SGML and LISP in DSSSL (was: RE: emitting comments)

["Mason, James David (MXM) " <MXM@xxxxxxxx>]

DSSSL was developed first and primarily as an SGML application. LISP/Scheme
came in as an afterthought only. 

DSSSL was developed by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 (which is now ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC34); the charter of the group is  mainly to do work related to SGML.
The DSSSL project goes back to the mid-80s. In those pre-Web, paper-based
days, the drive was on to find a way of describing (in an SGML-based syntax)
how to process (meaning primarily how to apply typography) SGML documents.
The cumbersome name of the standard (and some of the cumbersomeness of its
expression) are unfortunate results of the political climate that surrounded
WG8 throughout the late 80s and early 90s. That climate is gone, but it cost
us years in completing our projects. (We might have done something that
would have forestalled the need to do XML, etc., in the W3C if we hadn't had
to fight an opposition that was politically entrenched but produced no
long-lasting technical results.)

There had been an earlier attempt at an expression language for DSSSL that
had reached a statlemate. One might say that James brought in Scheme as a
way of getting the project moving to completion.

If the DSSSL community wants to revise DSSSL and wants to keep it as an ISO
standard, the work will still have to be done in SC34 and addressed to a
community that thinks SGML.

Jim Mason
SC34 Chairman

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Carlos Villegas [SMTP:cav@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent:	Wednesday, August 04, 1999 10:39 PM
> To:	dssslist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:	Re: emitting comments
> 
> 
> 
> David Carlisle wrote:
> > Yes, you can, but what has never really been clear to me was _why_ dsssl
> > was defined as an sgml application rather than a lisp-ish one.
> 
> Maybe that's something to propose for DSSSL-2 (If there is one!), 
> different ways to pack the DSSSL application. James Clark also mentioned
> that in his web enhancements document, a non-SGML packaging method
> should
> be developed. He proposed in the simpler case a Scheme file and the 
> addition of an (import "sysid") statement. 
> 
> 
> Carlos Villegas
> 
> 
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