-No Subject-

[Chet Ensign <Chet_Ensign%LDS -at- NOTES -dot- WORLDCOM -dot- COM>]

Caryn,

You wrote:

>> Are any of you using SGML to develop online documents? If so, what tools
>> are you using?  FrameMaker+SGML, SGML Author for Word, others?
>>
>> Any feelings on SGML?  Advantages, disadvantages?
>>
>>As you can see, this is very open-ended.  We are looking at SGML as a way
>>to create a variety of documents (paper, online, HTML).  There is a lot of
>>talk about SGML, but I haven't found very many people that are actually
>>using SGML.

Well, I could spend the rest of the afternoon writing an answer to this.
Unfortunately, I can't.

I will tell you that I am deep in the process of writing "SGML In Action" for
Prentice-Hall, a book of SGML case studies and I can tell you that:

a) SGML is absolutely being used by a number of companies (Novell, Silicon
Graphics, Sikorsky Aircraft, Grolier Inc., Thompson Prof. Publishing, VISA,
Fidelity, Ford, GM, HP, Intel, IBM, Standard & Poor's... that's just the ones I
can think of before my 2nd cup of coffee) with a big payoff in terms of
improved productivity and extraordinary reuse opportunities for information
authored in SGML,

and

b) None of the companies had an easy time getting started, largely because it
really requires that you stop thinking about better ways to create paper and
start thinking about better ways to create *information*

I'd suggest that you check out the SGML Open home page at www.sgmlopen.org and
Robin Cover's SGML bibliography at www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html -- two terrific
sources of information.

Best regards,

/chet

Chet Ensign
Logical Design Solutions
571 Central Avenue                      http://www.lds.com
Murray Hill, NJ  07974                  censign -at- lds -dot- com [email]
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