RE: About mil/heavy industries documentation standards (short answer)

["Broberg, Mats" <mabr -at- flir -dot- se>]

> Probably the primary function of these standards is to define 
> conventions for exchanging the content between different 
> organizations. More recently, they have also focussed on 
> issues of managing the content in database applications for 
> things like configuration management, versioning, validation, 
> etc. Having worked with some of the older military standards 
> that had a strong formatting component - I can say that the 
> formatting codes made the content more difficult to process - 
> and still required substantial work to turn the electronic 
> format into a display format.

Bill,

I would agree with you if the standard did not include a major section
about how documentation complying to the standard should be formatted.
But it does, and it does so in a mandatory way. There lies the reason
for my criticism: If it does mandate a special formatting, it should be
backed up with knowledge about how typography and page design works. And
it is not. 

However, the DTD itself says nothing about the presenatation of the
documentation - and if it would it would contradict the whole idea of
using a markup language - so there are no formatting codes that obstruct
further processing. 

Rumour has it, that ready-made stylesheets (FOSI, DSSSL, or XSL-FO) will
be included in future issues.

Best regards
Mats Broberg

Technical Documentation Manager
www.flirthermography.com