RE: [xml-dev] RE: Formatting Processing Instructions

["Betty Harvey" <harvey@eccnet.com>]

Len:

I noticed that as well about IADS.  A few years back I was investigating
the possible use for a client and set up a demo with one of their 38784C
manuals.  Getting the formatting and navigation correct required a lot of
manipulation.  My client now delivers the 38784C SGML and the IETM Class
2/3 conversion from their manuals.

We abandoned IADS and went with a custom HTML conversion that actually
looks and works very nicely.  IADS had a really difficult time with the
Illustrated Parts Breakdown.  The linking was something that wasn't
accomplished easily in IADS.

Did some nice testing with taking the TIFF images and creating SVG with
linking internally into the graphic.  Worked really well.  This is
accomplished with CGM with very expensive software but with SVG the
software is either cheap or free!

I was pretty proud of what we accomplished.  With a $99 search engine I
was able to have the entire manual searchable and highlighted on all hits.

I know IADS is free but it does come at a high cost when the stylesheets
and components are not based on standards.   (Len feel free to flame me
now|-)!

On another note since most organizations that have to deliver data to both
commercial and DoD clients it would be interesting to take DITA and
convert it 38784C or other DoD standard.  I am sure someone somewhere is
doing this but I haven't heard of it being done yet (Maybe I will do it in
my spare time).

Betty

> Rick sayeth:  "what PIs allow is a separation of concerns that reduces
> coordination effort"
>
> I opened an IADS document recently and discovered that in contrast to
> the fairly clean element/attribute coding of twenty years ago, it
> contained all processing instructions.  I didn't investigate further but
> it made me think that Greg Geis finally tired of the SGML/XML wrangling
> and commiteeizing, freaked out and went with the one bit of markup that
> no one can argue about very well because they are invisible to the
> committee members taught to never look at them.
>
> Whatever else can be said about PIs, they aren't used for sharable
> items, and therefore, aren't arguable outside the local cube farm.
>
> len
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:rjelliffe@allette.com.au]
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 4:54 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] RE: Formatting Processing Instructions
>
> We had a different use of PIs.
>
> We are testing transformations, and so we could that the output has
> the same number of text nodes as the input.  But the output untags
> many pieces of text.  So we replaced stripped tags with PIs, thus
> maintaining the text node boundaries and allowing the count.
>
> We could also use XML comments for this, but IIRC we use comments for
> other things.  So we could use XML comments and then add some
> signature string at the start of the comment value to distinguish the
> different kinds of comments. But why go to the trouble when XML
> already provides a second kind of free tag (i,e, PIs).
>
> I guess from a software engineering perspective, what PIs allow is a
> separation of concerns  that reduces coordination effort:  in the case
> above, we have a thorough but heavyweight schema development regime,
> so the requirements of testers could be accommodated by developers
> without needing to go to back to analysts and schema developers nor
> forward to presentation developers.
>
>
> Cheers
> Rick
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS
> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize
> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting.
>
> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/
> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org
> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org
> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
>
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
>
> XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS
> to support XML implementation and development. To minimize
> spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting.
>
> [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/
> Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org
> subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org
> List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
>
>


/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Betty Harvey                         | Phone:  410-787-9200  FAX: 9830
Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. |
harvey@eccnet.com                    | Washington,DC XML Users Grp
URL:  http://www.eccnet.com          | http://www.eccnet.com/xmlug
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/
Member of XML Guild (www.xmlguild.org)