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<title>Alpha Draft
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<h2>Alpha Draft
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<img src="../imgs/bluebar.jpg">
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<h3>Current Status</h3>
<p>I have decided to use a different SGML parsing package than the Amsterdam Parser (ASP).
Instead, I will be using the <em>sp</em> system created by
<a href="http://www.jclark.com/">James Clark</a>.
<em>SP</em> is an updated version of Clark's widely used <em>sgmls</em> package.
The version of <em>sp</em> that I have downloaded is from 1996.
<p>With this new software I have been successful in parsing two documents based on two different
SGML DTDs (an HTML 2.0 document and a document based on the ISO 'article' DTD.) For example,
I parsed the HTML document you are now reading:
<ul>
<li><a href="./exdoc.html">Example HTML document</a> (or use your browser's 'view source' capability.)
<li><a href="./exoutput.html">Output</a> from example.
</ul>
<p>The <a href="http://cs.wpi.edu/~jes/sgml/">documentation</a>
for <em>sp</em> is very cryptic. I will be spending much more time in creating
good documentation than I would have if I had stayed with ASP. I think, however, that
once useful help pages are available <em>sp</em> will be as easy to use as ASP. One
very nice thing about <em>sp</em> is that it does not need to generate a parser instance -
everything is done at runtime. Users will therefore not have to worry about whether they have
adequate disk quota to be able to use the parser.
<p>I have compiled <em>sp</em> under Digital Unix 3.2C. Thus far, I have been unsuccessful
in compiling it under Ultrix 4.4. The three executables generated by building <em>sp</em> -
<em>nsgmls</em>, <em>spam</em>, and <em>sgmlnorm</em> are installed on the machines
<em>raven</em> and <em>penguin</em>.
There are also several DTDs I have found and installed in <tt>/usr/local/lib/sgml/</tt>
on <em>raven</em> and <em>penguin</em>. I have not
tried using each DTD yet, but plan on doing so to make sure they work correctly under <em>sp</em>.
<br>
<br>
<hr size=2 width="60%">
<h3>Schedule</h3>
<dl>
<dt>To be completed by:
<dd><br>
<dt>3 July
<dd>Install software, as well as
<a href="../sgml/">web manual pages</a> bundled with the SP distribution;
start collecting DTDs for a library; try parsing various types of documents.
<dt>10 July
<dd>Begin creating a suitable set of exercises and examples for Lab 7.
<dt>17 July
<dd>Continue with Lab 7 exercises and examples; test these efforts on classmates and others;
start on local help pages for <em>SP</em> and basic SGML help pages.
<dt>24 July
<dd>Finish Lab 7 description and exercises and help pages; submit exercises to
others for testing.
<dt>31 July
<dd>Final product.
</dl>
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<em>Last Modified</em>: <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"--><br>
<address>jes@cs.wpi.edu</address>
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