Hope Greenberg wrote:
>Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 10:23:06 -0400
>From: Hope Greenberg <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: FrameMaker+SGML
snip
>Which reminds me, I posted a note to XML-L, but this group may have some
>recommendations. I've been asked to investigate alternatives to the
>current way of producing our bi-annual university course catalog and
>bulletin. Right now much of the information is stored in our
>Oracle-based Banner student information system and served up via the web
>in a variety of ways. But the print copy is lovingly hand-crafted in
>PageMaker. Again, exacting print requirements are driving the choice of
>production tools while a desire on the part of many of us to see this
>project go completely online is a major consideration. Accommodating
>both worlds would be the ideal. Do any of you have
>recommendations/anecdotes/advice (or even horror stories) you would be
>willing to share about the process if the course catalog is produced at
>your own institutions using SGML/XML?
>
>Thanks!
>
>- Hope
And Syd Bauman wrote:
>Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 10:44:56 EDT
>From: Syd Bauman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: FrameMaker+SGML
>
>Sorry to say I'm too busy getting our university catalogue out (my
>part is due very soon) to go into detail, but basically our current
>system for the printed course announcement bulletin (annual) and
>university catalogue (tri-annual) involves extracting data from the
>university's course databases using NATURAL; the extract routine
>output is near-SGML; a few perl scripts of mine pound it into SGML,
>then run it through nsgmls, then convert the ESIS into MML (Maker
>Markup Language), which is read by FrameMaker. For the bulletin,
>we're done. For the catalogue we then need to spit out MIF from
>FrameMaker, munge through yet another perl script, and read the
>output back into Frame.
snip
At risk of taking this outside of TEI discussions, but looking for people
with similar experiences...
We are exploring SGML as a possible future to make our current university
handbook publishing efforts work better - courses handbooks, subject
catalogues. We have purchased FrameMaker+SGML. And I was looking for
ready-made DTDs, as we're totally new to the SGML game, thinking TEI-lite
might be a way to go. A brave and foolhardy soul perhaps. Anyway...
We already dynamically publish course and subject information to the web
from our student system database, and have set up customised tagging output
via an intermediate database using FileMaker scripts and NisusWriter macros
to create XPress tags for automated page layout for print in QuarkXPress
(on Macintoshes in our publishing office). Separate perl scripts create
HTML from the same database.
Our courses and subjects data is already in this database, we've been
editing in this database for some time, and our printed and on line
versions of data have the same source, but this database is a clunky and
ancient system. We long to have files we can edit (in the layout file
itself) e.g. FrameMaker files - and then run this data back into the
database when updating. So we are investigating SGML/XML. We have
FrameMaker, but have kept to Quark so far for reasons of expediency and
limited time to learn new software... ("Ha! no time to learn FrameMaker,
and you think you'll have time to learn SGML," I hear some say...)
Very interested to hear that at least two universities are doing something
similar to where we think we want to go.
I would appreciate hearing from others, especially those who are using
SGML/XML allied to databases: successes, pitfalls, and any references to
other discussion lists etc.
And is TEI-lite a good DTD for this sort of work?
Andrew
_____________________________________________
Andrew Tredinnick
Publications Manager, Public Relations
University of Western Sydney Nepean
PO Box 10 Kingswood NSW 2747 Australia
Phone: 02 4736 0904 Fax: 02 4736 0776
