Documentation for DSSSL

[Ralph Ferris <ralph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

As HyBrick Program Manager, I consider good documentation on DSSSL at all
levels to be absolutely fundamental. Since my own focus has been on
linking, I've come to this realization a little later than I should. I'm
ready to try and help rectify that.

In terms of publication, I'd say that one or more books would certainly be
desirable. As a (very) few people know, a few years ago I wrote a short
book on HyTime, 1st Edition. I never attempted to have the book published,
so the exposure was very limited. (Of course, there was a reason for not
publishing - the revision of HyTime started shortly after the book was
completed. And Eliot Kimber was going to right the book about *that.*)

Getting a book ready for publication takes along time though, even when the
"standard" *isn't* changing. Meanwhile, there are clearly major gaps in
even the basic information needed to work with DSSSL-Scheme. For example, I
pointed to the paper "The Scheme Programming Language" by Ken Dickey as an
"introduction" to Scheme that's available on-line.

This paper, however, doesn't include a description of the Scheme "utility"
functions (e.g., string->number) that are important to writing functions
for style sheets. Since, as Brandon Ibach pointed out, DSSSL by no means
uses all of Scheme, a write up on Scheme Programming *for* DSSSL looks
pretty fundamental. And I wouldn't wait for a whole book on DSSSL to be
written before getting this information out.

My plan right now is to start pulling together some basic material and
putting it up on our Web site. For the larger effort, there probably needs
to be some kind of "editorial board" to organize the process, or at least
know who is doing what. We can continue discussing on this list how we
might move ahead or some people may want to communicate with me directly.


Best regards,
 
Ralph E. Ferris
HyBrick Program Manager
Fujitsu Software Corporation
HyBrick: http://www.fsc.fujitsu.com/hybrick/



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