5.4. Tips for Designing and Customizing DTDs

DTD design and construction is part science and part art form. The basic concepts are easy enough, but managing a large DTD—maintaining hundreds of element and attribute declarations while keeping them readable and bug-free—can be a challenge. This section offers a collection of hints and best practices that you may find useful. The next section shows a concrete example that makes use of these practices.

5.4.1. Keep It Organized

DTDs are notoriously hard to read, but good organization always helps. A few extra minutes spent tidying up and writing comments can save you hours of scrutinizing later. Often, a DTD is its own documentation, so if you expect others to use it, clean code is doubly important.