Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.ibd From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Computer & Automation Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 12:56:07 EST Message-ID: <7.1992Nov16.125608@AmeriCast.com> 11/16/92 TITLE Computer & Automation In Software Field, SGML Spells Easy Electronic Document Manage- ment First of two parts Kathleen Doler In Mountain View, Calif. Numerical databases have long been the forte of corporate comput- er systems, but much of the strategic information critical to corporations is contained in textual documents, not numbers. And while nearly all companies today create and edit documents using computers, few have implemented coherent systems to manage and retrieve textual information across their businesses. But a technology that's been around for years is beginning to catch on as a standard for describing the Computers & Automation format of electronic documents and retrieving them on a computer system. Structured Generalized Markup Language, or SGML, is a computer language used by publishers to describe the relationship between a document's structure and its contents. It provides the "tags" that, inserted in a document, tell a computer what type of text - a title, subtitle or the body of the text, for example - follows. SGML was published as a standard by the International Standards Organization in 1986. It can be used on any computer system, and it can describe documents so they are not dependent on any hardware, software, word processing format or operating system. The standard facilitates the exchange of documents between disparate computer systems and the electronic storage and re- trieval of textual information. But unlike imaging systems, which merely archive uneditable images of graphics or forms, SGML docu- ment systems also allow users to manipulate and update documents. Application Spreading The standard has gained momentum in the last three or four years. In 1988, the Defense Department adopted SGML as part of its Computer-Aided Acquisition and Logistics Support program, in which it aims to reduce the vast amount of paper manuals it must maintain for its equipment. Now, the department has told its sup- pliers that they must provide the technical manuals and specifi- cations for their equipment in electronic form, specified using SGML. Following the department's lead, industry has moved to em- brace SGML. The aircraft industry uses it for maintenance and operation manuals, the telecommunications industry for systems documentation and the publishing industry for books and journals. The standard is spreading into a variety of other commercial ap- plications as well. InterConsult in Arlington, Mass., is one of the few research firms that has attempted to analyze the emerging market for software used to implement the SGML standard. It esti- mates revenue of such software reached $204 million in 1991, out of a total publishing software market of $1.6 billion. By 1995, it estimates the SGML market will more than double to $550 mil- lion. Most analysts agree two factors are driving interest in SGML: the need to store and exchange textual information, and the availa- bility of new software that allows SGML to be used not only as a technology for specifying documents but also as a way to search and retrieve textual information. Also, with the growing acceptance and declining cost of CD-ROM technology, companies can now take advantage of CD-ROM drives to archive and then search and retrieve vast amounts of previously paper-based information. "SGML, combined with document management tools, is bringing a re- birth to the technology," said Ronni Marshak, editor-in-chief of The Office Computing Report, a newletter published by Patricia Seybold Group of Boston. "Before, it was only used by publish- ers." SGML software products can be divided into four categories: SGML document creation and editing programs, SGML conversion software, SGML storage and retrieval software, and SGML CD-ROM publishing tools. Conversion Software SGML document creation and editing programs are produced by Ar- borText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., and SoftQuad Inc. of Toronto. But most companies already have their documents on-line in a variety of word processing formats. That's where conversion software comes in. Avalanche Development Co. of Boulder, Colo., makes a program called FastTAG, which takes existing documents and converts them to the SGML format. Analysts have ranked Fast- TAG as the leading SGML conversion software product, and it is cooperatively marketed or resold by nearly all software suppliers claiming to support SGML. Several popular personal computer word processing software publishers also reportedly are working on SGML conversion products. WordPerfect Corp. of Orem, Utah, has announced plans to produce a conversion program for WordPerfect documents. Company officials say a version of the program to run on the Unix operating system will be out in December, and an MS- DOS version is scheduled for release in the first half of 1993. More Portable Service Manuals At the top of the heap in retrieval software is Information Di- mensions Inc. of Dublin, Ohio. IDI sells BASISplus, which allows users to store and retrieve SGML-formatted documents. Other makers of non-SGML publishing and editing software also re- cently have announced support for SGML. These include Interleaf Inc., Waltham, Mass.; Frame Technology Corp., San Jose, Calif.; and Xsoft, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based business division of Xerox Corp. Each of these vendors offers a combination of SGML editing or conversion tools or both, as well as document management sys- tems. Finally, putting service manuals in a more portable form is a priority for some manufacturers. So Electronic Book Techno- logies Inc. of Providence, R.I., makes DynaText, a tool for building CD-ROM-based software applications that allow users to browse and retrieve SGML documents. With this software, in-house publication groups can turn existing SGML reference documents into dynamic electronic books with text, graphics and even sample exercises that allow users to try to apply information. This article is copyright 1992 Investors Business Daily. Redis- tribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. 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