Tim Oey (oey@apple.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 1993 00:50:46 GMT
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BTW, for those who are curious about what setext is, here is a response I recently sent to an individual who e-mailed me. Enjoy! BRANDAUER CARL M <brandy@rintintin.Colorado.EDU> asks: > What is 'setext' and where can one find it? 'setext' (structure enhanced text) is a budding public domain standard for formatting plain ascii text so that it is as readable as possible for humans on essentially any computer terminal. You might consider setext to be a set of style conventions for human readable ascii text files (newsletters, documentation, etc). The raw setext form is extremely readable and the small amount of extra work is well worth it. The great strength of setext is that it is useable on essentially all computer viewing devices -- with the lowest common denominator being a VT100, 80 character by 24 line monospaced terminal with a non-word-wrapping text display. Adopting a consistent structure also makes setext more amenable to "machine" readers so people can construct setext browsers that take advantage of the well structured text to allow humans to access the text in an even faster and easier fashion. A setext browser can turn several megabytes of text into a exceptionally useable encyclopedia or reference manual. The best example of this is currently Easy View -- a Macintosh browser available on AOL, Compuserve, and probably quite a few FTP sites. As for where to find setext: 1) The TidBits electronic newsletter is distributed in setext format. TidBits can be gotten from most of the commercial online services (AOL, Compuserve, etc) and can also be gotten from comp.sys.mac.digest. 2) For a summary document about setext send an email to fileserver@tidbits.com with the single word "setext" in the subject line. 3) Contact Ian Feldman (the standard author/keeper) at setext-list@random.se. 4) If you have a Macintosh available, get Easy View from AOL, Compuserve, or some FTP site. 5) The following is an example of a setext document (not including the begin & end lines): -----------------------------------------------------------------begin Administrivia --------------- Tim Oey's original headers have been appended last. This is an example of how his submission could or would have looked had it been piped through a setext formatter (one of many possible layouts). Tim's assessment of the "lowest common denominator being ascii" should be rephrased, however, as "ASCII text formatted and OPTIMIZED for the lowest common- denominator hardware still for many more years to come: a VT100 terminal screen of 80 char*24 lines of _monospaced_ character output." Those unable to read this in the Easy View appl on the Mac may care to know that, despite obvious lack of any visible "coding" elements, this text contains enough of mechanically-parseable structure to allow it to appear as an outline in that browser's window, thus permitting access to its many parts in non-sequential manner while certain of its elements would display as richtext (styled) output. __ianf The Question ------------ by Tim Oey <oey@apple.com> In article <1qff1hINNf5u@uwm.edu> Gregory R Block, gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes: > I'm looking into electronic formats for printed materials. > Specifically, I'd like to know publications being distributed in > electronic or electronic and printed form. I'd like to work on > some "viewers" for these formats. You've hit a chord (at least for me). I too am looking for electronic formats for printed materials. Particularly for use in electronic forums such as BikeNet on America Online. After some investigation, it's become apparent that there are many viewpoints and considerations to take into account when asking this question. Considerations -------------- (1) What do you want the target audience to see (hear, use)? Formatted text? Fonts? Graphics? Color? B/W? Sound? Video? Hypertext navigation? (2) How will transmission occur? Floppies? CDs? LANs? High speed networks? Internet? Phone lines? Commercial Online Networks? (3) What hardware platform will it be viewed on? ASCII terminals? DOS PCs? Unix boxes? Mainframes? Macintoshes? (4) What software does it need (for viewing as well as creation)? Text editor? Wordprocessor? Free viewer? Bundled viewer? (5) How archivable (is that a word?) does it need to be? Should the format be compact? Searchable? Searchable across a set of electronic editions? (6) How convertable does the format need to be? Should it be available in a variety of formats? ASCII? Formatted text? RTF? SGML? Other? Comments & possible solutions ----------------------------- Depending on your needs and audience you may end up with (1) a lowest common denominator solution (where everyone has basic hardware and software and no one can be expected to upgrade), or (2) a highest common denominator solution (where you can dictate what everyone will be able to use, for instance buy everyone a Macintosh and high speed net connections to allow mixed text, graphics, video, and sound) or (3) something in between. The lowest common denominator is plain ascii text. A cool variation on this theme is setext -- a recent "standard" for formatting plain ascii text to make it more readable for humans as well as machines. It's machine interpretability allows developers to create better ways to view setext. For a summary document about setext send an email to fileserver@tidbits.com with the single word "setext" in the subject line. Or send e-mail to Ian Feldman (the standard author/ keeper) at setext-list@random.se. See also in comp.sys.mac.digest the online TidBIT postings which are setext documents. Easy View (a free viewer) is an excellent "smart" text browser that understands setext format (and some others). It is available from America Online and some other sources. As for the highest common denominator, the varied Macintosh formats seem to be the most widely available/ distributable/ flexible/ powerful ones around. The Middle Ground ----------------- The middle ground is where there is alot of action these days. **SGML** is a very functional standard, but it's hard to handle for lots of people and there don't seem to be many inexpensive SGML browsers or editors around. Its strength is that it only captures the logical structure of documents. Its weakness is that it only captures the logical structure of documents. **RTF** is a standard interchange format that's fairly flexible. Several popular wordprocessing programs on PCs and Macs can handle it (Wordperfect, Microsoft Word, etc). It does reasonably well with text formatting but graphics within docs can be a problem between platforms. **GRAPHICS** can cause lots of problems. Formats include MacPaint, PICT, TIFF, EPS, CGM, GIFF, fax group 3 & group 4, and many others. **COMPOUND DOCUMENTS** are the toughest. At the moment proprietary formats (such as MS Word, Wordperfect, HyperCard, ToolBook, Frame, Interleaf, etc) handle these the best. But some are readable on other platforms, some aren't. Plus everyone needs the appropriate software. As far as other compound document viewers, AppleLink from Apple (an e-mail program), SuperGlue from Portfolio Software, Inc. (408-252-0420), and Disk Paper (not sure if this became available or not) are all ones that are roughly based on the PICT format that work well on the Macintosh. Currently Adobe's Acrobat appears to be the best hope for non- multimedia interplatform compound document electronic publishing. There are some smaller vendors who will also likely compete in this arena (Common Ground from No Hands Software??). They will initially run on at least the Mac and PC and eventually Unix platforms as well. However, as of April 14, 93 they are not yet shipping. Soon hopefully we'll see how well they perform in practice. In My Opinion -------------- My primary audience is Mac, DOS PC, and Apple II users who are connected to online networks (in particular America Online). As for my own electronic publishing needs, setext seems to be the most flexible, useable, and readable format for text documents. The Easy View reader (runs on Macintosh) is really quite good. I'm hoping someone will create a comparable one for DOS PCs. Graphics are more difficult. I want a format for both clip art and for maps. Maps are extremely challenging since they generally have a large format as well as lots of detail. For color pictures on screen, GIFF is pretty good but I have yet to see GIFF handle hi-res (300 dpi) graphics well. Also GIFF seems to be a totally bit-mapped standard. I also need a vector-graphics standard. PICT on the Mac handles both, but people on other platforms have a tougher time handling it. A good compound document format is currently out of my reach. For the moment, I'm going to rely on RTF. However, graphics don't seem to survive between Mac & PC's that well at this time. BTW, surprisingly enough, the best cross platform program I've found is FileMaker Pro, from Claris (a flatfile database application - IMHO the best one on any platform). The PC and Mac versions use completely interchangeable files. Even to the point of both the PC and Mac having the same file open at the same time (!) (FileMaker Pro on both platforms is automatically multi-user). Even graphics come across ok on both platforms. Conclusion ---------- So there you have it -- at least as far as creating & distributing electronic versions of paper documents. The multimedia arena may take alot longer to shake out. Although many of the electronicly published documents have used a multimedia format -- but have been usually viewable only on one platform. These formats look whizzy but don't seem very good afterwards. As far as I can tell, setext (and plain ascii in general) is probably going to be one of the best interchange formats for a very, very long time to come. We're going to have to all wait for a compact, multi-purpose, interchangeable compound document format. Enjoy! --Tim -----------------------------------------------------------------end That's all, enjoy! ------- Tim Oey Work: oey@apple.com | Apple Computer, MS: 75-6H Home: oey@aol.com | _~C __C 20400 Stevens Creek Blvd. TheCyclist@aol.com | ='\<, ='\<, Cupertino, CA 95014 Applelink: OEY | (&)/(\) (&)/(\) Voice: 408-974-7282 America Online: Oey | Fax: 408-974-8983 TheCyclist | --------------------Don't pollute, bike commute!!------------------------
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