DD: Quick Reference card?

[Tony Graham <tgraham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Something we could produce quickly that would be useful to nearly
everybody is a quick reference card listing, for example:

 - Core expression language syntax, or portions such as syntax of
   "if", "cond", "case", "and", "or", "define", "list", and
   "quotation"

 - Core expression language procedures

 - Core query language procedures

 - SDQL primitives and derived procedures

 - Style language procedures

 - Flow object classes


The intention is just to list the minimal information.

The quick reference card could be formatted to fit both sides of a
single sheet of paper or to fit both sides of a tri-fold card:

 +--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+
 |      DSSSL         | Flow Object Classes| Core Query Language|
 |  QUICK REFERENCE   |  sequence          |  (current-node)    |
 |                    |  display-group     |  (node-list? obj)  |
 | Procedures         |  simple-page-seq.. |  (node-list-empty? |
 |  (not obj)         |  .                 |  .                 |
 .  .                 .  .                 .  .                 .
 .  .                 .  .                 .  .                 .
 |  (error string)    |  marginalia        |  (entity-name-norm |
 |                    |                    |           	        |
 +--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+

There doesn't have to be One True Representation of the quick
reference information.  The first stylesheet we produce may put on
both sides of a sheet of paper, then someone may be able to write a
stylesheet to make a tri-fold quick reference, or we may follow Jon
Bosak's example and make presbyopic and large-type options.

We don't always need to show all of the SGML everytime either.  Using
DocBook as an example, we could use GIs or the "role" attribute to
distinguish information so some stylesheets may not, for example,
include a section reference for each flow object class or each
procedure.

There doesn't have to be a single quick reference either.  We could
also produce a multi-page quick reference with a form factor similar
to that of the "Perl Desktop Reference" or its earlier Perl 4 cousin.

Producing a single-sheet and a more comprehensive quick reference from
a single source would be interesting, but it would also be harder and
is not something we need to try for straight away.

I hate to say it, but we don't need to produce a first version using
SGML anyway.  SGML would be good for producing multiple sorts of
output, and if multiple people contribute different stylesheets then
the quick reference card would make a good potted example of using
DSSSL, but we can still prototype the document in Word or similar.

Have I whetted anybody's appetite with this?  Who would like to work
on this?  Please respond to the list with your questions and
comments.  Assuming someone or some people do work on this, we can
make any draft or final results -- SGML, stylesheets, RTF, postscript,
etc. -- available to everybody by putting it on the Mulberry web site
and ftp site.

Assuming I had any copyright claim to this idea after (hopefully)
other people have brought it to fruition, any copyright I might have,
I would vest in YRIF.

Regards,


Tony Graham
=======================================================================
Tony Graham, Consultant
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                         Phone: 301-231-6931
6010 Executive Blvd., Suite 608                     Fax:   301-231-6935
Rockville, MD USA 20852                 email: tgraham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
=======================================================================


 DSSSList info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist