Skunkware 98/Skunkware 98.iso/src/sgml/sgml2latex-format.1.3.tar.Z/sgml2latex-format.1.3.tar/CHANGES

Text File | 1993-03-16 | 11KB | 244 lines

<!doctype qwertz system>
<article>
<title> Format Changes History
<author> Tom Gordon

<sect>Version 1.1  (September, 1991)

<enum>
<item> nroff/troff support added.   See the man page for format.

<item> Modified set of character and symbol entities to be the
intersection of TeX and PostScript and Latin 1.  There are now many
more entities as a result, but a few math entities have been deleted.
They may still be generated using the x element.

<item> Fixed the appendix element.

<item> Tabulars may now be used alone, anywhere a paragraph is allowed,
and not merely within tables.   Tabulars, when used alone, remain in
the same location in the formatted text as in the SGML source.
Tables, on the other hand, are floating elements, like figures.  Also,
tables, but not tabulars, may have a caption.

<item> Added a "notes" top-level element.  Simple document style
consisting of an optional title followed by a sequence of section
paragraphs.  No footnotes.

<item> ref, pageref, cite and ncite are now all inline elements.  They can
be used anywhere f, x, em, it, ... can be used, and not just inside of
paragraphs.  For example, a tag of a descrip element can now
include a cite.

<item> Changed name of latex DTD to qwertz to avoid confusion with
LaTeX.  This is upwardsly compatible so long as documents did not use
latex tags explicitly.  (The latex start and end tags were optional.)

<item> There is no longer a manpage DTD.  Instead, there is a new
manpage top-level element in the qwertz DTD.  Use the format command
to process manpages, just as with other document types.  There is a
"man" translation for nroff man macros.  It could be used like this:
<verb>
    format -T man ls.sgml | nroff -man | more
</verb>

<item> The syntax of the article, report and book elements has been
changed to allow a sequence of section paragraphs (i.e. %sectpar
elements) to precede any sections (or chapters).  This is useful for
short documents, for which no sections are desired, or for a preface.

<item> As format now includes a translation into nroff/troff, as well as
TeX, the TeX specific parts of the format command have been factored
out and put into a new command, qtex.  See the format and qtex man
pages.  To print a qwertz document containing bibliography references,
using LaTeX, now type:
<verb>
    format foo | qtex -b | lpr
</verb>

<item> The letter element has been changed so as to make it easier to
generate electronic messages, as well as print ordinary letters.  The
cc field has been moved from after the closing to just after the from
field.  The name field has been replaced by pcdata.  The address field
is now optional.  Both the (street) address and email fields are now
optional.  It is the users responsibility to include at least one of
them, where appropriate.  (We haven't required at least one of these
to be stated, as no address is required for the sender when using
office stationary.)  See the manual for details.  The examples have
been fixed to use the new format.
</enum>

<sect> Version 1.2 (December, 1991)

<enum>
<item> Jim Clark's SGMLS parser is now used, instead of ASP.  SGMLS
implements more of the SGML standard than ASP.  In particular, it
supports the subdoc feature.  It also appears to have fewer bugs.  All
of the shortref characters of the reference syntax are supported.
Pre- and post-processing with sed scripts, required to get around this
ASP bug, is no longer necessary.  Also, as DTD's do not need to be
compiled by SGMLS, it is now possible to include different versions of
files containing system data entities (for non-ascii characters and
symbols), in the qwertz DTD, one for each formatter, without having to
maintain multiple versions of the DTD, and without having to resort to
post-processing using sed scripts, as in the past.

<item> As blank lines can now be used as short references, the DTD has
been modified to make the explicit use of paragraph start and end tags
almost completely superfluous.  In particular, it is no longer
necessary to type the <tt/p/ tag after the <tt/item/ tag of a list.  The
change is upwardsly compatible.   The examples in the manual have been
changed accordingly.   One of the few places where a <tt/p/ tag is
required, is for the first paragraph appearing before the first
section of an article, or chapter of a book.  There may be some way to
modify the DTD to avoid this.

<item> The various kinds of "paragraphs", such as lists, literate
programming paragraphs, tables, and figures, must all now be within a
<tt/p/ element.  However, due to minimization, the <tt/p/ start and end tags
almost never need to be typed explictly, as mentioned above.
Further, these other types of "paragraphs" can now be embedded within the
text of an ordinary paragraph.  A new paragraph is started,
implicitly, by a blank line, as in TeX.  To embed one of these other
elements, such as a segment of code, just be sure not to leave a blank
line before or after the code tags.  For example:

<verb>
<p>Here is some code embedded within a paragraph:
<code>
main() {
    printf ("hello world\n");
}
&etago;code>
This is the continuation of the same paragraph.

And this is a new paragraph.
</verb>

<item>There is no longer an include option in the format command.  You
can easily include files using SGML file or subdoc entities.

<item>Nor is there the <tt/-n/ option, for declaring that the document
does not contain formulas.  Users tended to forget this option (I
certainly did), as was only necessary when using one of the <tt/nroff/
formatters.  Instead, there is now a <tt/qroff/ command, which is a
front-end to <tt/groff/.  It is especially suitable for use in
conjunction with format.  See the manual page for details.

<item> In the mapping into TeX, qwertz specific macros are no longer
added to the head of each file.  Rather, these are contained in a
qwertz.sty file, which referenced in the list of document options.
The disadvantage of this is that you must remember to send this file
along with your LaTeX document, when sending someone the LaTeX version
of your file.  Alternatively, you can also paste these (few) macros
into the beginning of the TeX version of your document, and remove the
reference to the qwertz sty file.  The advantage of this new approach
is that chapters of a book or report can be maintained in separate
files, and included in the complete document using the SGML subdoc
feature.  With the previous approach, TeX complained that the macros
where redefined, at each point where the subdocument was inserted into
the main document.  The problem of printing single chapters remains.

<item>Each document must now include an SGML
doctype declaration, at the beginning, such as:

<verb>
<!doctype qwertz system>
</verb>
If you define any document specific entities, they are placed between
&lsqb and &rsqb brackets, as follows:
<verb>
<!doctype qwertz system
[
<!entity foo sdata "\foo">
<!entity bar sdata "\bar>
]>
</verb>

This is all just standard SGML, but was not properly handled by ASP.
(<tt/biblio/ documents should be declared analogously.)  Author/Editor
generates such headers, which I used to have to filter out of the
document before processing it using ASP.  This should no longer be
necessary.

<item> The procedure for creating your own formats has changed slightly.
Mapping files in ASP format may still be used, thanks to James Clark.
However, the translation of character entities is now controlled by
SGML files containing system data definitions, rather than sed scripts.
See the manual page for format for details.

<item> The <tt/stitle/ and <tt/ntitle/ tags, for the titles of slides
and notes, have been eliminated.  Use the <tt/title/ tag instead.
Although this change is not upwardsly compatible, it is a minor change
in the interest of conceptual clarity.  There is now only one element
for titles, instead of three.

<item> Added a <tt/fax/ document style, comparable to the letter
style, for Telefax messages.  There is an attribute for providing the
number of pages of the fax, including the cover page.  I assumed that
most fax messages are one page long, not including the cover page, so
the default value of this attribute is 2.

<item> There is also a <tt/fax/ Unix command, to be used in a pipe.
If there is a fax message named "foo", the command could be used as
follows:
<verb>
$ format foo | qtex | fax
</verb>
See the manual page entry for further details.

<item> The <tt/biblio/ DTD has been extended to allow emphasis, using
as <tt/em/, <tt/bf/ and so on, within most fields.

</enum>

<sect> Version 1.3 (February, 1992)

<enum>
<item> The <tt/biblio/ DTD has been modified so as to allow the fields
of entries to be entered in any order, using SGML "and" groups.  This
is an upwards compatible change.  It makes it much easier to translate
existing BibTeX bibliographies into SGML.

<item> A <tt/-c/ option has been added to <tt/qtex/ for processing
single chapters or sections with &LaTeX generated by <tt/format/.  The
problem with cross reference between chapters of a report or book
stored in separate files has also been solved.   <tt/sgmls/ warns
issues a warning, rather than terminating.

<item> The translation of slides into LaTeX no longer uses SliTeX.
Instead, the LaTeX article style is used, with a larger point size.
This makes it possible to include anything on a slide that can be
included in a paragraph of an article.

<item> An optional <tt/date/ element has been added to title pages.
Oddly, it is usually used to suppress the printing of a date, by
adding an empty date element.  By default, when no date element is
used, today's date is printed.  This conforms to the &LaTeX
convention.

<item> The <tt/table/ and <tt/figure/ elements now have a <tt/loc/
attribute, for declaring allowed locations:  here (<tt/h/), top
(<tt/t/), bottom (<tt/b/), or on a separate page (<tt/p/).  This
should be used in figures and tables on slides, to keep them from
floating.

<item> There is a new type of list, called simply <tt/list/.  The
items have no label.  This is useful for fancy formatting of computer
code, for example.  Key words can be bold face.  There can be
mathematical expressions in boolean tests, and so on.

<item> Added an -l option to qroff, to generate latin1.  As the "col
-b" filter for removing backspaces also filters out non-ASCII
characters, backspaces (used by groff for bold formatting) are not
filtered out when this option is chosen.

<item> Added an -r <replacement file> option to the format command.
Replacements in the default replacement file can be overridden using
this mechanism.   Only the replacements for the start or end tags
which differ from the default need to be specified in this file.

</enum>


</article>