HyTime and Architectural Forms

ISO/IET 10744:1997 - The HyTime standard (second edition) (HTML), and technical corrigendum (3 April 1998).

Alternative version (I'm not sure what the status of this is, relative to the above).

The standard is relatively easy to read (for a standard), but the reader's guide is a useful companion.

Sources:

<http://www.hytime.org>

The SGML Users' Group distributes various supplementary materials, including machine-readable materials, tools, papers, and a view of the SGML Property Set (and the simplified ESIS version).

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.

• HyTime page, and 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, mildly specific to HyTime 1st edition.
• What's New and Cool in HyTime: Eliot Kimber again.
• Document Architectures. What You Need to Know About the New HyTime: a useful crib explaining why HyTime is vital! (also discussed in the SGML pages AF section).
• Specifically, the part of HyTime which refers to hyperlinks is Clause 8: Hyperlinks module.

Groves are a central concept, abstract rather than inherently difficult. There are several exellent discussions of groves in the appropriate SGML 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.
• Introductions to the grove idea from Kimber and Prescod Addressing the Enterprise: Why the Web needs Groves, and an overview of chapter 9 of the DSSSL standard from Dave Pawson. dpawson@rnib.org.uk.
• Newcomb on groves
• Not in the special-topics section, but on xml.com: Groves Explained, but Fabio Arciniegas A.

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: a very handy example, though somewhat (characteristically?) dense.
• Others to look at: Megginson's XAF processor, along with a discussion of basic architectural forms in that context.
• GPS - Groves and Property Sets for Python

• 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).

• Similarly, Kimber wants to retain the LINK feature
• GroveMinder is a grove management system from TechnoTeacher, a company formed by Steven Newcomb. HyBrowse is a (Wintel-only) HyTime browser from the same folk.
• See also the XLink and XPointer specifications within XML.
• Various useful demos and tools from Isogen and Dr Macro. Includes hy-lib.pl, a Perl library which implements some HyTime semantics. It's a prototype, and a couple of years old, but it might be illuminating.