1st Word Users Guide

The 1st Word tool is used by the standards developing organizations to take the database maintained by the Mini-Edit tool and render it into a complex printed document for publishing and balloting in the somewhat unique processes used by each SDO. The tool was originally developed internally by SCSC when we became a contractor to several different SDOs developing ITS standards and found it in our own self interest to automate much of the process. This reduced the drudgery inherent in creating a document of many hundreds of pages from weeks to a few hours as well as dramatically reducing the number of errors in the final product. Other standards organizations desired to have access to this tool, and as this also benefited our client who wanted to re-use their entries, the tool was born. At this point in time this tool produces ALL of the active ITS data and message set standards except the NTCIP device standards work which still uses some alternative methods in order to support the MIB process.

In order to obtain this tool you need to be either an SDO or a consultant working for an SDO producing ITS standards, (i.e be one of the Data Stewards). It is not distributed to the general public. The SDO community uses this tool to produce materials which bear their copyright. As you might expect, they remain concerned that end users not be in a position to reverse-engineer these documents in a fashion that would be found harmful.

In order to actually use the tool once you have it, you will need a good database, but also a number of collateral documents specific to the standard that you are developing. This includes all the front and back matter that traditionally is found and used in the creation of a standard. This tool will not magically create that for you; you must still author it by hand in some way. What this tool will do for you is automate the collection and merging of these separate parts of the document with other parts that come from the data dictionary. You will also need a set of style sheets for the SDO, meeting the style guidelines that they use. When it is done, you will still need to do a few things by hand before the document is complete (it is named first Word, not last word, in order to reflect this).