XML Development

We wrote the book. Literally.

This book is designed to teach anyone working in data-intensive publishing how XML can be leveraged to make the job of presenting data easier. While the XML discussions within the book are general, FrameMaker is used for all of the examples since it supports a wide variety of XML import and export options.

DTD Development or Modification (Cleanup)

DTD development—or FrameMaker EDD development—is tricky. Things can go wrong along the way. Or, your needs can change. Or, you might want to change but no longer have someone on-staff who knows your documents.

We can help. We have worked with documentation for many industries and understand documents. We also know how to make element lists that really work the way that you need them to work.

Additionally, we understand XML and can help you modify existing EDD and DTD elements to be more suited to XML...or to move your content into a database system using XML.

DTD/Schema Creation

Organizations of all sizes are beginning to realize how content and its reuse across the enterprise can improve productivity—and the bottom line. The need for change is driven by the desire to better manage information assets (documents, creative ideas, illustrations, charts, graphics, multimedia, etc.) and eliminate costly processes that fail to facilitate the effective and consistent re-use of content. At the heart of managing content for re-use, however lies the job of exposing the underlying structure of that information.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) DTD

Managed by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) 1.0 standard was released for public review in early 2005. DITA is designed for content creators, providing a framework for easily authoring online help, user guides, website content, and more. Content creators who use DITA author content in a topic-based tree, with information "typed" by using different subelements. The four main elements are: topic, task, concept, and reference. The real beauty of DITA is that it provides an architecture -- unlike other DTDs -- that allows for easy expansion through specializations (customizations to the DTD). A schema is also available for DITA.

DOCBOOK XML DTD

Available by download from many places, and installed with many tools as a "freebie", the DocBook XML DTD gives users absolutely every element they might need to create software or hardware documentation. However, DocBook may not be the right choice for some authors, especially those unfamiliar with authoring structured XML content. Additionally, authors have complained that the number of elements contained in DocBook is overwhelming (over 300 valid elements are included) and that as a result, using the DTD is more difficult than it ought to be. For that reason, some organizations have adopted the Simplified DocBook DTD (detailed below).

Simplified DocBook XML DTD

According to DocBook.org, the Simplified DocBook DTD "is a small subset of the DocBook XML DTD" (105 elements) created to help authors who may be overwhelmed by sheer number of valid elements in the original DocBook XML DTD (over 300 elements).

U.S. Military DTDs

Recently, the Department of the Navy (DON) released its Naming & Design Rules (NDR) version 2.0 for creating and working with XML structures. Version 2.0 firmly establishes a common structure and language for authoring and presenting content, and enables the discovery and reuse of common content elements across the naval enterprise.

From a client

My preliminary testing shows that your script pops into the production flow between the merge_topics.xsl and the xsl-fo for the PDFs, and it works as advertised. THANK YOU! Your comments in the code show that the problem was at least as complex as I had anticipated, if not moreso.

I appreciate your timely and thoughtful solution. I will be placing the script into our production flow today and giving it a full production workout on a large manual. If anything crops up, I will let you know, but initial results indicate that it appears to be successful.