Some history about GML

[tim_c]

Snippet I came across when I was looking at the origin of mark up/down
languages.

Watcom GML says it is in effect IBM GML.

I hadn't realised the close relation to HTML and why...

http://www.romankoch.ch/capslock/minigml.htm

"This manual describes the text preparation language GML (Generalized
Markup Language). The language was originally developed by IBM for use
with the DCF (Document Composition Facility) product distributed by
IBM." -- WGML manual.

[Paul S. Person]

Post by tim_c
Snippet I came across when I was looking at the origin of mark up/down
languages.
Watcom GML says it is in effect IBM GML.
I hadn't realised the close relation to HTML and why...
http://www.romankoch.ch/capslock/minigml.htm
"This manual describes the text preparation language GML (Generalized
Markup Language). The language was originally developed by IBM for use
with the DCF (Document Composition Facility) product distributed by
IBM." -- WGML manual.

Yep. Also, Watcom Script relates similarly to IBM Script.

IIRC, when I looked into this some time back, IBM GML was one of the
bases of the standardized GML, which, so far as I could tell, has
never been implemented (I was, of course, thinking that a PD reference
implementation might be helpful in reconstructing WGML). Instead,
specialized forms (HTML, SHTML, XML, basically anything with "ML" in
its name which has a standard defining it) have been developed.

Once we have WGML reconstructed, it might be interesting to see to
what extent it can be portrayed as, if not an implementation of the
standard GML, at least a specialized form of it.

[tim_c]

Post by Paul S. Person

Post by tim_c
Snippet I came across when I was looking at the origin of mark up/down
languages.
Watcom GML says it is in effect IBM GML.
I hadn't realised the close relation to HTML and why...
http://www.romankoch.ch/capslock/minigml.htm
"This manual describes the text preparation language GML (Generalized
Markup Language). The language was originally developed by IBM for use
with the DCF (Document Composition Facility) product distributed by
IBM." -- WGML manual.

Yep. Also, Watcom Script relates similarly to IBM Script.
IIRC, when I looked into this some time back, IBM GML was one of the
bases of the standardized GML, which, so far as I could tell, has
never been implemented (I was, of course, thinking that a PD reference
implementation might be helpful in reconstructing WGML). Instead,
specialized forms (HTML, SHTML, XML, basically anything with "ML" in
its name which has a standard defining it) have been developed.
Once we have WGML reconstructed, it might be interesting to see to
what extent it can be portrayed as, if not an implementation of the
standard GML, at least a specialized form of it.

As you might surmise I've been wondering along much the same lines.

That said I don't know why the WGML problem has not been tackled by
simply choosing another active standard and translating the existing
documents.

Seems to me that the myriad of markup standards today are all of low
human readability and the equivalent of GML are the markdown languages,
which are in some cases easy for humans.

[Peter C. Chapin]

Post by tim_c
That said I don't know why the WGML problem has not been tackled by
simply choosing another active standard and translating the existing
documents.

This has been discussed at length before. Converting the existing
documents to some other markup system isn't a trivial undertaking
either. For one thing, there are a lot of documents... some kind of
conversion tool would be necessary; probably we'd have to write it.
However, the WGML/Script system is capable of defining and using
complicated executable macros. It is not a passive markup. A system like
TeX could probably duplicate the effects, but conversion of the macros
would most likely have to be done manually by someone well versed in
both systems. Converting WGML to a passive markup (DocBook?) would
require the addition of another tool to handle the macros.

After much debate about this, the conclusion was basically: we follow
the path taken by the first person who actually works on this problem.
That path has been set... we are re-implementing WGML. :-)

Peter

[tim_c]

Post by Peter C. Chapin
After much debate about this, the conclusion was basically: we follow
the path taken by the first person who actually works on this problem.
That path has been set... we are re-implementing WGML. :-)

I read about that some time ago but nothing seemed to be active.

[Roald Ribe]

Post by tim_c

Post by Peter C. Chapin
After much debate about this, the conclusion was basically: we follow
the path taken by the first person who actually works on this problem.
That path has been set... we are re-implementing WGML. :-)

I read about that some time ago but nothing seemed to be active.

???????? See the "Web Changes" navigation link on the Wiki....

Roald

[tim_c]

Post by Roald Ribe

Post by tim_c
I read about that some time ago but nothing seemed to be active.

???????? See the "Web Changes" navigation link on the Wiki....

Ah, yes :-)

[Paul S. Person]

Post by tim_c

Post by Paul S. Person

Post by tim_c
Snippet I came across when I was looking at the origin of mark up/down
languages.
Watcom GML says it is in effect IBM GML.
I hadn't realised the close relation to HTML and why...
http://www.romankoch.ch/capslock/minigml.htm
"This manual describes the text preparation language GML (Generalized
Markup Language). The language was originally developed by IBM for use
with the DCF (Document Composition Facility) product distributed by
IBM." -- WGML manual.

Yep. Also, Watcom Script relates similarly to IBM Script.
IIRC, when I looked into this some time back, IBM GML was one of the
bases of the standardized GML, which, so far as I could tell, has
never been implemented (I was, of course, thinking that a PD reference
implementation might be helpful in reconstructing WGML). Instead,
specialized forms (HTML, SHTML, XML, basically anything with "ML" in
its name which has a standard defining it) have been developed.
Once we have WGML reconstructed, it might be interesting to see to
what extent it can be portrayed as, if not an implementation of the
standard GML, at least a specialized form of it.

As you might surmise I've been wondering along much the same lines.
That said I don't know why the WGML problem has not been tackled by
simply choosing another active standard and translating the existing
documents.
Seems to me that the myriad of markup standards today are all of low
human readability and the equivalent of GML are the markdown languages,
which are in some cases easy for humans.

The problem, as others have noted, is that Script is used as well.
Thus, things like this are found:

.if &e'&dohelp eq 1 .do begin
:HBMP 'clr.bmp' i
.do end

which I do not pretend to understand, but clearly requires more than
tag conversion to handle properly. Basically, the system used would
have to be able to run small programs ("if" "do", expression
evaluation, blocks -- I have no idea what all may turn out to be
required).