Structured Documents

This page contains links to standards and other information on structured documents, i.e. documents with a semantic content structure that can be transformed into a variety of display outputs.

Standards

The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is the ancestor of today’s popular markup languages, such as HTML and XML. Conceived before the Internet and finalized as ISO 8879:1986, SGML does not have a “home page”; the above page is retained by XML Cover Pages as a historical archive.

Sadly, many links you’ll find on that page are already dead. A Guide to SGML has a few more that are still alive: A Gentle Introduction to SGML (another mirror of the HTML version), SGML and PDF – Why We Need Both, and Reasons to Learn SGML. Note that the Document Type Definition (DTD) format, still in use for HTML and XML schemas, was originally designed for SGML – hence its peculiar syntax.

Most recent markup language standards, including CSS, HTML, XML, XSD, XSL, and so on, are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They also provide a very useful Markup Validation Service and a Link Checker for HTML and XHTML documents.

DocBook & DITA

DITA and the older DocBook are two OASIS standards for structured documents of usually (but not necessarily) technical nature. Essentially, DITA and DocBook are complex schemas that define a hierarchy of content tags for XML documents. The system resembles LaTeX but does not include a typesetting engine. You can transform documents into printable or viewable format using free converters (e.g. XSLT style sheets) from the DITA Open Toolkit or The DocBook Project, or you can purchase an integrated solution like Adobe FrameMaker.

Ironically, getting good documentation on these document standards is quite difficult. So far I managed to get three printed books on DITA, and two of them were useless (see below about the third). FrameMaker comes with some documentation, but naturally focuses on the integration of the standards with FrameMaker. So you will have to rely on the official reference documentation. For DITA, download the DITA Architectural Specification at the OASIS Standards repository. For DocBook, download DocBook: The Definitive Guide and perhaps DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide.

Scriptorium Publishing Services provides a great deal of information on using XML-based structured documents in technical writing. For example, check out Sarah O’Keefe’s webcast Attractive DITA: It is possible! and her extensive FrameMaker 10 review. Tony Self’s DITA Style Guide offers a good concise overview and usage guidelines for DITA 1.1 & 1.2 – it’s the one DITA book I can recommend.

This page was last updated on 19 February 2012. Current version available at http://www.kynosarges.org/