IS-Thought

Thinkers for the Information Society

(Formerly The SGML Centre)

As retirement beckons this website is being run-down. By the end of 2008 it will probably be no more, so please be prepared for its disappearance if you maintain links to it.

Who?     What?    Why?     Other Thoughts

Who

This website preserves knowledge that was gained over more than a decade by Martin Bryan while working as a private consultant, first trading as The SGML Centre and then as IS-Thought.

The SGML Centre was set up in 1993 to promote the use of ISO 8879, the Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) that forms the basis for much of the Internet, including the HTML Hypertext Markup Language and the Extensible Markup Language (XML). A key activity of The SGML Centre for much of the next decade was the setting up and maintenance of the European Commission's database on Information Society Standardization (DIFFUSE).

As XML took over from SGML as the main format for information dissemination over the Internet a name change was deemed necessary. In 2003 the name was changed to IS-Thought to reflect the wider scope of the company IS-Thought provided guidance on the application of standards, classification schemes and ontologies for the management of data within the Information Society. By combining well-established structured document markup techniques, such as HTML, XML and SGML, with metadata and semantic definition standards, such as Dublin Core, ISO 11179 Data Element Specifications, the Web Ontology Language and Topic Maps, IS-Thought introduced companies to the advantages of active knowledge management within their information spaces. 

What

This website contains a series of useful resources that I developed as a consultant, including an electronic copy of my book, Web SGML and HTML 4.0 Explained.

The website also contains a snapshop of the DIFFUSE project's website as it was when we last updated it in 2003.

The IS-Thought consultancy provided advice on the application of structured mark up and metadata standards, including:

• The W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• ISO 15836: The Dublin Core Metadata element set
• ISO 11179: Specification and Standardization of Data Elements 
• IEC 60245: Management data (metadata) for technical documents
• The W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps
• The W3C eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
• The W3C eXtensible Stylesheet Langauge (XSL)
• ISO 8879: Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
• HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
• Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime)
• Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL)
• Standard Vector Graphics (SVG)

Why

Among the papers  prepared for conferences, standards bodies, etc, as a consultant the following are available on-line:

• Managing the Multilingual Semantic Web
• Measuring the Dimensions of a Language
• Against assigning meaning to words
• 2+2=4: How can we solve such Mathematical Conundrums?
• Context - Philosophy's Unsolved Problem
• Datatypes for document content validation
• MULECO -- Multilingual Upper-Level Electronic Commerce Ontology  
• The case for a Multilingual Upper-Level Electronic Commerce Ontology  
• The role of process-controlled components in ebXML messages  
• The Role of Semantics in E-business
• Defining and Managing Semantics and Datatypes – Is there a role for ISO 13250 Topic Maps?  
• XML Schema for ISO 13250 Topic Maps
• Thoughts on the relationship between ontologies and philosophies
• Using XML Schemas to define B2B Datatypes
• Context: The key to understanding ontologies  
• Formal Definition of Semantic Concepts
• The need for process-based semantic sets
• Datatyping for Electronic Data Interchange
• Using HyTime for Scheduling Events
• An Introduction to the Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• An Introduction to SGML  

Other useful sources of information on information management standards include:

• International SGML Users Group
• OASIS, the Organization for Structured Information Standards
• The OASIS Cover Pages
• ISO/IEC 10646 Character Set

Webmaster: martin[at]is-thought.co.uk