% SiSU 2.0

@title: SiSU
 :subtitle: Summary of Features

@creator:
 :author: Ralph Amissah

@date:
 :created: 2002-08-28
 :issued: 2002-08-28
 :available: 2002-08-28
 :published: 2007-09-16
 :modified: 2011-02-07

@rights:
 :copyright: Copyright (C) Ralph Amissah 2007
 :license: GPL 3 (part of SiSU documentation)

:A~? @title @creator

:B~? What is SiSU?

:C~? Description

1~sisu_feature_summary Summary of features

_* sparse/minimal markup (clean utf-8 source texts). Documents are prepared in a single UTF-8 file using a minimalistic mnemonic syntax. Typical literature, documents like "War and Peace" require almost no markup, and most of the headers are optional.

_* markup is easily readable/parsable by the human eye, (basic markup is simpler and more sparse than the most basic HTML), [this may also be converted to XML representations of the same input/source document].

_* markup defines document structure (this may be done once in a header pattern-match description, or for heading levels individually); basic text attributes (bold, italics, underscore, strike-through etc.) as required; and semantic information related to the document (header information, extended beyond the Dublin core and easily further extended as required); the headers may also contain processing instructions. SiSU markup is primarily an abstraction of document structure and document metadata to permit taking advantage of the basic strengths of existing alternative practical standard ways of representing documents [be that browser viewing, paper publication, sql search etc.] (html, epub, xml, odf, latex, pdf, sql)

_* for output produces reasonably elegant output of established industry and institutionally accepted open standard formats.[3] takes advantage of the different strengths of various standard formats for representing documents, amongst the output formats currently supported are:

_* HTML - both as a single scrollable text and a segmented document

_* XHTML

_* EPUB

_* XML - both in sax and dom style xml structures for further development as required

_* ODT - Open Document Format text, the iso standard for document storage

_* LaTeX - used to generate pdf

_* PDF (via LaTeX)

_* SQL - population of an sql database (PostgreSQL or SQLite), (at the same object level that is used to cite text within a document)

Also produces: concordance files; document content certificates (md5 or sha256 digests of headings, paragraphs, images etc.) and html manifests (and sitemaps of content). (b) takes advantage of the strengths implicit in these very different output types, (e.g. PDFs produced using typesetting of LaTeX, databases populated with documents at an individual object/paragraph level, making possible granular search (and related possibilities))

_* ensuring content can be cited in a meaningful way regardless of selected output format. Online publishing (and publishing in multiple document formats) lacks a useful way of citing text internally within documents (important to academics generally and to lawyers) as page numbers are meaningless across browsers and formats. sisu seeks to provide a common way of pinpoint the text within a document, (which can be utilized for citation and by search engines). The outputs share a common numbering system that is meaningful (to man and machine) across all digital outputs whether paper, screen, or database oriented, (pdf, HTML, EPUB, xml, sqlite, postgresql), this numbering system can be used to reference content.

_* Granular search within documents. SQL databases are populated at an object level (roughly headings, paragraphs, verse, tables) and become searchable with that degree of granularity, the output information provides the object/paragraph numbers which are relevant across all generated outputs; it is also possible to look at just the matching paragraphs of the documents in the database; [output indexing also work well with search indexing tools like hyperestraier].

_* long term maintainability of document collections in a world of changing formats, having a very sparsely marked-up source document base. there is a considerable degree of future-proofing, output representations are "upgradeable", and new document formats may be added. e.g. addition of odf (open document text) module in 2006, epub in 2009 and in future html5 output sometime in future, without modification of existing prepared texts

_* SQL search aside, documents are generated as required and static once generated.

_* documents produced are static files, and may be batch processed, this needs to be done only once but may be repeated for various reasons as desired (updated content, addition of new output formats, updated technology document presentations/representations)

_* document source (plaintext utf-8) if shared on the net may be used as input and processed locally to produce the different document outputs

_* document source may be bundled together (automatically) with associated documents (multiple language versions or master document with inclusions) and images and sent as a zip file called a sisupod, if shared on the net these too may be processed locally to produce the desired document outputs

_* generated document outputs may automatically be posted to remote sites.

_* for basic document generation, the only software dependency is Ruby, and a few standard Unix tools (this covers plaintext, HTML, EPUB, XML, ODF, LaTeX). To use a database you of course need that, and to convert the LaTeX generated to pdf, a latex processor like tetex or texlive.

_* as a developers tool it is flexible and extensible

Syntax highlighting for SiSU markup is available for a number of text editors.

SiSU is less about document layout than about finding a way with little markup to be able to construct an abstract representation of a document that makes it possible to produce multiple representations of it which may be rather different from each other and used for different purposes, whether layout and publishing, or search of content

i.e. to be able to take advantage from this minimal preparation starting point of some of the strengths of rather different established ways of representing documents for different purposes, whether for search (relational database, or indexed flat files generated for that purpose whether of complete documents, or say of files made up of objects), online viewing (e.g. html, xml, pdf), or paper publication (e.g. pdf)...

the solution arrived at is by extracting structural information about the document (about headings within the document) and by tracking objects (which are serialized and also given hash values) in the manner described. It makes possible representations that are quite different from those offered at present. For example objects could be saved individually and identified by their hashes, with an index of how the objects relate to each other to form a document.

