Foreword------------------------------------- SGML is misunderstood and underestimated. I have always wanted to write this book. I am pleased that two people with whom I have had the pleasure to work were finally able to do so. Since I have always been a bit of an evangelist, I feel pride when my "students" become recognized "teachers". In the early years of SGML we struggled to define a language that would bring the information to its rightful place. We succeeded. Then we had to explain these idea to technical adoptors. Again, I think we have succeeded. We have learned much about SGML in the process of implementing it. These experiences must now also be shared, along with comprehensible information on the lan guage itself. The word must move out of the lab and the computer center and reach the business people, the users, the movers and shakers. The next generation will do things with SGML that we can't even imagine yet- it is that versatile.

Getting value from stuff you don't own is a compelling idea. Just think, someone else has created something that has value, and has given it or loaned it to you so you can leverage that value in ways that makes all parties richer. That's the promise of web services. Web services is all about exposing your services to your customers, whether they are external business partners or internal departments. Web services forces you to think of your information assets in a service-oriented view. Don?

The next five years will see a revolution in computing. Users will no longer have to work at every computer task as if they had no need or ability to share data with all their other computer tasks, they will not need to act as if the computer is simply a replacement for paper, nor will theyhave to appease computers or software programs that seem to be at war with one another. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is the technical advance enabling this revolution, and Dr Charles Goldfarb of the IBM Almaden Research Center is its inventor. The SGML Handbook gives the readerDr Goldfarb's thoughts on each clause in this widely adopted international standard, and guides the reader through every detail of SGML. The SGML Handbook includes the up-to-date amended full text of ISO 8879, extensively annotated, cross-referenced, and indexed; a detailed, structured overview of SGML, covering every concept; additional tutorial and reference material; a unique 'push-button access system' that provides hypertextlinks between the standard, annotations, overview, and tutorials. SGML will improve the productivity and competitiveness of all computer users if its sophistication is now harnessed by developers of SGML applications and implementors of SGML systems. These are the people who will find this book an invaluable guide and an authoritative voice.

Although not evident to all, many people have been waiting more than a decade for The SGML FAQ Book by Steve DeRose. It has been "brewing" for a long time, with many hours, months, years of research talking to people, gathering their ideas, listening to their frustrations, applauding their successes. Only Steve with his experience, credentials, wit, and enthusiasm for the subject could have written this book. But it is also a measure of the success and maturity of ISO 8879 and its amazing longevity that allows an "SGMLer" to write such a book. We can now laugh at ourselves, even disclose our mistakes without fear of the other guy. While most would not recognize it, the revolution known as the World Wide Web would not have happened without a non-proprietary, easy, and almost "portable way to create and distribute documents across a widely disparate set of computers, networks, even countries. HTML, an SGML application, enabled this and as a result the world and the SGML community will never be the same. For some the term SGML means order, management, standards, discipline; to others, the term brings images of pain, confusion, complexity, and pitfalls. To all who have engaged in it, the Standard means hard work, good friends, savings in terms of time, money, and effort, a sense of accomplishment and best of all - fun. This book adds immeasurably to all of these. Enjoy the quote from Through Looking by Lewis Carroll as much as we have.

The "SGML Buyer's Guide" helps experts and beginners to analyze the publishing process and to evaluate and choose the best tools and services for their needs. It also presents a new methodology, developed by the authors, that simplifies and optimizes publishing systems. The CD-ROM contains a professionally chosen selection of SGML and XML freeware, a graphics package, and demos of many commercial SGML software packages.

Historical Information Science is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by almost 6,000 citations, detailing developments in information technology since the advent of personal computers and the convergence of several social science and humanities disciplines in historical computing. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form) and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, techniques, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, data archives, and museums.

This volume contains the proceedings of two recent conferences in the ?eld of electronic publishing and digital documents: – DDEP 2000, the 8th International Conference on Digital Documents and Electronic Publishing, the successor conference to the EP conference series; and – PODDP 2000, the 5th International Workshop on the Principles of Digital Document Processing. Both conferences were held at the Technische Universit ̈ at Munc ̈ hen, Munich, Germany in September 2000. DDEP 2000 was the eighth in a biennial series of international conferences organized to promote the exchange of novel ideas concerning the computer p- duction, manipulation and dissemination of documents. This conference series has attempted to re?ect the evolving nature and usage of documents by treating digital documents and electronic publishing as a broad topic covering many - pects. These aspects have included document models, document representation and document dissemination, dynamic and hyper-documents, document ana- sis and management, and wide-ranging applications. The papers presented at DDEP 2000 and in this volume re?ect this broad view, and cover such diverse topicsashypermediastructureanddesign,multimediaauthoringtechniquesand systems, document structure inference, typography, document management and adaptation, document collections and Petri nets. All papers were refereed by an international program committee.