[ANSI-Smalltalk] Welcome

[Ralph Johnson]

i suggest that we develop an XML format for representing the standard,
and a script to convert it into something printable, perhaps by
generating LaTeX or even PDF directly.  It will not necessarily
generate all the headers that the standards body needs, those can be
added manually whenever we make an official submission.  We will think
of the XML document as the official standard, while they will think of
the final PDF as the official standard.

The advantage of an XML format is that we can use it for many things,
such as test case generation or code generation.  It could be used by
type checkers, reverse engineering tools, or bug detectors.  It would
be a living document, in contrast to an official standard, which is
always a check-point in time.

Lots of people write books this way.  Martin Fowler has Ruby scripts
that translate XML to LaTeX.  We woud use Smalltalk, of course, and it
would be amusing to see if we could stick to ANSI Smalltalk in the
conversion script.

-Ralph Johnson