There is further complication with the fact that Panorama Free (and
presumably Panorama Viewer) are intended as tools to view and not to
create Panorama stylesheets. One cannot use Panorama Free to view
files located on a local drive, only those delivered through an http
server. So while one might be able to reverse engineer the Synex syntax
as Mr. Johnston describes, you might not necessarily be easily able to
edit and view them locally. There are also version inconsistencies in
Panorama products in the width of the spacing defined by a tab. This
accounts for some irregular displays one sees when using Panorama to
view finding aids that have columns and the columns do not seem to
align.

Michael
Michael Fox
Head of Processing
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Blvd West
St. Paul MN 55102-1906
phone: 651-296-1014
fax: 651-296-9961
[log in to unmask]
**NOTE NEW AREA CODE EFFECTIVE JULY 12, 1998**

> ----------
> From: Pete Johnston[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 1998 2:23 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list EAD
> Subject: Re: Panorama style sheets
>
> On Wed, 16 Sep 1998 Massimo Castellacci asked
>
> > I need documentation on creating style sheets for ead documents with
> > Panorama free.
> > Could anyone help me?
>
> As far as I know, Softquad only provide documentation on how to
> create stylesheets and navigators via the dialog interface which is
> built into Panorama Pro (and, I assume, their Panorama Publisher
> product) and which is _not_ part of Panorama Free or Panorama Viewer.
> Basically, I guess Softquad intended Panorama Free and Panorama
> Viewer as tools for document "readers" who weren't interested in
> setting up their own documents for "publication".
>
> (If you haven't seen Panorama Pro, basically the document display
> looks similar to that of the viewer, but you can right click on the
> content of an element in the main body of the display and set up
> style characteristics via a dialog - if you try this in Panorama
> Free, it tells you to buy Panorama Pro!)
>
> Without Panorama Pro/Publisher, it might be difficult... Having said
> that, the stylesheet which is generated via this dialog process is
> itself an SGML-encoded document, encoded according to the Synex
> Stylesheet Explorer DTD (which comes with Panorama Free as a file
> called "sheet.ent" in the CATALOG sub-directory).
>
> I don't know of any documentation of this DTD. If you have a look at
> the content of a few stylesheet documents (i.e. the .ssh files which
> are shipped over the Web with an EAD-encoded document) which other
> EAD document publishers have set up, then it's not too difficult to
> see how the style characteristics are encoded - essentially a series
> of <STYLE> elements with the TAG attribute identifying the element
> (possibly qualified by ancestry) and sub-elements identifying
> characteristics like <FONT-SIZE>.
>
> I really wouldn't like to be trying to set up a stylesheet from
> scratch by this means, but using an existing stylesheet as a basis
> and making modifications on a trial-and-error basis might be
> workable, especially if your application of the EAD markup is fairly
> close to the other publisher's.
>
> You can usually locate the .ssh files in the web browser's cache
> after downloading an EAD document from a remote source. Alternatively
> some early implementors made their stylesheets available explicitly
> via ftp. e.g. Library of Congress at
>
> ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/american.memory/ead/
>
> I'm sure there are others out there....
>
> Pete Johnston
> ====================================================
> Pete Johnston (Effective Records Management Project)
> Archives & Business Records Centre
> University of Glasgow
> 77-81 Dumbarton Road
> Glasgow G11 6PP E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
> Scotland, U.K. URL: http://www.gla.ac.uk/InfoStrat/ERM/
>
> Tel: (UK) 0141 339 8855 ext. 2166 or (UK) 0141-330-4159
> Fax: (UK) 0141-330-4158
>