2 Document Structure

An FSML document consists of three major components:

• The file begins with several lines of declarations and a root element, which describe the XML version, document type, file type, and basic formatting information about the file to be read.
• The FileData section defines all the parameters in the file including data type, location within the hierarchical structure of parameters, and documentation.
• The FileStructure section describes the process to be used for reading and writing the file data.

These components fit together in the following basic structure:

Structure	Sample FSML Code
Declarations	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE FileTypeSpecification SYSTEM "file:filename">
FileTypeSpecification begins	<FileTypeSpecification Attributes>
FileData begins	<FileData>
	Elements
FileData ends	</FileData>
FileStructure begins	<FileStructure>
	Elements
FileStructure ends	</FileStructure>
FileTypeSpecification ends	</FileTypeSpecification>

The next sections discuss each of these FSML requirements in depth:

• declarations and FileTypeSpecification are described in Section 2.1
• file data are described in Section 2.2
• file structure is described in Section 2.3.

In addition, some example FSML documents are provided in Section 3.