> Nuno: > > That list is very valid and are problems I think any content publishing > entity has. However, I read them all as people-problems. Not technology > problems. I don't see a CMS being able to fully address any of > those issues > without SOME compromise on the part of the humans. > > I think to address the issues you brought up, one needs to step back and > make sure the entire human team is in agreement with the move forward. > Technology needs buy-in to work. > > -Darrel
This is an interesting thread; apologies if I am picking it up a little late and also if I take it off on a bit of a tangent. Like Nuno, I see a lot of holes in the Write Once Publish Anywhere philosophy. However, I am strongly in favour of using semantic rather than presentational forms of mark-up (WHERE APPROPRIATE) and using a form of mark-up (XML being the obvious choice today)that is open to manipulation by software applications (WHERE APPROPRIATE). I am partly in favour of this approach because of the potential to present information through delivery media (print, browser, voice etc.), but also because mark-up of this type has other uses (for example an application can automatically generate a table of contents if H1, H2, H3 are used rather than 14pt bold, 12pt bold/itallic, 10pt itallic). Generally speaking I would like to see the industry invest effort in the semantic/machine readable route, which means agreeing standards, developing the right applications and educating authors, designers and developers. However there are a number of constraints that we need to be aware of: * Authors - limitations on time, effort, motivation and skills * Software applications - not that smart when it comes to unstructured information, they prefer structured data * Business case - what business (or social) benefits are to be had from taking the technically elegant approach? * Information - as Bob Boiko (author of Content Management Bible) says "Information doesn't naturally come in distinct little buckets, all displaying the same structure, and all behaving the same way." Information is like a human conversation it can't easily be broken down into bits without loosing something * Delivery medium - Nuno has described in great detail the heterogenous nature of different delivery mediums. One size does not fit all! I would be very interested to hear more from people on this subject (on or off list)- particularly real world examples where the semantic/machine readable approach has worked. I am trying to build a good business case for why organisations should invest time and money in doing things this way. Jason ============== Jason Burton CM Consultant cScape Strategic Internet Services www.cscape.com =============== -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
