BSI has a long history with standards development and publishing that began in the early 20th century. It began experimenting with XML in the 2000s and adopted the ISO STS in 2014. This resulted in various business, technology, people, and process challenges in transitioning to the new schema. However, benefits included increased automation, speed, flexibility, and opportunities to develop knowledge products. Going forward, BSI remains actively involved in NISO STS development and sees opportunities in competition while still supporting a single standard for the ISO ecosystem.
13. Snapshot from 2015 – XML ‘cohorts’
12/10/2017
CEN legacy
conversion XML
CLC legacy
conversion
XML A1 - ISO legacy conversion (Innodata)
ISO
operational
conversion
2012
A2 - ISO eXtyles
conversion post 2012
BSI Compliance
Navigator legacy
documents
CEN eXtyles
XML
A3 - BSI
Compliance
Navigator
standards
A: ISOSTS
BSI
Eurocodes+
standards
B: BSISDS
A1 – ISO legacy ~12,000
A2 – ISO eXtyles
originated
~2,000
A3 – BSI Compliance
Navigator (includes
some based on A2)
~2,000
A4 – ISO eXtyles
originated
~500
A5 – CEN legacy
conversion
~1,000
A6 – ISO operational
conversion (period
between legacy
conversion and adoption
of eXtyles)
Unknown
A7 – Non-standards
content for Compliance
Navigator
~100
A8 – CLC legacy
conversion
~100
B – Eurocodes + (active) ~230
14. Practical examples of problems faced
1 Numeric character references being used in ID values when their intended use is for
display
<std std-id="DIN 50 100/02.78" type="undated">
<std-ref>DIN 50 100/02.78</std-ref>
</std>
2. MathML anywhere?
12/10/2017
Our product certification mark, Kitemark was registered in 1903 and is still used today, with over 3,000 licences. Our Royal Charter status was awarded in 1929 and still provides today our guiding principles on how we operate.
BSI were founding members of both ISO, the International Standardization Organization and CEN, the European Committee for Standardization and we are still actively involved today
We originally opened our testing labs in Hemel Hempstead in 1950 and have grown our product certification business through the acquisition of specialist gas testing labs from in Loughborough.
More recently acquisitions have included NCSI, the second largest certification body in Australia which has strengthened our expertise in food certification.
The acquisition of specialist consultancy businesses, EORM, who provide environmental, health and safety consultancy and training and Espion who provide specialist information security and penetration testing services ensures that whatever our clients needs, BSI can provide a solution.
Address specific needs – typesetting large looseleaf volumes with short lifespans
Domain specific products with richer feature set
I’m going to talk through the journey in more detail, outlining some issues and things to consider if you’re setting off down this path, and reflections on what we might have done differently or are seeking to improve now.
And while there have been and continue to be challenges, there are some immediate benefits, and we’re obviously thinking of future benefits too. And that future is very much tied to the success of NISO STS as a standard for standards.
Some common themes among standards publishers
Do we need to change?
What do our customers want?
How do we persuade them to want more?
How do we develop XML-based products?
Are we still publishers, or software vendors?
How do we transform ourselves to be an XML-Early or XML-First publisher?
Remember that we are looking back on the journey now, so most of this is behind us. But even now, some of these questions re-appear, although sometimes the words change. The most common one we hear now is ‘but what is smart content?’ And while we’re not hearing so many ‘you should build an app’ comments, we’re now being asked how XML can help us with blockchain, or AI, or any number of other technology buzzwords.
A relatively innocuous looking issue that causes significant problems when the application of the XML is not towards print.
Sometimes scale helps, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Enables BSI to build a semantically consistent content repository
Enables BSI to produce enriched XML for Digital Product and Typesetting
Automated transformation of XML variance
Actioned within an XProc that sequences XSLTs
A two-part process:
1. Identification – what structures are present in this XML
2. Transformation – should identified structures be marked-up differently
Driven by a ‘QA Spec’ of identified ‘Features’ with associated XSLTs
QA Spec controlled by Online Production
Versioned controlled
Applicable version written into the XML
Acts a library of individual Features for normalisation
Any issue identified in PDF that can be influenced from the XML will be included in the spec
Changes to XML mark-up, driven by governance decisions can be made by Normalisation