This is a book I wrote over a period of about 3 months sometime around 2002. I have forgotten the details. It was accepted and slated for publishing by the SAS Press. I do not recall why it stalled in the process and was never published. Perhaps because it is written in LaTeX which I remember being a problem for them.

I no longer have any interest in this, I enjoyed creating all of things I did for SAS. Helping our users, writing papers and extending the possibilities of the software. That was a long time ago. I have no respect for SAS.

ODS Markup and Tagsets are still in use, so maybe there are people interested in this. So here it is. I´m not sure what it might take to get it compiled into a pdf, but should not be too difficult.

At first glance, the ODS Markup destination looks just like all the other ODS destinations. It has the same syntax and options as ODS HTML. But ODS Markup is different. The other ODS destinations have a fixed output type. The RTF destination can only create RTF output. The printer destination can create postscript, PCL, and PDF. But ODS Markup can create any number of output types, all of which can be created or modified by anyone.

ODS Markup is able to do this because it is really a framework which uses a tagset to define what it should print to it's files. The other destinations, including the old HTML destination were hard coded and compiled as a part of the SAS executable. We can create and use as many different tagsets as we like. SAS ships 52 different tagsets. ODS Markup is rather chameleon-like because of this. ODS HTML is really ODS Markup. So is the CSV destination, and CHTML, excelXP, LaTeX, Troff, etc. The only difference between these different ODS destinations is the tagset that is in use. They are all really ODS Markup.

When we use ODS Markup we are using a tagset. The tagset determines the type of output. Therefore, a tagset defines an output destination! This realization has far reaching implications. It means that we can change the html that ODS HTML generates. It means we can create a new HTML destination with your corporate style and headings. We can create a new XML destination to allow data interchange with a business partner or client. The possiblities are endless.

It stands to reason, that if we want to use ODS Markup to our best advantage, what we really want to do is use tagsets. So that is what we are going to explore. What are these tagsets and how do we use them? You will find that tagsets can simplify otherwise complex problems in a way that allows reuse and flexibility that would not be available with out them.