Tips for implementing SVG Spec?

I'm planning to implement a subset of SVG in the near future for use
in a vector editor program I've been writing. (I'm mostly interested in
import/export, but think display would be useful too). Most of what I
know about SVG I got from the O'Reilly book plus my own test documents
and poking around news forums. 

I was reading the thread on this list
on exception handling, am now thinking that SVG has a lot of technical
details that I have been glossing over. If I want to make sure I'm
compliant to the standard, is there any advice or tips about how I
should structure my code?  

Mark