Jade and hyperdocuments

[David Megginson <dmeggins@xxxxxxxxxx>]

W. Eliot Kimber writes:

 > Is it still the case that Jade can only process a single document
 > instance at a time? In other words, there's no way to call the SGML
 > document grove constructor recursively in order to bring multiple
 > document groves into memory?

Yes, it's still the case.  Jade will be able to process multiple
instances when it introduces the `sgml-parse' SDQL primitive from
clause 10.1.7 of ISO/IEC 10179:1996.  For those who are interested,
here is the description (retyped by hand):

  10.1.7  SGML Grove Construction

  (sgml-parse string #!key active: parent:)

  Returns a node-list containing a single node that is the root of a
  grove build by parsing an SGML document or subdocument using the
  SGML property set.  `string' is the system identifier of the SGML
  document entity or SGML subdocument entity.  `active:' is a list of
  strings specifying the names of the active DTD or LPDs.  At most one
  DTD shall be active.  If `parent:' is specified, then the entity to
  be parsed is an SGML subdocument entity, and the value shall be a
  singleton node-list in the grove in which the subdocument should be
  treated as being declared.  This uses the default grove plan, which
  is determined in an application-dependent manner.

In other words, you will be able to use this primitive to parse an
SGML document or subdocument and get the root node.  As far as I can
tell by reading the source, Jade is entirely capable of dealing with
multiple groves already, except that someone would need to write a
class to build the grove.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
University of Ottawa            dmeggins@xxxxxxxxxx
        http://www.uottawa.ca/~dmeggins