Don't Touch My SGML

Abstract

SGML used to be the future of documentation. It still is, because no matter how much we push for XML, we still need SGML. Entire business models rely on it, and if we want to use our newfound technologies (hey, XML is only 28 as I write this), we'd better make sure we can include the old. Author in XML? Yes, sure. Publish the XML? Yes, absolutely. But don't touch my SGML This paper starts off from a use case involving three separate SGML vocabularies that had to be supported going forwards, no matter what. That use case evolved into a more general approach to converting SGML to XML, including adding other SGML vocabularies when needed, to take advantage of modern XML technologies for authoring and publishing, including publishing back to SGML when needed. The resulting set of scripts and resources has been made freely available in the hope that it can help others looking for a way to manage SGML.