Nuno Lopes wrote: > I would like to say that although I believe that technically I could > make a system (I've done it) that could put this in practice that point > is that the constraints that would have to enforce both to writers and > designers, overall the editorial would far outweigh the benefits of this > concept. After the technology is installed you would see people trying > to circumnavigate how the system works in order to have things done the > way they want it (and have not stated in the beginning or simply thought > that it was an acquired fact) then soon one would start thinking why > have they bothered after all, period.
I agree that such systems are technically possible. I've built them too. I also agree that in many cases they don't work. Mostly, I think, this is because the techniques are applied to the wrong problem. Very few people are willing to change the way they work in order to make somebody else's life easier. Web Masters hoping that everyone in their company is going to start writing well structured XML documents because it makes life easier for the web master are doomed to disappointment. Same goes for knowledge management architects trying to capture all corporate information in an easily searchable form. Content providers (both professional writers and people with other jobs) get no benefit from switching to structured authoring. However, it costs them both time and effort. Nor are these people incented to produce content in this form -- promotions and raises are not tied to it. And even if they were incented, they usually lack the context to understand the structures they are asked to produce. Complaints about authors cheating the markup to achieve layout effects are as old as SGML, but I suspect that in most cases achieving the anticipated layout effect is the only comprehensible context the author has. On the other hand, there are situation in which moving to structured writing benefits the writer. Single sourcing in the technical documentation community is of benefit principally to the writers themselves. Writers in technical documentation are facing a productivity crisis because of shortened product cycles, increasing customization of both products and content, and, of course, headcount reductions. The ability to create each piece of information once and to maintain it in one place, and to create many different information products for different products, markets, users, and media from that single source can provide a huge productivity boost to writers. Also, writers in this field have a good understanding of the structure of their information, and a natural ability to adapt to new technologies (you can't be a tech writer without that ability!). People working at the macroeconomic content management level (web site creation or corporate knowledge management) must face the fact that they will always need to transform and sanitize the material they receive, because it will never be in the interest of the vast majority of their contributors to provide pre-structured information to them. In the micro-economic world of focused content creation (technical documentation groups, other similar groups) a move to structured authoring, if done properly, can be of direct benefit to the authors and therefore has a good chance of success. --- Mark Baker Senior Consultant, Content OmniMark Technologies Corporation 1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3 Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.omnimark.com > trim your replies for good karma. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
