I've enjoyed the exchange as well. I also read the thread on the DITA list and stumbled across Tim Bray's opinion last week. (Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that one of the "creators" of a "language" that allows you to create your own markup language is telling people not to create their own markup language?)
I guess the answer to my original question is a resounding it depends. And only a highly paid consultant would know for sure. : ) Seriously. It seems that the common ground is that before you can decide, you have to do the analysis. If you're requirements are close to an established schema, start with one of those. Otherwise, you're better off creating your own (provided you have the resources or talent available to generate the final outputs. Thanks Mike -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] om] On Behalf Of Alan Houser Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 12:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Structure/Schema - Custom or off the shelf? Hi Marcus, I've enjoyed our exchange. The contrast between Micheal's and Eliot's opinions is fascinating, and insightful. Eliot has a long-standing reputation in the markup languages community, while Michael's reputation is solid as a designer of DITA and much of the underlying XSLT processing required to implement the DITA architecture. Yet they disagree. To add yet another opinion to the mix, Tim Bray, a co-author of the XML recommendation, warns of the requisite effort and risks in designing any new substantial markup vocabulary, and advises readers to begin by evaluating the capabilities of the "big five" proven XML vocabularies (I would add DITA to his list). http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/08/No-New-XML-Languages . Why does Michael advocate using DITA out-of-the-box? I can't speak for him, but I suspect the answer lies at least partially in the size and structure of IBM's product development teams, which resemble small-to-medium software companies more than tightly-integrated members of a $150+ billion dollar enterprise. I tend to agree with you and Eliot for XML implementations in which the business requirements mandate a substantially new vocabulary, and the budget supports the necessary development and implementation effort. However, many (especially smaller) organizations face business needs that can be met by subsetting DocBook or using DITA as-is or nearly so. In addition, these vocabularies provide the necessary processing toolkits for generating output. The latter can be a complex, costly effort that is often out-of-reach of smaller organizations who are evaluating a migration to XML-based publishing. This range of needs and budgets reminds me of an exchange I had in the exhibit hall at last year's STC conference in Seattle. I approached one of the well-known content management vendors, and said "Do you have a solution in the mid-five figures [U.S. dollars]? If so, I could recommend it to many of my clients." He replied enthusiastically, "Yes, most of our implementations are in the half-million dollar range," then proceeded to rattle off several members of the Fortune 100. I listened politely before moving on to the next booth. -Alan Marcus Carr wrote: > > Alan Houser wrote: > >> DITA architect Michael Priestley (a co-author of the 2001 paper you >> cited) has more recently addressed the misconception that DITA is an >> exchange format, not an authoring format >> (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/1081). My anecdotal >> experience matches Michael's -- that about half of all >> implementations use the DITA DTD "out of the box" for content >> authoring. > > This showed up in a conference plug recently and I revisited the link > that Alan provided to Michael Priestly's posting. Out of interest, I > looked at the post to which Michael had replied, and found it was a > very good email from Eliot Kimber - one of the long-term industry > experts going well back into the SGML days. His explanation is far > better than mine was, but echoed much of the same sentiment. If you're > interested, have a look at > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/message/1080. > > -- --- Alan Houser, President Group Wellesley, Inc. 412-363-3481 www.groupwellesley.com _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/mike.feimster%40acstechn ologies.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
