Standard Generalized Markup Language Research Articles

Remediating the Editor

Writing and editing interfaces have profound implications for the subjectivity of human writers and editors, and hence the conditions of digital scholarly knowledge production. The extent to which the cultural inflections of such interfaces reflect the social, political, and technical contexts of their production emerges from a consideration of Author/Editor, the first software program dedicated to editing Standard Generalized Markup Language, and its provenance in Canadian literature, publishing, and cultural nationalism. The design of editing environments to negotiate tensions endemic to socialized and networked scholarship is increasingly crucial as reading and consumption merge with writing and production.

Thinking Outside Conventional Aerospace and Defense Technical Publications Using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)

In Aerospace and Defense, documentation is of a very large size, highly structured and needs constant updating. Managing this documentation has been a constant challenge to this industry. Moreover accuracy of data is a critical aspect of constant worry to publication managers. At present, documentation is being created using traditional publishing software resulting in wastage of time and effort. Time is spent in formatting documents instead of creation of content. Each time a document is created or updated formatting has to be applied manually. Preparing documents for print or web requires complete reformatting. Content is not structured across similar types of publications resulting in no consistency. Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) allows a document to be broken up into modules allowing reusability. SGML enforces content to be developed in a structured manner maintaining consistency across publications. This structured approach is achieved using a Document Type Definition (DTD). Separation of content from formatting is achieved using Format Output Specification Instance (FOSI).

Thinking outside conventional aerospace and defense technical publications using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)

Thinking outside conventional aerospace and defense technical publications using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)

Creation of Drug Information Database based on Pharmaceutical Markup Language (PML)

Utilizing the standard generalized markup language (SGML) of drug package inserts,extensible markup language (XML) documents were prepared through detailed markup based on the definitions of pharmaceutical markup language (PML).The prepared PML documents were stored in an XML-native database,enabling content searches of indexes based on the detailed markup of phrases and sentences describing signs and symptoms.This made it possible to search not only for whole sentences indicating signs and symptoms but also various expressions describing changes in blood pressure and pulse that do not necessarily match as regards spelling.In the present study,we investigated detailed markup methods for PML using existing SGML documents,and converted package inserts for 196 products into PML documents.With special emphasis on adverse reactions,we examined the usefulness of the PML documents by retrieving content from the database using XPath.

Encoded Archival Description: An Introduction and Overview

Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is an emerging standard used internationally in an increasing number of archives and manuscripts libraries to encode data describing corporate records and personal papers. The individual descriptions are variously called finding aids, guides, handlists, or catalogues. While archival description shares many objectives with bibliographic description, it differs from it in several essential ways. From its inception, EAD was based on Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and, with the release of EAD version 1.0 in 1998, it is also compliant with EXtensible Markup Language (XML). EAD was and continues to be developed by the archival community. While development was initiated in the United States, international interest and contribution are increasing. EAD is currently administered and maintained jointly by the Society of American Archivists and the United States Library of Congress. Developers are currently exploring ways to internationalize the administration and maintenance of EAD to reflect and represent the expanding base of users. ESARBICA Journal Vol.20 2001: 71-80

XML: GATEWAY FOR DATA MOBILITY AND UNIVERSAL CONNECTIVITY

Extensible Markup Language (XML) started as an effort to simplify the standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which was the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) standard for defining data vocabularies. This study investigates XML technology as a substitute to SGML that would be Web friendly, and easy to learn and use while supporting a variety of applications for faster and more efficient data mobility on the Web. It describes several compelling reasons why XML is a useful technology for representing structured data mobility. XML is a markup language used for data structure in a textual form. A specific goal of XML is to keep most of the descriptive power of SGML, while removing as much of the complexity as possible. This article includes an overview of XML and its specifications and corresponding components, development of schemas for defining industry standards data definitions, potential problematic impact on information systems and recommended solutions for developers and practitioners.

XML and Early English Manuscripts: Extensible Medieval Literature

This article is intended to introduce literary scholars to the use of markup languages in general and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) in particular in the creation of electronic texts based on early English manuscripts. It is not a how-to, but primarily a survey of recent work. It notes the limitations of some popular markup languages, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), in terms of storing, reproducing and disseminating information about medieval manuscripts, and explains ways in which XML could be used to overcome some of these limitations. It also describes the use of XML in a research project based at the University of Manchester's Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies.

The development and operation of a package inserts service system for electronic medical records

To promote the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals and to prevent side effects, physicians need package inserts on medicinal drugs as soon as possible. A medicinal drug information service system was established for electronic medical records to speed up and increase the efficiency of package insert communications within a medical institution. Development of this system facilitates access to package inserts by, for example, physicians. The time required to maintain files of package inserts was shortened, and the efficiency of the drug information service increased. As a source of package inserts for this system, package inserts using a standard generalized markup language (SGML) form were used, which are accessible to the public on the homepage of the Organization for Pharmaceutical Safety and Research (OPSR). This study found that a delay occurred in communicating revised package inserts from pharmaceutical companies to the OPSR. Therefore a pharmaceutical department page was set up as part of the homepage of the medical institution for electronic medical records to shorten the delay in the revision of package inserts posted on the medicinal drug information service homepage of the OPSR. The usefulness of this package insert service system for electronic medical records is clear. For more effective use of this system based on the OPSR homepage pharmaceutical companies have been requested to provide quicker updating of package inserts.

Evaluating the informative quality of documents in SGML format from judgements by means of fuzzy linguistic techniques based on computing with words

Recommender systems evaluate and filter the great amount of information available on the Web to assist people in their search processes. A fuzzy evaluation method of Standard Generalized Markup Language documents based on computing with words is presented. Given a document type definition (DTD), we consider that its elements are not equally informative. This is indicated in the DTD by defining linguistic importance attributes to the more meaningful elements of DTD chosen. Then, the evaluation method generates linguistic recommendations from linguistic evaluation judgements provided by different recommenders on meaningful elements of DTD. To do so, the evaluation method uses two quantifier guided linguistic aggregation operators, the linguistic weighted averaging operator and the linguistic ordered weighted averaging operator, which allow us to obtain recommendations taking into account the fuzzy majority of the recommenders’ judgements. Using the fuzzy linguistic modeling the user–system interaction is facilitated and the assistance of system is improved. The method can be easily extended on the Web to evaluate HyperText Markup Language and eXtensible Markup Language documents.

An automatic load/extract scheme for XML documents through object-relational repositories

Extensible markup language (XML), a simplified version of standard generalized markup language (SGML), is designed to enable electronic text interchange in the Internet. XML documents have a rigorously described structure that may be analyzed by computers and easily understood by humans. Most current approaches store XML documents in file systems or in relational database systems. However, the nature and the design of file system or relational database schema may cause limitations on fitting with XML document structure. In this paper, we present an automatic load/extract scheme to store and retrieve XML documents through object-relational databases. We propose an architecture, called XML meta-generator (XMG), which, after reading a specific document type definition (DTD), automatically generates the corresponding object-relational database schema (OR-Schema), a DI-Decomposer and a DI-Reconstructor, which are explained as follows: 1. OR-Schema––an object-relational database schema in UniSQL/X format for a specific DTD. 2. DI-Decomposer––a module decomposes XML document instances (DIs) according to the specific DTD format and stores the elements into the corresponding object-relational database. 3. DI-Reconstructor––a module retrieves elements from the object-relational database and reconstructs it to recover the original DI. These modules make XML documents be automatically decomposed into and reconstructed from object-relational databases in a seamless manner. Moreover, documents stored in the object-relational databases can be managed and inquired more easily than it could be in file systems or relational databases. Useful applications on various documents can also be easily built on top of the target database, such as digital libraries, data warehouses, and data or text mining systems.

Succession in standardization: grafting XML onto SGML

Succession in standardization is often a problem. The advantages of improvements must be weighed against those of compatibility. If compatibility considerations dominate, a grafting process takes place. According to our taxonomy of succession, there are three types of outcomes. A Type I succession, where grafting is successful, entails compatibility between successors, technical paradigm compliance and continuity in the standards trajectory. In this paper, we examine issues of succession and focus on the Extensible Markup Language (XML). It was to be grafted on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a stable standard since 1988. However, XML was a profile, a subset and an extension of SGML (1988). Adaptation of SGML was needed (SGML 1999) to forge full (downward) compatibility with XML (1998). We describe the grafting efforts and analyze their outcomes. Our conclusion is that although SGML was a technical exemplar for XML developers, full compatibility was not achieved. The widespread use of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) exemplified the desirability of simplicity in XML standardization. This and HTML's user market largely explain the discontinuity in SGML–XML succession.

Standard Protocol for Exchange of Health-checkup Data Based on SGML: The Health-checkup Data Markup Language (HDML)

To develop a health/medical data interchange model for efficient electronic exchange of data among health-checkup facilities. A Health-checkup Data Markup Language (HDML) was developed on the basis of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and a feasibility study carried out, involving data exchange between two health checkup facilities. The structure of HDML is described. The transfer of numerical lab data, summary findings and health status assessment was successful. HDML is an improvement to laboratory data exchange. Further work has to address the exchange of qualitative and textual data.

Developing and integrating an adverse drug reaction reporting system with the hospital information system.

We have developed an adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting system integrating it with Hospital Information System (HIS) of the University of Tokyo Hospital. Since this system is designed with JAVA, it is portable without re-compiling to any operating systems on which JAVA virtual machines work. In this system, we implemented an automatic data filling function using XML-based (extended Markup Language) files generated by HIS. This new specification would decrease the time needed for physicians and pharmacists to fill the spontaneous ADR reports. By clicking a button, the report is sent to the text database through Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) electronic mails. The destination of the report mail can be changed arbitrarily by administrators, which adds this system more flexibility for practical operation. Although we tried our best to use the SGML-based (Standard Generalized Markup Language) ICH M2 guideline to follow the global standard of the case report, we eventually adopted XML as the output report format. This is because we found some problems in handling two bytes characters with ICH guideline and XML has a lot of useful features. According to our pilot survey conducted at the University of Tokyo Hospital, many physicians answered that our idea, integrating ADR reporting system to HIS, would increase the ADR reporting numbers.

Converting ACM Authors' Articles to SGML

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has contracted with OCLC to provide an end-to-end electronic publishing system for their journal publications. This report focuses on the article conversion component, which converts accepted articles from the original format used by the author to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), based on ACM's SGML Document Type Definition (DTD). The conversion component can work with documents in several word-processing and text-editing formats, including WordPerfect, MS Word, Framemaker, and LaTex, that originate on a variety of platforms, including DOS/Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, and Unix. The key transformations in the process are: (1) from the native format to Rich Text Format (RTF), and (2) from RTF to SGML. Exoterica Corporation's OMNIMARK programming language is used for the second step, while each word processor creates the RTF files.

Arbitrary SGML Viewers and Their Role in Online Text Delivery Systems

The Office of Research was asked to determine the minimum set of changes needed for Electronic Journals Online to support arbitrary Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) viewers, such as SoftQuad, Inc.'s Panorama, while maintaining the current capabilities of the software system. This paper focuses on arbitrary SGML viewers and what role such programs play in the business of online text delivery.

Manipulating Tagged Text

While the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is intended to offer freedom from vendor-dependent data, it is difficult to translate arbitrary SGML into multiple output formats. To address this problem, we have incorporated translation capabilities into the SGML Grammar Builder project.

Complexity of Context-free Grammars with Exceptions and the inadequacy of grammars as models for XML and SGML

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) allow authors to better transmit the semantics in their documents by explicitly specifying the relevant structures in a document or class of documents by means of document type definitions (DTDs. Several authors have proposed to regard DTDs as extended context-free grammars expressed in a notation similar to extended Backus--Naur form. In addition, the SGML standard allows the semantics of content models (the right-hand side of productions) to be modified by exceptions. Inclusion exceptions allow named elements to appear anywhere within the content of a content model, and exclusion exceptions preclude named elements from appearing in the content of a content model. Since XML does not allow exceptions, the problem of exception removal has received much interest recently. Motivated by this, Kilpelainen and Wood have proved that exceptions do not increase the expressive power of extended context-free grammars and that for each DTD with exceptions, we can obtain a structurally equivalent extended context-free grammar. Since their argument was based on an exponential simulation, they also conjectured that an exponential blow-up in the size of the grammar is a necessary devil when purging exceptions away. We prove their conjecture under the most realistic assumption that NP-complete problems do not admit non-uniform polynomial-time algorithms. Kilpelainen and Wood also asked whether the parsing problem for extended context-free grammars with exceptions admits efficient algorithmic solution. We show the NP-completeness of the very basic problem: given a string w and a context-free grammar G (not even extended) with exclusion exceptions (no inclusion exceptions needed), decide whether w belongs to the language generated by G. Our results and arguments point up the limitations of using extended context-free grammars as a model of SGML, especially when one is interested in understanding issues related to exceptions.

SGML and XML Document Grammars and Exceptions

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML) allow users to define document-type definitions (DTDs), which are essentially extended context-free grammars expressed in a notation that is similar to extended Backus–Naur form. The right-hand side of a production, called a content model, is both an extended and a restricted regular expression. The semantics of content models for SGML DTDs can be modified by exceptions (XML does not allow exceptions). Inclusion exceptions allow named elements to appear anywhere within the content of a content model, and exclusion exceptions preclude named elements from appearing in the content of a content model. We give precise definitions of the semantics of exceptions, and prove that they do not increase the expressive power of SGML DTDs when we restrict DTDs according to accepted SGML practice. We prove the following results:1. Exceptions do not increase the expressive power of extended context-free grammars.2. For each DTD with exceptions, we can obtain a structurally equivalent extended context-free grammar.3. For each DTD with exceptions, we can construct a structurally equivalent DTD when we restrict the DTD to adhere to accepted SGML practice.4. Exceptions are a powerful shorthand notation—eliminating them may cause exponential growth in the size of an extended context-free grammar or of a DTD.

The Design of Metadata Interchange for Chinese Information and Implementation of Metadata Management System

With the development of Internet, digital libraries/museums have received worldwide attention and many developed countries are doing extensive researches on digital libraries/museums. In Taiwan, many institutions have digitized their collections. In addition, major research projects such as Digital Museum Project, Digital Archive Program, Digital Local Document Program, and CMNet are either in progress or about to begin. To digitize resources and present them on the WWW is the first priority; nevertheless, it is more important to organize these resources based on their characteristics, so users may retrieve and use them effectively. In digital library/museum systems, metadata plays a crucial role: its formulation has to begin with understanding the user demands and object characteristics, and standardization is essential for * The work is partially supported by National Science Council under grant NSC 89-2750-P-002-012.

Books into bytes: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches Worterbuch on CD-ROM and on the Internet

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches Worterbuch (DWB) comprises the most extensive documentation of the German language: for more than one hundred years - the longest period of publication for a German dictionary - generations of lexicographers have contributed about 350,000 entries to the DWB, which is divided into sixteen large volumes (thirty-two sections), containing a total of 67,744 columns. The DWB also reflects more than one hundred years of institutional, lexicographical, historical, and political history. This paper describes the project 'Deutsches Worterbuch on CD-ROM and on the Internet', established at the University of Trier in 1998, stressing in particular the significance of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and the guidelines developed by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for the creation of a digitized version of the DWB. In addition, a prototype for a CD-ROM version will be introduced, emphasizing the importance of the electronic DWB, via its transformation into the electronic medium, for opening up new possibilities in using the rich dictionary material.