!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu