Re: Doc Book DTD?

["Elaine M. Brennan" <ebrennan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:09 AM 5/7/99 -0700, Dan Emory wrote:

>At 11:29 AM 5/7/99 -0400, Bowlby, Garth wrote:

>>We're thinking about settling on the DocBook DTD, and building upon it as
>>needed.
>>But before we commit to a specific DTD and map all our paratags and
>>character tags to elements, we'd like to hear opposing or supporting
>>opinions from other Frame users:
>>What other DTDs are Frame+SGML users using and why?

>1. DocBook is the DTD/EDD from hell. Among other things, it probably takes
>the prize for being the most difficult one for authors to use. It's what you
>would expect for a DTD developed by a committee, the majority of whom were
>not working professional writers.

DocBook was never intended to be a DTD that comapnies used "as is", straight 
out of the box . As with many of the major SGML DTD initiatives, it was seen 
primarily as an interchange/meta dtd that individuals and companies
would/should 
customize to meet their own requirements. 

Unfortunately, all too many companies think that taking the time to
understand the 
requirements they have for their documentation is time wasted ... and they pay 
for it later. 

Rather than starting from your existing paragraph tags, start by trying to
understand
what kinds of content you have in your document set, what your requirements
are for 
using that content, and then see how those requirements map to DocBook, or
to CALS, 
or to Pinnacles, or to TIM or to ATA 2000, or to J2008 or to any one of a
horde of 
other standard DTDs that are available. 

Don't fall into the trap of "we've always formatted X this way" before you
need to -- 
it's a classic trap of the analysis phase of a project .... right up there
with "I can't 
use the same tags as Person X, because my content's different."  

The act of analysis is essentially a work of classification and sorting --
and the things
that are most alike (and therefore use common tags) and the things that are
most 
differentiated (and therefore require different tags) in your organization
are likely not 
to be exactly the same as anyone else's.  

If you simply adopt some one else's DTD without doing your own analysis
work, you're 
likely to end up with a DTD that's a little bit too big (leading to tag
abuse), a little bit too 
small (leading to constant tweaks and changes), a little bit too hot, or a
little bit too cold. 
You get the picture ;->. 

--Elaine 

---- 

Elaine M. Brennan                ebrennan@architag.com
Phone: +1 303 766-1336           Fax:   +1 303 699-8331
Senior Consultant                Pager: +1 888 770-9391 
Architag International           <http://architag.com/>http://architag.com 
Instructor
Architag University             
<http://architag.com/university>http://architag.com/university


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