How to Deal with XML

To arrange XML authoring, you can ask for a consultation or for a complete solution. Or you can do it yourself - the following steps will guide you through the process.

Choose an XML Format

There are several popular XML formats that may be suitable for your XML documents. Alternatively, you can create your own XML format.

DITA - The Darwin Information Typing Architecture

The DITA XML format encourages writing of content as small, self-contained, modular topics that can be reused in different deliverables and single-sourced in a variety of ways. This topic-oriented approach emphasizes modularity and reuse of topics as concise units of information, being opposed to writing long book-oriented files such as Docbook.

Docbook

Unlike DITA's topic-oriented content, Docbook XML documents have a linear structure that corresponds to a typical book with its chapters and sections. Among other differences, the Docbook XML format offers you a fixed set of elements and attributes while the DITA XML format allows you to define custom information types based on existing ones.

Or Create Your Own XML Format

Despite the wide choice of available XML formats, you still may need to create your own in-house XML file type.

Define Structure

XML allows you to define your own structure of an XML document with the list of legal elements and attributes. This can be done by means of XML Schema or DTD .

Design Presentation

Information about how to display content is defined not in the XML document itself but in a separate CSS or XSLT stylesheet or using JavaScript.

Decide Where to Store Your XML Documents

It is important to decide how you are going to store your XML documents so that they can be easily accessed and are safe from loss and corruption.

File System

File systems are databases used to store and organize documents. They can be of different types (disk/flash/network) offering useful features such as journaling/versioning.

Content Management System

Content management systems are computer applications used to create, edit, manage, store, version, search and publish various kinds of content.

Find an Appropriate XML Authoring Tool

To author XML documents, you need an XML editor. An XML editor should not be confused with an XML development environment that is used to code things like XSL stylesheets or XML schemas.

XML editors are available of different types: textual, graphical, and WYSIWYG. Serna Enterprise XML editor and Serna Free XML editor are WYSIWYG editors with built-in support for popular XML formats, including DITA, Docbook, and TEI, and the ability to work with your own XML formats.