To: Internet:nfb-rd@nfbcal.org
Greetings:
ICADD is the International Committee for Accessible Document
Design, which I became acquainted with last fall while at Closing
the Gap in Minneapolis. ICADD is now in its formative stage--that
is, it is trying to set up a board of directors and determine how
its membership will be structured. As you will see from the
following, SGML is key to everything that ICADD is pushing for.
Read and enjoy.
=================================================================
From: Duxbury@world.std.com
Subject: no subject (file transmission)
To: edwards.chi@xerox.com (Alan Edwards), usids002@ibmmail.com (Curtis Chong),
wakefiel@tmn.com (Douglas Wakefield),
hksbfred@ctsc.hkbc.hk (Fred Leung),
caibmrps@ibmmail.com (Guido Corona),
cbfb_gwk@selway.umt.edu (George Kersher),
greglo@microsoft.com (Greg Lowney),
Moulton2@applelink.apple.com (Gary Moulton),
vanderhe@macc.wisc.edu (Greg Vanderheiden),
jallan@tenet.edu (Jim Allan), dixon@mail.loc.gov (Judy Dixon),
fheda02@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be (Jan Engelen), jolie@acm.org (Jolie Mason),
duxbury@world.std.com (Joe Sullivan),
larry_goldberg@wgbh.org (Larry Goldberg),
74076.2075@compuserve.com (Larry Skutchan),
paciello@shane.enet.dec.com (Mike Paciello),
ewers@macc.wisc.edu (Neal Ewers), icrrj@asuacad.bitnet (Richard Jones),
stig.becker@1551.abc.se (Stig Becker),
timn@scs.apana.org.au (Tim Noonan), tom@bradford.ac.uk (Tom Wesley),
herzogf@labi.he.schule.de (Uli Strempel), yuri@sq.com (Yuri Rubinsky)
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 23:41:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Joe Sullivan, Chairman, ICADD Elections Committee,
c/o Duxbury Systems, Inc.
435 King St., P.O. Box 1504, Littleton, MA 01460 USA
tel: 508-486-9766 fax: 486-9712 Internet: duxbury@world.std.com
Date: February 28, 1994
To: ICADD Voting Members and those eligible to become Voting
Members
via Internet: icadd_v
and via fax: 1-502-895-1509 (Maureen Eddins), 1-617-969-6204
(Brian Charlson), 1-703-237-2503 (Leonard Suchanek)
Subject: Election of ICADD Board of Directors
There have been six nominations for the five members of the Board
of Directors of the International Committee on Accessible
Document Design (ICADD). Listed in the order received, they are:
Mike Paciello
Uli Strempel
Maureen Eddins
Tom Wesley
Tim Noonan
Julie Mason
Please vote for up to five persons to be members of the ICADD
Board of Directors. Votes may be for the nominees or write-ins,
but only ICADD voting members may be considered. You may vote
for fewer than five persons if you wish, but votes for more than
five persons will be entirely disqualified.
Persons who are eligible to be ICADD Voting Members, but who have
not previously indicated their wishes in that respect, may still
vote in this election, and in doing so become ICADD Voting
Members.
The deadline for receipt of votes is Wednesday, March 9, 1994. I
will announce the results on March 10th. The first meeting of
the ICADD Board of Directors will take place approximately one
week later, at the CSUN conference in Los Angeles.
You may register your vote with me by any convenient means of
communication, at the address given at the beginning of this
message.
=================================================================
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 06:45:00 EST
From: Tim Noonan <timn@ION.APANA.ORG.AU>
Subject: Introducing myself
To: Multiple recipients of list ICADDB
<ICADDB%ASUACAD.BITNET@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu>
Hi, my name is Tim Noonan and I have been nominated to fill one of the
Vice President vacancies on ICADD's board of directors. Because I work
and live in Australia I thought this might be a good opportunity to
introduce myself to those members of the committee I have not yet met
and to tell you a little about myself and my work.
Because I don't know all the nominees for the five positions, I hope
that other Vice President nominees will also consider posting a brief
summary of what they do.
I am 28 and have been working as the Adaptive Technology Services
Manager at the Royal Blind Society since 1989. Royal Blind Society is a
not-for-profit organisation based in Sydney Australia which provides a
wide range of services to clients in the state of New South Wales. In
this role I direct a team providing adaptive technology training and
equipment recommendations and evaluations.
My position also has primary technical responsibility for recommending
and implementing new technology and transcription processes into our
Alternative Format Production section. This section produces texts on
disk, in braille and in large print, tactual and bold print
maps/diagrams, and also has high quality recording studios for the
production of audio books in both two-track and four-track (Library of
Congress) formats.
Royal Blind Society is now exploring SGML and various DTDs. We are
currently evaluating the WordPerfect IntelliTag product as an SGML
editing environment because of its accessibility through adaptive
technology.
Currently we use WordPerfect 5.1 and have developed a comprehensive
macro program which automatically converts complex documents into an
accessible format. This includes converting tables into a highly
readable format, adjusting line lengths, notifying the reader of changes
in running headers or footers, identifying text and graphics boxes and
extracting text from captions and footnotes directly into the ASCII
document.
I have been blind since birth and am a braille reader. I have also been
using etexts extensively with speech synthesis for many years.
I am currently a member of the Disk Sub-committee of the RoundTable
Production Committee. RoundTable is an Australian organisation with
representation from most transcription and library service providers for
people with print handicaps in Australia. I'll be reporting back to
RoundTable on the outcomes of the upcoming ICADD meeting.
I am involved in two Standards Australia committees relevant to people
with disabilities. One deals with text communications devices for
people with disabilities (such as text phones for people with hearing
disabilities) and the other deals with a committee developing a standard
user interface for telephone-based Interactive Voice Response systems
(such as telephone delivery of newspapers, library catalogues and home
banking).
I hope this potted overview of my work and relevant interests is of some
assistance to you and am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Tim Noonan,
Adaptive Technology Services Manager
Royal Blind Society 4 Mitchell St.
Enfield NSW 2136 AUSTRALIA
+61 2 334 3333 (WK)
+61 2 747 5993 (FAX)
+61 2 687 1112 (HM
Internet: tnoonan@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
=================================================================
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 13:35:27 EST
From: "Mike Paciello, VIIS: 381-1831" <paciello@SHANE.ENET.DEC.COM>
Subject: FYI: Microsoft/SGML and MS-WORD
To: Multiple recipients of list ICADDB
<ICADDB%ASUACAD.BITNET@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu>
ICAAD Members:
I received this mail and found it was okay to distribute. You may already be
aware of this. Perhaps Greg Lowney has a comment or two for us :-)
Regards,
- Mike
From: RAGMOP::CARON "it's my idea and I don't think much of it! 25-Feb-1994
0758" 25-FEB-1994 08:08:02.56
To: @SGML_INTEREST
CC:
Subj: SGML and MS-word
SGML FOR WORD
Below a summary of efforts currently under way by Microsoft to allow
MS-Word for Windows documents to be used to output SGML according to
user-defined DTD's.
Theo
INTRODUCTION
This document provides background information on Standard Generalized Markup
Language
Microsoft Word & The SGML Standard
Because SGML stores information about the structure of the documents and not
the formatting, different presentations can be used to suit the distribution
model.
An SGML document has two parts: a DTD (Document Type Definition) and a document
instance (the actual data). The DTD describes the structure of the instance. It
identifies the legal tags in a document and their relationships to each other.
MICROSOFT SGML AUTHOR FOR WORD MARKET BACKGROUND
Microsofts vision of SGML is to broaden the accessibility of this technology
without requiring users to understand the details of the technology. The
largest
problem facing SGML usage today is the increased cost of tagging documents due
to decreased productivity. The currently available SGML editing tools are
typically not very user friendly and are designed almost exclusively for the
UNIX environment. Our approach contrasts rather starkly with the current
offerings, and we hope that our product will result in highly increased author
productivity by allowing authors to work in a familiar and comfortable editing
environment (Word) while still enjoying linkage with SGML.
GOALS OF SGML AUTHOR
- Make SGML easy, and make SGML authors more productive.
- Allow end users to create SGML without knowing "the standard"
- Allow MIS to configure the converter for any DTD.
HOW SGML AUTHOR WORKS
SGML Author has two parts, a converter (end-user focused) and a separate
mapping application (MIS focused).
The End User Model
To author an SGML document the end users simply construct their documents in
Word as they normally would, except they must use styles for all formatting.
To ensure that they use the styles appropriately, the users format according
to an MIS provided style guide and set of Word templates. To create SGML,
the
user then saves the file as SGML just as they would export to any other file
format. Once the user has chosen to save an SGML representation of the file,
an ASCII text file is created which contains syntactically correct
(i.e. parseable) SGML. To achieve this syntactically correct SGML,
the converter may modify the Word file to ensure conformity to the DTD.
For example, a DTD might have a <list> element which required that there
be at least two <items> in the list. If the user had only created one list
item, the converter would create a necessary, albeit empty, second item and
inform the user of this fact. The results of any necessary modifications are
returned to the user in the form of a new Word file which has been annotated
to describe in Word terminology why the file was changed. For example, if
the
DTD required that <para> always follows <para0> and the user did not
follow this convention, then the converter would automatically create a
<para0> structure in the Word document. It would also insert a Word
annotation to inform the user why this change was necessary. The user could
then determine whether or not this new Word document is semantically (i.e.
it
has the correct meaning) correct, and then make any appropriate edits.
Importantly, the end user needs to know little about SGML throughout the
entire process. This usage model is detailed in the diagram below.
WORD MAPPING
DOCUMENT FILE
\ /
\ /
\ /
CONVERTER
|
|
+-------+----------------+
| |
ANNOTATED SGML INSTANCE
WORD DOCUMENT
The MIS Model
To ensure that the desired result is achieved, the converter has to be
pre-configured to create the appropriate SGML. This is done by creating a
mapping file using a provided Mapping Application. This application is
geared
at the SGML knowledgeable individual, and it allows this individual to build
specific mappings between Word templates (i.e. styles) and the structures in
the SGML DTD. Where standard DTD's do exist (i.e. CALS), Microsoft will
provide pre-assembled mapping files and templates. For customers who have
built their own DTD's, they will need to use the mapping application to
build
corresponding templates and mapping files. This is detailed in the diagram
below.
WORD
TEMPLATE SGML DTD
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
MAPPING APPLICATION
|
|
MAPPING FILE
EXPECTED AVAILABILITY
This product is planned for commercial availability in the first half of 1994.
The initial release will be for Microsoft Windows, and it will be followed by
releases for the Apple Macintosh and Windows NT. These products will be sold
and
distributed as separate add-ons to Microsoft Word, and they will require Word
6.0 or later to run.
=================================================================
Cordially,
Curtis Chong
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