Creating a New Element

I am in the process of creating a new element (called footer - which is my
first attempt at trying this) that I want to add using a custom layer. I
have created the custom layer which I named mydocbk.dtd. All I have so far
are the first couple of lines, and I'm a bit confused on how to finish.

Here is what I have so far:

<!ENTITY %local.tech.char.class "footer">
<!ENTITY % DocBookDTD PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.2//EN">
%DocBookDTD;


I am trying to follow an example that looks as follows:

<!ENTITY % local.tech.char.class "|MethodName">

<!-- load DocBook -->
<!ENTITY % DocBookDTD PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN">
%DocBookDTD;

<!ELEMENT MethodName - - ((%smallcptr.char.mix;)+) >
<!ATTLIST MethodName
        %common.attrib;
        %classname.role.attrib;
        %local.classname.attrib;
>

The line that reads
<!ELEMENT MethodName - - ((%smallcptr.char.mix;)+)>

is very confusing. I have no idea what ((%smallcptr.char.mix;)+) means.

In my instance, I am wanting to base footer on the para element, but am not
quite sure how to finish it up.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

-JB