Re: SGML to Lout, HTML, etc.

[Tom Gordon]

Take a look at James Clark's recently announced Jade system.
It is a beta release of a DSSSL Engine for translating SGML
into various other formats.  The neat thing about it is that
the translators themselves are, in theory at least, independent
of any particular page layout or typesetting system.  For
each formatter of interest, like TeX or Lout, a "backend" is
required, but these need only be written once.  

There are already preliminary versions of backends for TeX,
RTF and HTML.  (HTML being abused here as a page layout notation.)
Jame Clark is planning to write a backend for his own groff
system.

To translate documents of some SGML type, such as HTML, into 
Lout using DSSSL, you would also need one of more DSSSL "style
sheets" for HTML.  But one such style sheet would be sufficient
for producing documents in any of the available backends.

   Linkname: Jade - James' DSSSL Engine
        URL: http://www.jclark.com/jade/

So what we Louters need now is some hearty volunteer to get to 
work on a DSSSL backend for Lout.

Tom Gordon


Dr. Thomas F. Gordon
GMD FIT - German National Research Center for Information Technology
Research Division Artificial Intelligence
53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany
email: address@hidden;  phone: (+49 2241) 14-2665
http://nathan.gmd.de/persons/thomas.gordon.html