Proofing is a tedious but essential step of text conversion. Two types of tools that take some of the pain out of the process are syntax checkers, and viewers that expand the tags.
Syntax checkers examine a file for such things as begin-end tag sets that aren't balanced and structural or nesting tags that aren't in an acceptable order. Most data preparation houses can write such programs for specific jobs.
A viewer capable of expanding the tags—hiding them from view and performing their function, such as bolding a string of text—makes it far easier to visually proof a document than if it is cluttered with tags. The availability of this feature alone is a compelling reason for converting source files to RTF. They can then be loaded into Microsoft Word for Windows for proofing and additional editing or tagging. The resulting file can be saved in RTF format, for input into the next stage of the document processing cycle.
You may discover that existing electronic files don't match the current printed material you want incorporated into the application. This can happen because corrections are typically made manually near print time, and sometimes those changes don't get made in the source text files as well. If you find discrepancies, you'll need to add another step to collect all the changes and incorporate them into the electronic files.