Overview
ISO 12083:1994 - Information and documentation - Electronic manuscript preparation and markup - specifies a set of SGML-based document type definitions (DTDs) and supporting facilities to create and interchange structured publications. The standard defines DTDs for Books, Articles, Serials (collections of articles) and a standalone Mathematics DTD that can be embedded in other SGML applications. It also provides the SGML declaration and conformance rules needed to produce interoperable electronic manuscripts suitable for authors, publishers, libraries and database vendors.
Key topics and technical requirements
- SGML declaration and syntax: specifies the reference concrete syntax and APPINFO options (e.g., SDA, HYTIME) for document instances, conforming to ISO 8879.
- Document Type Definitions (DTDs): complete DTDs for Books, Articles, Serials and an embeddable Mathematics DTD to support formulas and math structures.
- Conformance rules: guidance on using the reference concrete syntax, declaring user-defined elements externally, overriding parameter entities, naming conventions and restrictions on aliasing existing elements.
- Flexibility and extensibility: elements and entity sets may be removed or modified to fit specific applications (e.g., authoring vs. interchange), while preserving interoperability.
- Registration recommendation: encourages registration of DTDs for interchange applications under ISO/IEC 9070.
- Support files and entities: references to standard entity sets and notations (special characters, diacritics, math symbols) to ensure consistent character handling.
- Normative interoperability references: relies on ISO 8879 (SGML), ISO/IEC TR 9573 (techniques for applying SGML), ISO/IEC 10744 (HyTime), ISO 8601, ISO 3166 and related standards.
Applications and users
ISO 12083:1994 is a practical toolkit for:
- Publishers and editors creating structured workflows for books, journals and serial publications.
- Authors working in structured manuscript environments to separate content from presentation.
- Digital libraries and archives needing standardized, machine-readable document architectures for long-term preservation and exchange.
- Software developers and vendors building editorial systems, conversion tools, typesetting pipelines or content management systems that require interoperable SGML DTDs.
- Scientific and technical publishers who need embedded mathematics support for formulas and equations.
Practical use cases include standardized manuscript preparation, interchange of published content between systems, automated table of contents and index generation, and embedding of mathematical notation into publication DTDs.
Related standards
- ISO 8879:1986 - Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
- ISO/IEC TR 9573 - Techniques for applying SGML
- ISO/IEC 10744:1992 (HyTime) - Hypermedia/time-based structuring
- ISO/IEC 9070:1991 - Registration procedures for public text owner identifiers
- ISO 8601, ISO 3166 - date/time and country code formats
Keywords: ISO 12083:1994, SGML, document type definition, DTD, electronic manuscript preparation, markup, Books DTD, Articles DTD, Serials DTD, Mathematics DTD, ISO 8879, structured publishing, interchange.