SGML and tech. writing courses

[David McMurrey <davidm -at- AUSTIN -dot- IBM -dot- COM>]

For students in advanced technical writing, I'm trying to brainstorm
up some sort of unit in which they get some exposure to SGML.

I'm a beginner at SGML myself and plan to learn along with the
students, although I've had some exposure to SoftQuad's Author/Editor.
I'm thinking that students ought to have some experience with using an
SGML editor, converting a document to SGML, doing a validation, and
then debugging a document so that it will successfully get through
that process.

Do you think this is the right set of tasks students ought to have
in order to get an introduction to SGML?  Can you think of others?
Are these unrealistic in terms of the training and software that are
needed?

If you think this idea for a part of a course might work, how do you
think we could solve the software part of the puzzle?  Author/Editor
is expensive: we couldn't get each student to purchase it, although
some sort of site/group license might be possible (but it would still
be complicated and tricky).

Does anyone know of any shareware that might work for this?  I don't
know how naive it is to wonder whether there might be such a thing as
SGML shareware, but I guess it can't hurt to wonder!

I'd appreciate an thoughts/ideas/suggestions/get-real's anybody might
be willing to pass along.



-- David McMurrey
(davidm -at- austin -dot- ibm -dot- com)