1. Network publishing and mark-up languages

2. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.2 p- versus e-form  The share of documents in e-form and accessible over the network is growing fast.  There are types of documents that will “always” exist in a paper form or co-exist in both forms.  There are numerous types of documents that already function better in e-form, at least for some populations (or generations).  The e-document can replace the paper form only if it is readable without limits of time and place.

3. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.3 Independence of place  Document should be usable in the same way irrespective of server’s distance and user’s hardware and software for reading.  It is mainly a technological problem. We need  a reader of a size and weight of a book,  with screen with visual characteristics of a paper,  with autonomous power supply,  with wireless connection to servers with documents.  All that we already have, but not in one reasonably expensive appliance.

4. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.4 Independence of time  Document must have the same usability until potential readers disappear.  It is mainly an organisational problem:  we need standard document formats, which will be understood by future generations of software and hardware, and  we need consensus to obey those standards.  Such standard formats are made by mark-up languages.

5. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.5 History of e-publishing  At the beginning the creators of e-documents were few, mostly creators of bibliographic databases.  They independently developed formats of their e- documents and software for their use.  It was easy because e-documents were simple, ASCII files.  Things became complicated with the development of more complicated, multimedia documents.

6. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.6 History of e-publishing  Because of the lack of standardisation new documents were not usable by definition on every operating system and brand of computer.  Producers of e-documents were forced to develop different versions of documents and/or software for its use for all major brands of OS and computers.  It was economically unfeasible and the only exit was standardisation.  Standardisation of computers? Impossible. Standardisation of e-document formats.

7. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.7 Mark-up languages: introduction  Mark-up languages must make possible:  the transfer of documents between different types of computers and software for reading,  simple and economical transport through networks,  longevity of documents (problem of e-archiving).  Mark-up languages enable us to mark structure and/or form (appearance) of documents.

8. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.8 Mark-up languages: introduction  Mark-up languages are artificial languages, composed of:  labels (tags) that divide document into structural elements,  tags that describe appearance of structural elements, and  syntax that defines appropriate use of tags.

9. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.9 Structure vs. appearance  If mark-up language defines only structure of a document, then its appearance on a screen or paper is entirely dependent on the software used for document’s representation.  In such case the structure of document is separated from definitions of fonts, colour of background, distance between lines, etc. With such attributes of documents the printing-house mark-up languages are dealing.

10. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.10 RTF  Very common type of e-documents are documents written with word processors, e.g. MS Word for Windows.  Structure and appearance of documents are inseparable.  The result is very limited possibility of transfer of documents between different types of computers or operating systems; even between different generations of same word processor.  More advanced is word processor, more closed system it is.

11. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.11 RTF  A strong need exist for transportability of word processor files.  Developers of word processors agreed upon the common transport format, which is understood by the most programmes of that kind.  This is RTF – Rich Text Format.  RTF denotes only document’s appearance.

12. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.12 RTF: example {\rtf1\ansi\deff20\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f4\froman\fchars et0\fprq2 Times New Roman;}{\f5\fswiss\fcharset0\fprq2 Arial;}{\f20\fnil\fcharset0\fprq2 SLOHelvetica;}} {\colortbl;\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue255;... 20 to 30 lines of lines with general description of fonts and distances follow... \pard\plain \qr\sb40\sa40\tx357 \f20\fs20\lang2057 {\fs18 Lecture: Computer communications, Databases 2} \par \pard\plain \s18\sb40\sa40\tx357 b\f20\fs30\lang2057 {\i\fs32 Predavanje: Standardi za označevanje dokumentov \par }\pard\plain \s1\fi-360\li360\sb240\sa40\tx357 \b\f20\fs28\lang2057 1.\tab Reasons for standardisation of document descriptio tags for types and colours of fonts tags for text positioning

13. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.13 Postscript and PDF Postcript (Adobe):  Mark-up language for driving laser printers.  Marks only document’s appearance, including images. PDF (Portable Document Format):  Makes possible the original appearance of a document on a web browser.  Documents on screen look the same as on the paper.  Simplified and upgraded variant of Postscript.  Marks appearance and only partly structure (hyper- text pointers).

14. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.14 SGML SGML: Standard Generalized Mark-up Language.  International standard, adopted by ISO on 1986 and upgraded several times since then.  Family of standards, managing the mark-up of all known types of e-documents. v Its strength is generality, because logical structure and appearance of a document are completely separated. v Appearance is left to software for representation of documents on screen or paper.

15. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.15 SGML SGML divides e-document into three parts:  Declaration, which describes the most general data about document (Latin or Cyrillic script…) and symbols with special meaning for SGML.  Document Type Definition (DTD), which describes the  possible structural elements of document,  their meaning,  hierarchical relationship among structural elements, and  tags that mark these structural elements.  Body of a document, marked with tags.

16. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.16 HTML  SGML is not a real mark-up language but a recipe how to build mark-up languages for different types of documents.  HTML is such language developed for web documents.  It is relatively simple and this is the reason for extreme simplicity of web publishing.  In its original versions it mostly defines structure and only partly appearance of documents.  Author: Tim Berners-Lee (early 90’s).

17. Alpe Adria Master Course :: Medical Informatics :: Dr. J. Dimec: Web publishing and mark-up languages.17 HTML  The standardisation of HTML is endangered since its birth.  Big producers of web browsers, Microsoft and Netscape try to impose their own tags and functionality to beat the competition.  Documents written with some word processors for HTML can not be read on browsers made by competition.  It is safe to use simple Notepad or Netscape’s editor.