Ilana, there's a good paper on the IBM developerWorks site that should give you an introduction to XML, structured documentation, information typing, and IBM's DITA. It also has links to other useful resources on XML and these other topics: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-dita1/index.html "The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation." The best known SGML DTD for structured documentation is DocBook. I think that's what Tenix uses (Bill?). IBM has its own SGML DTD called IBMIDDoc, which was designed with traditional long paper manuals in mind. DITA is IBM's newish DTD, this time implemented in XML and designed for flexible, topic-based documents and many different output formats. Think of SGML like Papa Bear's chair: too big and hard for most people. HTML is Baby Bear's chair: too small and restrictive. XML is (meant to be) like Mama Bear's chair: just right. You wouldn't necessarily use DITA or DocBook yourself, but once you're comfortable with the concepts in the paper I quoted above, you have a flying head start on whichever XML-based documentation system you do end up with. I work on a set of very old (and old-fashioned) software manuals in IBMIDDoc. If my contract gets extended I should get a chance to rewrite, retag and restructure them using DITA and info typing principles. Should be fun and 'a great little learner' -- fingers crossed. Good luck. --- Stuart Burnfield Information Developer Australian Programming Centre Form follows function -- that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. -- Frank Lloyd Wright ************************************************** To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field. To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. To search the austechwriter archives, go to www.freelist.org/archives/austechwriter To contact the list administrator, send a message to austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx **************************************************