The current issue of EPOdd (Electronic Publishing, vol 2, no 3)
has an article by Jacques Andr&eacute which I'd like to draw to
the attention of those with an interest in markup. Titled
<q>Can structured formatters prevent train crashes?</q>, it suggests
that one contributory factor in the train crash at the gare du Lyon in
June 1988 (in which 56 died and hundreds were injured through a
combination of failures in the braking system of an incoming train)
was that the maintenance manuals were not only difficult to use but
also contained a layout error in the part describing the braking
system. The article makes clear how a structured document editor
would have precluded such errors.
 
Incidentally, the article is apparently a translation of an earlier
version called <q>LaTeX ou SGML pouvaient-ils faire &eacuteviter
l'accident de la gare de Lyon?</q> published in a journal called
<q>Cahiers GUTenberg</q>. Does anyone on this list know of this journal?
 
Lou Burnard