Subject: ISO 8879 -- SGML -- and its relavence to internationalization

From: Dominic Dunlop <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 17:00 GMT

Keld and others,

Firstly, here I am at a new address in a Real Job (as opposed to being
a self-employed person).   But don't use this new address unless and until
I tell you to.  Continue to use [email-masked].

Secondly, this job involved the amassing of 100 million words of English-
language text, ``marked up'' so that computer-aided linguists can chew it
over.  (Previously, too little has been readily available on-line for
them to get their teeth into.)  The marking-up used SGML (Standard
Generalized Mark-up Language), as defined in ISO 8879:1986, as amended
in 1988.  This document makes interesting reading, even if it is of the
type that requires that you have drunk no beer before picking it up, and
which demands that you need a beer after putting it down.  The standard,
although basically American in origin (the work started inside IBM
rather more than ten years ogo) addresses a considerable number of
internationalization issues, among them coded character sets, repertoires
and character names.  (Yes, it does name characters; yes, the names are in
lower-case.)

Before the Netherlands meeting of WG15RIN, I shall summarize the
internationalization-related content of ISO 8879, as I consider that the
information will be useful to the group from two points of view:

1. So that we can see the problems encountered and solutions arrived at
   by another group working in the field of internationalization; and

2. So that we can avoid gratuitously contradicting the content of an
   existing ISO standard.