Re: Open Book

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

On Wed, 21 Jul 1999 12:59:06 -0700, Robert Hopcroft <hopcroft@uswest.net> wrote:
>
> Doug Loss wrote:
>
>>    However, the basic idea behind it is still a good one.  In doing a
>> bit of searching of the web I found this:
>>
>> <http://xent.ics.uci.edu/~khare/Paper.htmld/index.html>
>>
>> It's dated, but I can get in touch with Rohit Khare and see where things
>> currently stand.  It looks as though this may be a more robust system
>> for generating WWW-based textbooks anyway.
>
> Doug, I took a look and it doesn't appear to deal with XML. I'm wondering
> what our position on using XML is?
>
Actually, it probably does.  this paper was written before XML came on the 
scene, but this paragraph from the "Standard Representations" section seems to 
cover it:

The ``other'' category includes proprietary markup schemes, as used in 
Multimedia Viewer, and future standards associated with commercial development, 
tossed under the rubric of ``object-oriented file systems.'' Interoperability 
with these schemes will be possible, but the efficiency of conversion is 
unclear as yet. Once these systems arrive, though, we will have a platform for 
publishing not merely hypermedia data, but through distributed object 
technology, simulations and processes.

>>    While I'd like to have the open-content textbook project be
>> associated with seul-edu rather than be ours entirely, I think it's
>> important enough that if no one else will do it we should.
>
> Actually, we are very close to laying out a framework for doing the whole
> thing. If we can utilize Promath/GFlash as a display engine, we have a big
> piece done. On the textbook side all we have to do select a set of topics,
> create an outline for each and get people to fill in the pieces. However we
> need to decide whether or not, we are going to base it on XML I know way
> back we were talking XML. I took a Quick look in the archives but I didn't
> spot what I'm referring to.
>
Our premier XML effort is EDUML by Bruno Vernier.  It's aimed at representing 
all kinds of educational data, but I don't think it's intended for 
representation of text similar to HTML (tell us if I'm wrong, Bruno).  For that 
we should probably pick some other XML-based language designed for it.  
Actually, HTML, properly used, isn't too bad at that.  I've used the DocBook 
DTD in SGMLTools to create a document that could be rendered as HTML, LaTeX, 
PostScript, ASCII, and probably some other formats, and that worked very 
nicely.  I'll look into XML languages aimed at publishing and see what's 
available.  I'd still like people to take a close look at Rohit's paper to see 
if we should try to get this on Linux.  I think it may be a good idea.

Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
dloss@csrlink.net    those in authority off their guard and give
(570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
                        Mark Twain