Message-ID:  <199811091636.LAA12505@hilbert.math.albany.edu>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1998 11:36:02 -0500
From: "William F. Hammond" <hammond@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: Quotes, HTML, and FrontPage
Status: R

Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk> writes:

> strange. I use software based on standards every day of my life, and I
> don't own any of them. how is your copy of ASCII?

For the most part I think that it does not make sense for me to
rely on a standard that is "owned" because I then have the concern
that it could be changed in an unfair way.

It's probably reasonable to trust ISO.

If you want the SGML standard, a nicely annotated copy of it
is in Goldfarb's _SGML Handbook_ and it's probably impractical
to think about asking for the creation of a web-served version.

(I don't about revisions of the standard in regard to possible
revisions of the book.)

The book has a readable tutorial.  As for the rest it's like the
Unix manual.  Mostly, it's more than you want to know, but you may
want to have it.  Its price, as I recall, is roughly the same order
of magnitude as the ISO thing.  You can survive without it if you
go to "comp.text.sgml" and to Robin Cover's web site on SGML.

                                   -- Bill