\title{Portable Documents: Why Use SGML?} \author[David
Barron]{David Barron\\ Department of Electronics and Computer
Science\\ University of Southampton} \begin{Article}
\section{Introduction} In this article we present a few ideas as
a framework for the discussion of portable documents. We address
a number of questions: \begin{itemize} \item What are portable
documents? \item Who needs them, and why? \item How to produce
them, now and in the future \end{itemize} \section{Documents}
Traditionally, a document was a file (or a deck of cards), and
consisted solely of text. Today, documents are typically {\em
compound}, a mixture of text and graphics (bit-map or line art)
that can be rendered on paper or screen. Additionally, they may
include hypertext links (in which case they can only be viewed
on screen). A recent development is the ability to incorporate
video and sound in a compound document, either embedded within
the document or linked by a pointer: such a document is a {\em
multimedia} document. Hypertex