Review of
     "Markup Systems and the Future of Schorlarly Text Processing"
                                   by
           James H. Coombs, Allen H. Renear, Steven J. DeRose

                         Representing the group
     Rick Compton, Fred L. Drake, Jr., Mark Missana, Steve Williams

  The authors of this paper assert that scholars have allowed the
state of authoring and research support applications from the computing
field to slip over the fifteen to twenty years preceeding the
publication of their paper.  The trend observed by the authors, that of
increased use of non-structural "word processing" authoring tools
dominating the workplace rather than more powerful structure-driven
tools, has in fact continued since the publication of the paper to the
current state of affairs.  In many environments, the presentation-driven
systems described by the authors as being the most difficult to use have
completely supplanted even the consideration of structure-based tools as
candidates for document production.

  Several categories of document markup are described in the article:

        1.  no markup at all, a variation typicaly not used in modern
            languages,
        2.  punctuational markup, where word, phrase, and sentence
            boundaries are identified by spaces, commas, periods, and
            other punctuation characters inserted in to the text,
        3.  presentational markup, where the visual form of the document
            is specified directly,
        4.  procedural markup, in which presentational instructions to
            some particular processing system are embedded in the text,
        5.  descritive markup, as often found in applications of SGML,
            which approaches documents as structured objects containing
            semantically-interpretable parts,
        6.  referential markup, which allows external elements to be
            handled without regard to their content, either through
            procedural or declarative constructs, and
        7.  meta-markup, which allows new markup constructs to be
            created as needed for particular documents or classes of
            documents.

  The authors claim that documents marked up using a descriptive
system of annotation, augmented by referential and meta-markup
constructs, provide the highest level of reusability and lowest level
of initial investment on the part of the authors.  A mental model of
the process of marking documents is presented which shows that
descriptive markup offers the highest level of information content for
the lowest cost of including markup beyond the punctuational level.  The
use of alternative approaches to handling documents is examined and
found inadequate, with examples being used to demonstrate the
deficiencies of less powerful approaches to document preparation.

  Additional value is added to a document through the use of descriptive
markup, allowing the use of desciptive systems to not only have a low
authoring overhead but also to have the highest return on the
investment.  Examples are presented where descriptive markup in a
document is used to create additional interpretations of the document
content including outline- and index-style views.  The most important
benefit of using descriptive markup, however, is to allow future
applications to interpret existing documents in new ways.  This is made
possible since descriptive systems provide a means identify document
content by the role it plays within the document.  Elements which are
presented in a similar format may still be interpreted as distinct types
of elements by marking them as having different types.  The presentation
format becomes independent of the content identification, allowing new
processing to be created based on the roles of elements within
documents.

  The authors are clearly strong proponents of descriptive markup
systems, and indicate that many new applications for scholarly text are
waiting to become available if enough authors and publishers move toward
using content-oriented systems.  This is a highly attractive view that
has seen more light since this article was published, but which, in many
ways, remains a distant vision.  Much work remains to be done to make
descriptive markup more readily re-usable.

===================================

    "Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing"
        by Coombs, Renear, and DeRose

    SD COOM87 Article Summary by Group I: Kalafut, Muhlenburg, Klein,
Fitzgerald

    Not too long ago researchers were looking for new ways of composition.
Some became merely computerized typesetters or programmer-typists, merely
just doing the same old thing a little faster.  Their problems were that
they ignored on-going computing research that could help, overlooked the
fact that "soft" copies were just as important as "hard" copies, and
concentrated too much on just the presentation of a composition.  Then along
came descriptive markup, which is the best imaginable solution.
    In the beginning, markup was just written punctuation and presentation,
which evolved into electronic forms.  Now there are basically 6 types of
markup: punctuational, presentational, procedural, descriptive, referential,
and metamarkup.  Markup processing is usually either just being read by
humans (presentational), formatting (procedural), or open-ended (descriptive).
Markup can either be exposed, disguised, concealed, or actually displayed.
    Descriptive markup has many advantages over the other main document
markup methods - procedural and presentational - to make both composition
and publishing very doable.  Descriptive markup is the grand solution for
document portability.  It also eliminates source file maintenance, for
example, when there is a standard style change.  The 4 alternatives for
portability all have drawbacks easily overcomeable with descriptive markup.
Descriptive markup also facilitates the most important phase of markup -
selection.  In conclusion, descriptive markup is the best solution for
manuscript composition and distribution because it allows authors to
concentrate on content and structure, facilitates maintenance and
portability, and contains the semantics and pragmatics for alternative
views and structure-oriented editing.

===================================

MARKUP SYSTEM AND THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARLY TEXT PROCESSING
Authors; Coombs, Renear, and DeRose
Group 2
Lauren Barton
Martin Falck
Nelson Kile
Carolyn O'Hare
Robert Ryan

Markup tells the reader something about the content or expression of words.  
When the reader sees markup, it is interpreted into gestures to convey the 
proper meaning.  There are several ways to include markup in a document.
     * Punctuational - consists of a closed set of marks to provide syntactic
information about written utterances.  This markup is relatively complicated,
ambiguous, and subject to considerable stylistic variation.
     * Presentational - includes horizontal and vertical spacing, folios, page
breaks notes and ad hoc symbols.
     * Procedural - consists of commands indicating how the text should be 
formatted (i.e. skip line, indent).
     * Descriptive - author identifies the elements types as tokens. 
Descriptive markup indicates which a text elements are, or declare that a 
portion of a text stream is a member of a particular class.
     * Referential - refers to entities external to the document and is 
replaced by those entities during processing.
     * Metamarkup - Provides a facility for controlling the interpretation of
markup and for extending the vocabulary of descriptive markup languages (i.e.
macros).

With descriptive markup, adjusting the set of rules establishes a design that
will be executed automatically and consistently.  If the rules need to change,
only the rules change the file remains intact.

Three major categories of markup processing.
     * Reading.  Presentational markup, moderately well suited to descriptive.
     * Formatting. Procedural markup
     * Open ended (includes formatting) Descriptive

Markup is:
     * Exposed when the system shows the markup as it occurs in the source 
file without performing any special formatting.
     * Disguised when it is converted to a special character.
     * Concealed when it is not shown at all.
     * Displayed when it is shown as a especially formatted representation.

Text editors may show all 4 types of displays.

Any change to the computing environment pose a threat to procedural and 
presentational markup.  Both procedural and presentational markup may 
present maintenance problems.

Descriptive markup allows for greater portability.  Can be easily converted 
into SGML.  The author discounts other alternatives to portability.

The author recommends conversion to descriptive markup to reduce costs.

Presentation markup - The relation between the  text and the typographical 
element is arbitrary.

Procedural markup - Very complex

Descriptive markup - reduces the process of markup selection to a single step
falling out of element recognition.  It also supports the author in focusing 
on both the structure and content of documents.  Supports composition 
assistance features such as alternate views of a document.

The author concludes that descriptive markup is the best approach.

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