3.1. HyTime and Architectural Forms

ISO/IET 10744:1997 - The HyTime standard (second edition) (HTML).

The standard is relatively easy to read (for a standard), but the reader's guide is a useful companion. See also the table of contents, the definitions, Clause 8 Hyperlinks Module, and possibly the machine-readable materials area.

Sources:

<http://www.hytime.org>

The SGML Users' Group distributes various supplementary materials, including machine-readable materials, tools and papers.

The HyTime editors:

Charles Goldfarb, Information Management Consulting; Steven R. Newcomb, TechnoTeacher Inc.; W. Eliot Kimber, ISOGEN International Corp.; Peter J. Newcomb, TechnoTeacher Inc..

About HyTime: introductions and overviews.

• SIL special topics: Archtectural forms and Groves, Grove Plans, and Property Sets in SGML/DSSSL/HyTime.
• HyTime overview and links
• A Tutorial Introduction to SGML Architectures. This one is very good! It's a clear introduction to architectural forms, DTDs, validation and instances, exemplified in XML.
• HyTime Application Development Guide. Hard going, but detailed and pretty clear. I think this refers to the first version of the HyTime standard, because its discussion of linking doesn't seem to match with what I find in the HyTime standard (but perhaps that's just me). At the same site is a good HyTime overview
• SGML Architectural Forms (rather brief article from <TAG>)
• Quick Guide to HyTime Basics. A useful summary, but one which, again, seems to concentrate on HyTime 1st edition.
• Document Architectures. What You Need to Know About the New HyTime: a useful crib explaining why HyTime is vital! (also discussed in the SIL AF section).
• Specifically, the part of HyTime which refers to hyperlinks is Clause 8: Hyperlinks module.

Groves are a central concept, albeit rather difficult. There are several exellent discussions of groves in the appropriate SIL special topics section. Here is a selection.

• W. Eliot Kimber on What are groves? (informative and clear, but also rather dense). It includes the illuminating remark:

  The HyTime standard also relies on groves and property sets in that all HyTime functionality is defined as operations on nodes in groves, rather than on the syntax of SGML documents. Thus, HyTime and DSSSL share the same fundamental abstract data view of SGML documents. This same abstract data view could be used by any other processor, standard or proprietary.

• Derek Denny-Brown.
• The Purpose of Groves, Steve Newcomb.
• Charles Goldfarb.
• Kimber again, on Managing SGML Architectures and Object Models with Groves. This might not make a lot of sense before you've made some headway with the earlier ones (part of a collection of papers at ISOGEN).
• Here's a useful picture of a grove.

Support for HyTime in tools, and other supporting applications.

• Architectural form processing in SP.
• A James Clark posting to comp.text.sgml, on Architectural forms in SP1.1.
• Others to look at: Megginson's XAF processor, along with a discussion of basic architectural forms in that context.
• Kimber paper on Re-Usable SGML: Why I Demand SUBDOC, which includes the remark

  The HyTime function needed to support cross-document ID references is minimal and can be easily implemented by tool vendors and in purpose-built tools. [...] NSGMLS and Perl are more than capable of providing the same functions. You need only support the nameloc and nmlist architectural forms and need not even support multiple locations (meaning that each nameloc refers to a single target element).

• HyBrowse is a (Wintel-only) HyTime browser from TechnoTeacher, a company formed by Steven Newcomb.
• See also the XLink and XPointer specifications within XML.