Conference Tutorials

Introduction to Schematron for Publishing QA

Debbie Lapeyre & Wendell Piez
Mulberry Technologies

No matter what XML modeling language you are using to define your documents, there are some validations that grammar-based schema languages just can't express or that, for practical or business reasons, you do not want to build into your basic XML models. Solution? Schematron: the simple reporting and validation language. Schematron is a rules-based validation/reporting language that works by making assertions about patterns found in XML documents and reporting back messages about the truth (or otherwise) of those assertions. There is no need to validate that the complete structure of a document is correct; just check one small constraint, or three. Schematron is small, powerful, and easy to learn. It can provide the best error/reporting messages in the world (you craft them for your specific situation). Even if you already use a schema language, Schematron can help for fast checking; pinpoint reporting of element and attributes presence, absence, values and value ranges, and co-constraints and other hard-to-crack edge cases. Schematron is not a big scary programming language like XSLT or XQuery, this is a little report writer we can all use.

The class will illustrate Schematron with commonly used configurations in a document-based environment. The intended audience includes technical managers, programmers, QA testers, and power users who need to do some of their own QA. This tutorial is especially good for the the technical folks who have heard of Schematron, but not had the time or energy to find out what it's all about. Basic knowledge of XML tagging is helpful, but no prior Schematron, XPath, or XSLT is knowledge required for this class, although some XPath experience will make writing Schematron much easier.

Applying DITA to Narrative Documents

Eliot Kimber,
Really Strategies, Inc.

This tutorial explores specific techniques for applying DITA to narrative documents. Participants will use off-the-shelf tools to design and create a custom DITA-based application for narrative documents typical of mass-market and trade books. Participants will see a document taken through a complete publishing cycle, from initial content creation through production of Web and print final form products. The tutorial will explore the core DITA features required by this type of application. The intended audience include developers, managers, and power users seeking to understand DITA concepts and constructs, and working with the standard by developing and using DITA applications. Basic knowledge of XML tagging is helpful.