Paper on Literate Programming For DSSSL

["W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@xxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

I have prepared a paper and an associated set of usable materials on using
SGML architectures to create highly-structured DSSSL specification
documents that both take advantage of JADE's inherent architectural
derivation of DSSSL specs from the DSSSL spec architecture and the use of
architectures to enable literate programming.

The paper and materials are available from the ISOGEN Web site:

- Paper: www.isogen.com/papers/litprogarch/litprogarch.html
- Materials: www.isogen.com/demos/dslspec/dslspec.html

The abstract for the paper is:

<abstract>
Relates the author's experience in developing an SGML-based system for
creating and managing DSSSL specifications using SGML architectures as
defined by the new Architectural Forms Declaration Requirements Annex of
ISO/IEC 10744:1997 (Annex A.3 of HyTime). Demonstrates the use of the
following:

?Using architectures to combine semantic objects from different domains
into a single document 
?Using architectures to associate general-purpose metadata with
domain-specific objects (DSSSL functions and specifications in this case) 
?Using multiple architectures with a single document 
?Using the same set of declarations for both client documents and as an
architectural meta-DTD 
?Using multiple levels of architecture 
?Using architectural instance derivation to do useful things 
?Suppressing architectural processing of elements and data 
?Using SGML to structure program code ("literate programming") 
</abstract>

While I wouldn't suggest that the DTDs I defined be used for the DSSSL
documentation project, the approach might be a useful one for the project
given a sufficiently general architecture for specification metadata and
function descriptions.

For you DSSSL geeks out there, the package includes a little parlor trick,
namely using a DSSSL spec to format itself.

Cheers,

E.

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