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	["1171" "Thu" "29" "June" "1995" "10:45:32" "+0100" "Sebastian Rahtz" "Sebastian.Rahtz@CL.CAM.AC.UK" nil "24" "Re: (La)TeX is SGML?" "^Date:" nil nil "6" nil nil nil nil]
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Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 10:45:32 +0100
From: Sebastian Rahtz <Sebastian.Rahtz@CL.CAM.AC.UK>
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Subject: Re: (La)TeX is SGML?
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>         C++ are MUCH better suited to writing compilers or parsers
>         than TeX is; a full-blown SGML parser in TeX is very likely
>         infeasible, and certainly foolish.  [For more information on
i'd agree wholeheartedly with Nelson here;use the existing tools!
 
> The already-existing translators from SGML to (La)TeX are not complete
> solutions, because (a) they are based on particular document type
> definitions (notably, HTML), NOT the general SGML grammar, and (b)
> they are not founded on a rigorous grammatical analysis, but rather on
> simple ad hoc pattern matching.  Thus, they can do a good bit of the
> job, but will never be completely reliable.
a) its hard to see how a ->laTeX tyranbslation can be anything other
than job-specific, as the DTD to LaTeX markup cant be generalized
(unless you adopt the Flynn approach of just mapping
<tag> to \tag)
 
b) i think Nelson is hard on the existing tools. the one Elsevier use
(internal) doesnt fit his description
 
I've been very happily playing with David Meggison's SGMLSpl Perl
library. it gives you a programming environment for dealing with the
ESIS output of an SGMLS parse.
 
sebastian