DTD Design

We offer a consulting service to help design a new publication or application, aiming at efficient XML methods and a good DTD/Schema.

Considerations are:

• Economical data capture
• Support for all potential uses
• Support for required output formats

Legacy Data Conversion

Many businesses and publishers have valuable data that must be used in the future but which is not currently marked up for this purpose.

Generally this data needs to be given new markup (XML) to be used with a Company or Publication DTD.

The main methods of achieving this are:

• Manual rekeying, using an authoring tool (eg. XMetaL)
• Digital scanning of printed pages, giving mostly only raw data without markup
• Copying the old files to new, by a program that infers meaning of the old markup and inserts the new XML automatically
• X-ICE interactive conversion environment

Choice of method

Whichever method is chosen, it is necessary for the design of the new data structure to be established first, and the DTD or Schema properly designed.

The choice of method depends on how the legacy data is held at present. Important factors are

• Re-keying and scanning introduce literal errors in the data, and require extensive proofing
• Re-keying and scanning require detailed markup of the copy for insertion of the XML markup
• Conversion by program requires original markup to be present to allow the program to infer the data structure, and is rarely completely automatic
• Conversion by program avoids introduction of literal errors in the data, but lacks flexibility when dealing with unusual constructions

Design Procedure

We recommend publishing and data conversion projects should be started with a feasibility study to outline:

• DTD and XML markup strategy
• Style definitions for the required range of output formats using the data
• Examination of legacy data to decide appropriate conversion method

XML Conversion Summary

The following table summarises the types of conversion to or from XML normally used by Turn-Key Systems. Note that all references to XML apply equally to SGML.

Contact us for more information.