AFs and the DPH (Was Animal Friends, etc.)

[David Megginson]

Peter Murray-Rust writes:

 > However, all the benefits from AFs have to be realised by having an
 > AF-aware processor (I differentiate parser from processor - an ESIS stream
 > could be input into an AF-aware processor). My understanding is that:
 > 	- there are no freely available AF processors
 > 	- generic AF processors are beyond the ability (or at least the time) for
 > a DPH to write from scratch
 > 
 > Therefore AFs are only available to largish groups with time and/or
 > money... This rules out the DPH.

Actually, none of these statements is true.  I am working on a very
large project where people are using Omnimark and even ACL to work
with architectural forms.  Further more, the SP-family of programs --
nsgmls, jade, sgmlnorm, etc. -- have a full-featured architectural
engine built right in.

In the simplest sort of architectural processing, you simply designate
an attribute name -- say, Biblio -- and take actions based on the
attribute's value for different element types.  For example, with

  <monograph Biblio="entry">...</monograph>

you would note that the value of the Biblio attribute is "entry" (or,
more generally, that "entry" is the architectural form of this
element) and process the contents accordingly.  With

  <byline Biblio="author">...</byline>

you would note that the architectural form is "author", and process
accordingly.  In a different document type, you might have

  <responsibility Biblio="author">...</responsibility>

However, since the value of the Biblio attribute is the same, you
should be able to process it with the same code.

A very easy way to set this up is to use #FIXED attributes declared in
the DTD:

  <!ATTLIST monograph
    Biblio  CDATA #FIXED "entry">

  <!ATTLIST byline
    Biblio  CDATA #FIXED "author">

That way, when an author includes

  <byline>David Megginson</byline>

your software will see

  <byline Biblio="author">David Megginson</byline>  

Of course, if you are doing DTD-less parsing (ick), you can specify
the architectural form attribute values explicitly on the elements, as
in the earlier examples.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117 at freenet.carleton.ca
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins at microstar.com
      http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/

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