Copyright © 1996 Harvey Bingham
The scope is limited to that of the syntax from the ISO 8879-1986(E) SGML standard as corrected in Amendment 1. This SGML Syntax Sumary adds extensive hyperlinking of syntactic variables used in productions to where they are defined, and where the defined syntactic variables are used. It also collects into distinct documents each of the token kinds used in productions. Locators provide {clause and page:line} references, to facilitate use with the ISO 8879 SGML standard and The SGML Handbook.
This summary omits the text found therein that supports understanding, other than the clause and sub-clause headings, and the suggestions on semantics inherent in the names of the syntactic productions and the tokens used in their definitions.
The purpose of SGML syntax is to describe:
The SGML Handbook includes the ISO 8879-1986(E) SGML standard, and provides many significant extensions. These help with understanding the many fine points of that standard: historic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic.
Included are the revisions from
ISO 8879-1986(E) SGML Syntax Summary
The earlier printed version of this Syntax Summary contains much of the material in this document. I widely distributed it, and provided it to the Graphic Communications Association, as a service to the SGML community. It is now out of print. So I have created this electronic version from it, augmented with direct hyperlinks.
The SGML Handbook contains extensive explanation and is the authoritative reference. It includes the Standard material, with additional tutorial and commentary by the author. The editor provided an extensive cross-index, that exposes the limits of a paper index in indirect referencing, both through the limited differentiation among references to a single concept, and omission of "where-used" references. I believe that the hyperlinks herein are better focused and hence more useful for the more limited purpose of studying the Syntax of SGML.
In the production listings, the "reference" {clause, page:line} locator provides cross-referencing into The SGML Handbook. The list of production-name[prod.no] pairs following the "used in:" includes all the other productions that use this production-name as a syntactic variable in their definitions.
ISO/IEC 10179:1996 DSSSL
DSSSL is the standard for specifying transformations on SGML document instances and associating style information.
See the DSSSL Syntax Summary for the similar set of documents, also by Harvey Bingham, that augment information extracted from the DSSSL standard.
ISO standards are available from national standards bodies.
The 432 definitions provide concept clarification. Many of the productions in the syntax gain meaning from the definitions contained in this clause of the standard.
The syntactic productions are shown in order of production numbers. The form used for each syntactic variable is:
[prod. no.] refers to one of the 211 Production numbers. The values range
from [1] to [204]. In the Amendment, nine with decimal parts were added: [5.1],
[5.2], [35.1], 87.1], [1491.], [149.2], 163.1], [166.1], and [168.1].
Two
productions were explicitly deleted without renumbering the originals: [98] and
[99].
The first line defines the syntactic term, the "left hand side" of the production. Its defined syntactic variable name suggests its use. It is often a phrase, usually in lower case. The "=" separates the name from its defining expression.
The definition, the "right hand side" of the production, contains a separate line for each syntactic token. The tokens are in the same order as in the standard, (where they are run-on to appear usually on one line), but rather are here spread vertically, the form used originally in the SGML Syntax Summary that was adopted in The SGML Handbook.
The metacharacter symbols before and/or after the syntactic tokens indicate their precedence "( )", selection "? * +", and ordering ", | &".
The definition contains one or more lines, each with one of the five forms of syntactic tokens, possibly with metacharacter symbols before and/or after the token
The metacharacter symbols used as the metalanguage in the productions provide precedence, occurrence, and ordering. These are used in the same way as in a document type declaration.
Precedence (...) Parentheses before Occurrence before Ordering
Continue with the SGML Syntax Summary.
Harvey Bingham's home pageSGML Syntax Summary original 8 June 1988
Corrected 10 January 1992
Expanded and converted to HTML 26 Mar 1996
Updated 28 May 1996
Changed return mail 8 Nov 1996
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This material may be used freely for the purposes of studying SGML
and promoting its application. This copyright notice shall be
included in any subsequent copies. The author reserves the right
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