Abstract
Since the first days of SGML, there has been a variety of software to parse, validate, analyse, format, store, search, and extract the information. Some of this was what we now call Open Source, particularly the smaller utilities, but the majority of applications were conventional commercial offerings.
In the course of time, many of these have become unavailable, for assorted reasons, with the result is that some very useful systems have been lost, and replacements are not always as effective.
This research attempts to catalogue and analyse a collection of XML and SGML software that is either off the market, or only available within a different product, and thus not accessible to users. The objective is to see if there are still ways to shorten the distance between the bricks that are not otherwise provided for.
Table of Contents
I am grateful to the numerous people in University College Cork and elsewhere who stepped up with offers of Windows and other installer CDs when my carefully-preserved originals went missing, including (alphabetically) John Barrett, Roy Cummins, Stephen Dineen, AV Drepe, Martin Fleming, Nick Hogan, Sinead Horgan, Steve King, Margaret Lantry, Piaras MacEinri, Neil Nash, John O’Connell, Michael O’Halloran, Billy O’Rourke, Bereniece Riedewald, Joel Walmsley, and Frank van Pelt. Thank you also to the SGML-era veterans who prompted me with the names, details, or disks of long-forgotten products, especially Debbie Lapeyre, Lauren Wood, and Michael Sperberg-McQueen