INES - A context sensitive WYSIWYG SGML editor for standard documents

This contribution describes INES (Integrated Standard Editor based on SGML), an advanced context sensitive SGML editor based on the publishing system Interleaf 5. This editor was developed at ZGDV to support working with the DTD of the German Institute of Standards (DIN) to write standard documents. The goal of the development was a complete SGML editor combining the advantages of WYSIWYG with the advantages of structured SGML editing. The editor should guarantee the DTD conformance of the document. Interleaf 5, which offers an object-oriented LISP programming interface, was improved by the following SGML features: (1) SGML kernel to manage the data of the DTD and its instances, (2) context sensitive editor (CSE) as a shell around this kernel which builds the connection to the user interface and the layout components, (3) interactive attribute editor to handle the SGML attributes and to control the layout, (4) online help for elements and attributes, and (5) layout editor to define the context-dependent layout. INES was developed without using the Interleaf product Interleaf <SGML> Developers Toolkit. The CSE supervises the actions of the user constantly to guarantee that the document is in accordance with the DTD at any time, i.e. no postprocessing with an SGML parser is necessary. The editor realizes this with context-dependent menus for the creation of elements and entities, with controlled keyboard input, and with a special handling of cut, copy and paste. The CSE guarantees also that all required elements and attributes exist in the document. It is possible to load arbitrary DTDs into INES.