
                          SGML Entity Management
                          ----------------------

                  Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>

                                2026-01-29


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Abstract
--------

     This document provides a guidelines for implementation dependent
     Entity management of SGML entities for Debian systems.  This defines
     the mapping of _External Public Identifiers_ to _System Identifiers_.
     (In other words, this document covers the use of `/usr/lib/sgml',
     entity naming, and catalog files.


Copyright Notice
----------------

     Copyright (C)1998 Manoj Srivastava

     This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
     under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
     Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
     later version.


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Contents
--------

     1.        Introduction and Scope

     2.        Proposed mapping of public identifiers to system identifiers

     3.        Location of miscellaneous files

     4.        Examples


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1. Introduction and Scope
-------------------------

     This document was written by Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
     with contributions from Mark W.  Eichin <eichin@kitten.gen.ma.us> and
     Adam P.  Harris <aph@debian.org>.  This document is part of the
     `sgml-base' package.

     This guideline is intended to be intepreted as SGML sub-policy (not
     official policy).  While this document does not carry the weight of
     official policy, it is sufficient basis for the submission of bugs
     against a package.  This may change at a latter date.

     Entity Management is generally left up to the implementation, and
     hence there are no extant Standards that cover this.  However, lack of
     an established convention would prevent different segments of the SGML
     subsystem from co-operating with each other, hence it is important
     that a policy be established so that SGML package maintainers may
     depend on other parts of the system behaving consistently.


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2. Proposed mapping of public identifiers to system identifiers
---------------------------------------------------------------

     SGML can refer to an external file (really an entity) with an
     <external identifier>: this is a <public identifier> or a <system
     identifier>, or both.

     A typical public identifier looks like

          	  PUBLIC "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN"

     where `ISO 8879-1986' is the owner, `ENTITIES' is the text class and
     `Added Latin 1' is the text description, and `EN' is language.

     A system identifier looks like

          	  SYSTEM "htmlplus.dtd"

     where `htmlplus.dtd' is a system-specific identifier.

     To map external identifiers to file names, one should first try the
     system identifier, as a file name, and then search entity catalog
     files and then search the list of file names derived from the public
     identifier.  The catalog format is according to SGML/Opens resolution
     on entity management.  The catalog consists of a series of entries and
     comments.  A comment is delimited by `--' like in a markup
     declaration.

     The fallback derivation of the file name is modelled after the `sgmls'
     environment variable <SGML_PATH>, and Emacs `psgml' mode's
     <sgml-public-map> variable.  There does not seem to be any official
     standards (this is left to the implementation), so this standard is
     simply an abstraction of real-world practice of SGML tools, and shall
     now be the standard for Debian systems, since this is the convention
     currently followed by all applications currently in Debian.

     Contiguous white space is compacted to a single space and replaced
     with an underscore (`_'); the characters `/' to `%' are also replaced
     with `_'.  The text class is down-cased.  The language specifier
     (i.e., `//EN') and anything following it should be removed.


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3. Location of miscellaneous files
----------------------------------

     There are a number of other files, though not entities referenced by
     Document instances, are still required by the SGML subsytem to parse
     or validate the document.  These files are also covered by this
     document.

     1.   Declaration Files: Any declaration file should be put in
          `/usr/lib/sgml/declaration'

     2.   Notations: These files go in `/usr/lib/sgml/notation'.


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4. Examples
-----------

     A few public and system identifiers pairings are shown below.

PUBLIC "ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN"
/usr/lib/sgml/ISO_8879-1986/entities/Added_Latin_1

"ISO 8879-1986//ENTITIES Added Math Symbols: Arrow Relations//EN"
/usr/lib/sgml/ISO_8879-1986/entities/Added_Math_Symbols:_Arrow_Relations

"-//IETF//DTD HTML Level 3//EN//3.0"
/usr/lib/sgml/IETF/dtd/HTML_Level_3.0

"-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict Level 3//EN"
/usr/lib/sgml/IETF/dtd/HTML_Strict_Level_3

"-//USA-DOD//DTD Table Model 951010//EN"
/usr/lib/sgml/USA-DOD/dtd/Table_Model_951010

     The first four actually exist in Debian.


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     SGML Entity Management

     Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>


     2026-01-29

