By multiple languages, we mean a DTD that is used to author in more than one language independently. For example, one author could be using the DTD to author in English while another author is using it on another system to author in German. Some of the language-specific factors to consider are:

Dates are displayed differently in different countries. If you have an element in your DTD with a date attribute, you can divide the date in three separate values: month, day, and year. The FOSI can be coded to output the date appropriately depending on the language.

Generated text such as “note” and “caution” identifiers would have to be specific to each language. Some users tag nouns and adjectives so that their order can be reversed for different languages. The DTD would specify the ordering of these elements for the different languages. In this case, the top level element in the DTD would have an attribute the FOSI could use to output the correct translation for generated text. This attribute is also used to assign the right hyphenation dictionary for the language.

Punctuation varies from place to place. In the United States a period (.) is used for a decimal point. Some countries use a comma (,) instead.