Mike Feimster wrote:
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?)
If only he'd known then what he knows now - he could have developed the
5 schemas needed by humankind and saved the rest of us the trouble of
learning XML in the first place... ;-)
I guess the answer to my original question is a resounding it depends. And
only a highly paid consultant would know for sure. : )
Now you're getting the hang of it... ;-)
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.
I think that's a pretty fair summary, though I would add that you may be
able to convert your custom structure into an OTS structure for
publishing. That gives you your cake and lets you eat it as well - you
get the richness and security of a custom structure and the application
support for your outputs. Moving between structures with XSLT isn't
conceptually that much more difficult than creating mapping tables in
FrameMaker, though you do need to know the syntax.
--
Regards,
Marcus Carr email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia) www: http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Einstein
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