Re: [xsl] Tools to Flatten a DTD

["G. Ken Holman g.ken.holman@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks, I'm blushing here at all of the accolades regarding Microstar
Near&Far.

Thank you, all, for the delightful comments and
the walk down memory lane of over 30 years ago.
It was my first "management only" project without
a hand in the actual coding. I came up with the
icons, symbols, and look and feel. A crack
development team did a wonderful job bringing the product to life.

It may interest you to know that the flattening
"feature" was actually a bug and brought about
the death of the product. Without a clear set of
end-user requirements and shared experience to
illuminate the issues for the development team,
the product as designed never preserved the
authored DTD and *always* flattened *all* of the
user's intricate efforts to edit a useful suite of DTD fragments.

In effect, the tool was read-only. The munged
output was useless to those who were properly managing DTD fragments.

Lesson learned on day 2 of the product release,
but nothing could be done in the time and
resources available to the small company (maybe
twelve people at the time?). The unfortunate
behaviour was baked into the design.

The product became a useful DTD viewer, but that
is all, and it wasn't enough to sustain as a product (or as a company).

Thank you, again, for the kind comments.

. . . . . . . Ken

p.s. the product name was dictated by Microstar's
founder whose acquaintance with the surname
"Near" was in the Far East (Japan, I think). The
name meant a lot to our founder, and we were
stuck with trying to spin the name into something
meaningful for clients and for the technology. If
nothing else, it was memorable in its bizzareness.

At 2023-05-24 21:26 +0000, Eliot Kimber eliot.kimber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Many, many years ago (1992 or 1993, I think),
> when I was at IBM and a brash punk kid, I showed
> up at the SGML conference with a disk (the ones
> that look like a save icon) with IBMs SGML DTD and some documents on it.
>
>
>
> I went around to all the vendors and said Hey,
> can you show me what your product will do with my SGML stuff?.
>
>
>
> When I got to the N&F booth Ken Holman was
> there, smiling like he always does, friendly and
> welcoming. He took my disk, popped it in his computer and said just a
minute.
> I dont recall now how long it took to loadit
> may have been immediately or maybe he said come
> back in a bitbut in any case, it did eventually
> load and I got to see the amazing visualization of our crazy 800-element
DTDs.
> Of all the vendors there, Near and Far was the
> only one to successfully load my DTDs or content.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> E.
>
> _____________________________________________
>
> Eliot Kimber
>
> Sr Staff Content Engineer
>
> O: 512 554 9368
>
> M: 512 554 9368
>
> <https://www.servicenow.com>servicenow.com
>
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>
> From: dvint dvint@xxxxxxxxx <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at 4:01 PM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: dvint@xxxxxxxxx <dvint@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [xsl] Tools to Flatten a DTD
>
>
> [External Email]
>
>
>
>
>
> ----------
> Near and Far is the tool I wrote about.
> Especially great if you have to deal with SGML dtds.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
>
>
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
>
> From: "Peter Flynn peter@xxxxxxxxxxx"
> <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Date: 5/24/23 1:32 PM (GMT-08:00)
>
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Subject: Re: [xsl] Tools to Flatten a DTD
>
>
>
> On 23/05/2023 19:41, Peter Flynn peter@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > On 23 May 2023 15:19:39 <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> I have a DTD with a bunch of external references. I need to modify
> >> the DTD and distribute it to a client. Can you recommend any tools
> >> for flattening a DTD?
> >
> > I think I documented one or more in my book on tools but I'm away
> > from base for 24hrs. I'll check tomorrow.
>
> I had a look :-)
>
> > Mulberry uses Near and Far, but that is not available for purchase,
>
> Oddly, although I mention loading a DTD from a flattened version in
> Near&Far (p.173) I don't say anything about using Near&Far to do the
> actual flattening. Debbie is well ahead of me here.
>
> On p.177, the book says:
>
> >> For reading existing DTDs, the solution is to flatten the DTD
> >> with a program such as Richard Lights experimental NormDTD (see
> >> this chapter) or James Clarks spam (see chapter 4), both of which
> >> are included on the CD-ROM.
> I have snipped out those pages at
> <http://xml.silmaril.ie/downloads/normdtd-spam.pdf>http://xml.silmaril.ie/do
wnloads/normdtd-spam.pdf
> The ospam binary is still shipped in the OpenSP package.
>
> NormDTD was DOS-only
> (<https://nl.ijs.si/et/talks/Eurolan/silSGMLpubSWedit.html#normdtd>https://n
l.ijs.si/et/talks/Eurolan/silSGMLpubSWedit.html#normdtd)which
> presumably means it will be happy in a modern DOS emulator.
>
> I do still have the CD-ROM is anyone wants a copy.
>
> [Near&Far, quote Debbie]
> > and one fine day, they will change the Windows OS and it will stop
> > working.
>
> You will still be able to install Win95 and then install NFD in it :-)
> Meanwhile there is still a small market for a good schema visualiser of
> the calibre of Near&Far. Nothing currently available comes anywhere near
> IMNSHO.
>
> Peter
>
>
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