XML Training: Introductions to the Standards

SGML Literacy

(1-day lecture)

Participants learn to read the files they are most likely to see in creating or working with SGML. This course is designed for people who want to understand the nuts and bolts of SGML files; people who have been using context-sensitive SGML editors but are unfamiliar with raw SGML; and people who have been reading narrative descriptions of SGML elements and graphic representations of SGML structure but don't know how to read a DTD.

The course discusses the rationale behind SGML and the principles underlying generic tagging, as well as the differences between SGML and other markup languages. Students learn about:

• Generic markup
• How SGML works
• Reading and using a DTD
  • DTD internal and external subsets
  • Element content models and exceptions
  • Attribute and entity declarations
  • Data content types (PCDATA, RCDATA, and CDATA)
  • Notations, NDATA, and SDATA
  • Markup minimization
  • DTD modularization
• Analyzing tagged documents for conformance to a DTD and the rules of SGML
• Correcting tagged documents until valid
• Reading marked section declarations and understanding how they work to include/exclude document or DTD portions, or turn off markup

In addition, instructors provide an overview of the SGML declaration, after which students should be able to read the most commonly modified portions of the SGML declaration and identify conflicts between the declaration, a DTD, and documents; also treated in this overview is the OASIS (SGML Open) catalog mechanism for resolving public identifiers.

Prerequisites: None.

Return to the Mulberry Home Page