RE: [xtm-wg] Re : Style Guide for XTM specs

["Mason, James (MXM) " <mxm@ornl.gov>]

[Bernard Vatant]
> We have a constant mix-up of language and meta-language
> So, for the reader (and writer) to be able to make the distinction,
> the spec terms should be typed in a characteristic {style} ... Any
> word not in that style is "meta", even if the same words are used at 
> both level, which is bound to occur with e.g. "names" or "subjects",
> even if it should be good to avoid it for clarity of discourse. 
[Sam Hunting] 
>I'm having a hard time translating this into a quasi-mechanical process. 

The quasi-SGML source for ISO 8879 contained pretty extensive markup to
distinguish all sorts of things, particularly in the notation that was used
in the production grammar (e.g., syntactic variable, syntactic literal,
reserved name, delimiter, delimiter role), and that markup was also used
when one of the formal items from the productions was mentioned in text.
Suffice it to say, there was a whopping lot of markup in the files (about as
bad as marking up mathematics), but it allowed us to publish the ISO
standard, and then Charles went back and used the same file to do the _SGML
Hanbook_, which added all sorts of commentary on the commentary already
there-and it's all distinguished (typographically, if not in clarity). It's
been a long time since I saw one of those files, but there were probably
about a dozen special tags just to set up all the components in the text.

I don't know what sort of markup you folks used to produce XTM since all I
see is the HTML that's on the Web. If you can stand it, it might be
worthwhile to go back and do extensive descriptive markup now, before things
get any worse.

Jim Mason



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