Step 9: Have Others Check Your Work

Just when you think you’re done, you’re in for a surprise. Someone who works with service bulletins daily might say, “That definition sounds great, but the effectivity paragraph hasn’t been part of the front matter for three months now!” Change happens all the time.

Managers do not want to involve their troops in decisions and, consequently, often have no idea of how documents are used and how work really gets done. This is why it is so important to get the advice of the document users early on.

Once you fix the problems that others find, you’re ready for the final step.

Step 10: Revise and Test Your Work as Needed

This process is not complete until there are no more hang ups. All problems must be accounted for, or else you must continue revising and testing your work.

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• See “Dealing with Mixed-Content Models” and “Dealing with Ambiguous Content Models,” pp. 258-259

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Consultants are a big help in this area. They can point out ambiguous definitions and mixed content. They might tell you to start all over again. That is not likely, but they will let you know whether you have stumbled into a hornet’s nest of problems. Their advice can save you time in the long run.

From Here…

Defining elements is only part of the adventure of SGML. You must also declare them, add attributes, add entities, and refine your document analysis. The process eventually flows together. While you learn SGML, though, you have to take it step by step.

For more information, refer to the following:

•  Chapter 8, “Relating Elements to Each Other,” covers hierarchy, order, and occurrence.

•  Chapter 9, “Extending Document Architecture,” discusses how to add different capabilities to your documents.

•  Chapter 10, “Following General SGML Declaration Syntax,” includes detailed information on declaring elements, attributes, and entities.

•  Chapter 11, “Using DTD Components,” discusses element groups and their design implications.

•  Chapter 16, “Markup Challenges and Specialized Content,” covers document design for standard data and conditional documents.

•  Chapter 25, “Handling Specialized Content and Delivery,” shows you how to deal with tables, math, and other specialized content.