SGML - Your Multi-Platform Publishing and Information Management Solution

Did you ever wish that instead of maintaining a document in a bunch of different formats you could keep your documents in just one format that every computer and every application could understand? Did you ever wish that large documents were more like databases and less like an endless string of words? Well, you're not alone.
In 1986, enough people had the desire for a format-neutral and content-enriching information standard that SGML was born.

What is SGML and what can it do?

SGML is a platform-neutral standard for creating documents and information archives - it's a series of rules that everyone can follow in order to make their documents publishable in different media (print, CD-ROM, the Web) and to make their documents readable with different kinds of computers. SGML is also a structure for storing information which eases info-management and manipulation: it supports very powerful searching, and allows large information repositories to be repurposed, broken down, and rearranged intelligently into individual documents.

What are some uses of SGML?

Large Product Catalogs

A large catalog stored in SGML is easily published in print, on the Web, and on CD-ROM from a single SGML archive. Individual product sheets can also be extracted from the archive automatically, and printed as individual promotion sheets.

Manual and Documentation Archives

The aerospace industry is using SGML to store large archives of documentation about aircraft maintenance. When a new manual needs to be produced on a specific topic such as avionics or on a specific series of airplanes, a search and conversion utility can find and format the appropriate information.
SGML also facilitates the creation of interactive electronic technical manuals and interactive courseware.
Online Information Delivery The Canadian Department of National Defense uses SGML to reduce manual usage. The average field technician used to have to carry up to 18 pounds of manuals; field technicians now carry lightweight portable computers and search SGML archives to get the specific information they need, when they need it.

How does SGML translate into so many formats?

Conventional documentation programs (word processors, desktop publishers, multimedia) each have a different way of storing information, which means they cannot easily exchange the same documents. SGML can translate into so many display formats because, in its raw format, it is not concerned with the way in which the contents of a document are displayed, but rather with the types of information a document contains.
The information in an SGML document is interspersed with a special type of meta-information, known as tags, which describe the information's structure and content. These descriptions may be used by a converter or a browser (such as SoftQuad's Panorama Publishing Suite) to define the display of the various types of information contained in the document.
A single SGML file may contain any kind of information - text, graphics, video, sound, even the contents of a database.
An SGML converter can be designed to isolate any number of individual information components of in SGML document, and produce a separate new file for each one, catered to fit the appropriate publishing platform. An SGML browser can be configured to immediately display each different kind of information it finds in an SGML document, whether that means playing a video, showing an image, or printing a hardcopy.