Re: Doc Book DTD? (Revisited)

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The description provided below is intended to underscore the complexities of
FM+SGML Element Definition Document (EDD) design. It was extracted from a
paper describing an EDD that I designed.

This paper was created from an EDD/template (the EDD itself has nearly 200
pages). The EDD includes 155 element definitions for creating different
information types and document objects. Those elements contain over 1000
format rules driven by attribute values and/or element structural context.
Over 200 multi-use format change lists in the EDD are put together in
numerous combinations to implement the formatting specified in those format
rules.

The template's paragraph catalog contains over 100 format-rule-specified
paragraph tags, and many of those tags are deployed for multiple uses and
contexts that modify their formatting, as specified by format-rule-selected
format change lists.

An extreme case is the paragraph tag used in this paragraph. It is specified
in a number of different elements, and format rules in those elements can
produce well over 100 different formatting variations of it.

If the same template had been implemented for unstructured documents, its
paragraph catalog would have to contain well over 500 tags to duplicate the
EDD/template's formatting capabilities.

Unlike an unstructured template, this EDD/template can accommodate a number
of different document types, including memos, glossaries, appendixes, point
page revision packages, text insets, standalone papers like this one, and
multi-file books made up of chapters, in which some of the chapters span two
or more files. Additionally, the EDD provides many user-specified formatting
options, some of which can significantly alter the appearance of an entire
document. It would require many different unstructured templates to
replicate the full range of the EDD's capabilities.
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     | Nullius in Verba |
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Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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