Representing and reasoning on SGML documents

Essays in Honour of Gilles Kahn, 2009

The structure of documents of various degree of formality, from scientific papers with layout information and programs with their documentation to completely formal proofs can be expressed by assigning a type to the abstract syntax tree of the document. By using dependent types-an idea from type theory-it is possible to express very strong syntactic criterion on wellformedness of documents. This structure can be used to automatically generate parsers, type checkers and structure oriented editors.

1995

The automated discovery of logical structure in text documents is an important problem that has recently received a good deal of attention; it can enable the creation of flexible and sophisticated document manipulation tools that will greatly increase the impact of electronic documents. This paper addresses aspects of the nature of the logical structures to be found, in order to develop categories of structures that reflect the variance in requirements for discovery and the variance in significance for applications. A complete taxonomy is not developed, but relevant attributes are identified in three forms of categorization: fundamental, based on structure definitions; discovery, based on required observables to find structures; and usage, based on roles structures play in applications. The attributes themselves are independent of the choice of particular logical structures to consider in a given application, and their direct implications are discussed. 1 Introduction The automated ...

Markup Languages, 1999

Quality control in electronic publications should be one of the major concerns of everyone who is managing a project.

1997

Most documents have a hierarchical structure, which can be made explicit by markup languages such as SGML. In this paper we propose a formal model for representation of hierarchically structured documents, to be used as the basis for document query languages. The model uses a redundant representation of the document elements to simplify the expression of common queries. As an illustration of the power of the model we show how queries might be expressed, both as set-theoretic expressions and in a simple algebra, and outline how queries might be evaluated in a practical system.

This paper provides a formal specification in Z of a conceptual model for an XML document called Graph-Document Type Definition (G-DTD). This model has been used for describing XML documents at the schema level and also assists the user to arrange the content of XML documents. More importantly G-DTD can be used as a tool to simplify the XML document design in a simple and precise way. The specification presented here provides a formal account of the state and operation of this model and a sound basis for instantiations of the model to be built.

Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 1997

we propose a computational model of structured documents and their processing based on preferential attribute grammar schemes and grammar coordinations. Our grammar-based model can be viewed as a specification of composable structure transformations.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1998

As more and more digital documents become available for the public use from di erent sources, also the needs of the users increase. Seamless integration of heterogenous collections, e.g., a possibility to query and format documents in a uniform way, is one of these needs. Processing of documents is greatly enhanced if the structure of documents is explicitly represented by some standard (SGML, XML, HTML). Hence, the problem of integrating heterogenous structures has to be taken into consideration. We address this problem by introducing a classi cation method that acquires knowledge from document instances and their document type de nitions, and uses this knowledge to attach a generic class to each SGML element type. The classi cation retains the tree hierarchy of elements. Although the structure is simpli ed, enough distinctions remain to facilitate versatile further processing, e.g., formatting. The class of an element type can be stored in the document type de nition and, using the architectural form feature of SGML, the documents can be processed as virtual documents obeying a pre-de ned generic DTD. The speci c usages of the classi cation, in addition to formatting and querying, include assembly of new documents from existing document fragments and automatic generation of style sheet templates for original document type de nitions. We have implemented the classi cation method and experimented with several document types.

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2016

Much of the activity in a digital library revolves around collecting, organizing and publishing knowledge about the resources of the library, in the form of metadata records. In order to document such activity, digital librarians need to express knowledge about the metadata records they produce. This knowledge, which we call documentation knowledge, may express e.g., provenance, trustability, or access restrictions of the records. Today, documentation knowledge is mostly represented in digital libraries via RDF. We propose a new type of information system, called documentation system, as a basic component of a digital library allowing to represent and reason about both domain and documentation knowledge in an expressive language such as OWL.

In this paper we develop the language theory underpinning the logical framework PLF. This language features lambda abstraction with patterns and application via pattern-matching. Reductions are allowed in patterns. The framework is particularly suited as a metalanguage for encoding rewriting logics and logical systems where proof terms have a special syntactic constraints, as in term rewriting systems, and rule-based languages. PLF is a conservative extension of the well-known Edinburgh Logical Framework LF. Because of sophisticated pattern matching facilities PLF is suitable for verification and manipulation of HXML documents.

1989

We are pursuing a programme of research in document representation. The principal aim of this research is to develop a document description language that has a precise formal semantics, that is fully expressive of the constructs typical of traditional (procedural) document description languages, that is constraint-based, and that cleanly separates specifications ofform and content. The research is currently in the first of three envisioned three phases. In the first phase we are formalising the Office Document Architecture (ODA) by faithfully translating ODA document descriptions into logic programmes. The translation utilises highly restricted forms of Prolog programmes. 1 In the second phase we will explore various enhancements of ODA's expressive power that are immediately apparent upon freeing the translation from having to adhere to the initial restrictive conventions. Finally, we will explore and articulate a constraint logic programming language having "built-in" constructs for expressing both primitive and composite document description concepts.