Sharon C. Adler

The birth of a standard

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) was adopted as an international standard for data description, data modeling, and interchange in October 1986. This article explores the evolution of this standard following its technical completion and leading to widespread market acceptance.

The “ABCs” of DSSSL

DSSSL, the Document Style Semantics and Specification Language, is ISO/IEC 10179, an International Standard for the formatting and other processing of SGML documents. DSSSL was completed in January 1996 after 8 years of development. From its inception, DSSSL was conceived as a companion standard to SGML, where SGML is a language for standardizing the way we represent document structures without regard to its form or presentation. It is possible to use SGML markup to represent formatting information, but this is discouraged, since doing so makes a document more difficult to reuse and reprocess. Reuse is generally a significant requirement for SGML data so it is not a good idea to pollute your document with presentational markup. Yet formatting of some nature is still desirable, and sometimes critical, for all documents, and in some cases users want to interchange this formatting information (informally known in the industry as style sheets) in a standardized, non-proprietary format. DSSSL is key to enabling this interchange.