When delivering content for an S1000D Project, the data modules need to be:

  • well-formed content if delivering an XML S1000D Project
  • valid to the S1000D Schema version that has been assigned to your S1000D Project
  • valid to the project BREX if one has been provided

Your S1000D Authoring Tool should guide you through what is required to be inserted and assist with ensuring your S1000D data module is valid to the appropriate S1000D Schema.

Most S1000D authoring tools will also allow you to temporarily put objects in that are not allowed, but will warn you and highlight what you have done wrong. Then when saving your file, most tools will again highlight that the document is currently not valid to what the S1000D Schema requires.

What tools will I need to author valid S1000D data?

When selecting a tool or even multiple tools for your team, you need to consider the authors’ experience with S1000D and S1000D authoring tools, and with SGML, XML and structured content in general. Some teams have a handful of authors who are highly experienced with complex structured authoring tools, but they receive most of the content from subject matter experts (SMEs) and engineers that do not want to know what an element or an attribute is.

Often the approach in the past has been to have subject matter experts work in products such as MS Word and specialist teams convert or copy and paste content into the structured authoring environment.

With S1000D Authoring, the modular size of the documents has allowed less complex and more user friendly authoring tools to appear on the market. This has enabled subject matter experts to add content directly into a structured document without them knowing they are writing to S1000D.

Note: If your organization uses disparate systems such as parts databases or product lifecycle management (PLM) tools, you should also consider how authors can easily access and re-use data held in those systems from their S1000D authoring environment. This content sharing capability can dramatically reduce authoring time and improve data accuracy.

Find out more

For more information about S1000D Authoring options, visit our S1000D Authoring Tools page.