--- Alan Houser <arh at groupwellesley.com> wrote: > Organizations are "successful" when they meet their > business requirements as efficiently (time and $$$) as > possible. I talk lots of people _out_ of migrating to XML for > this reason. I even occasionally say "you're doing just fine > with MS Word." ======================================== Certainly, there's no rational reason to migrate to XML unless you intend (now or in the future) to manage your documentation by storing it (parsed into its constituent components) in a database/CMS, or your customer(s) demand that your documentation be delivered to them in that form for the same purpose.
The other case where XML may be important is database publishing of catalogs, directories, etc., where the content is originated in the database, and must be output to a publishing engine such as FrameMaker. However, there are several other forms (e.g., character-delimited, fixed field, and others) in which any database can output the data, and, in my experience these alternatives are better than XML for database publishing. ========================================= > Printing XML using XSL-FO is one of the most difficult tasks > you will face, and leveraging the XSLT transforms for an > off-the-shelf DTD is likely to save a very substantial amount > of development time. ====================================== And there's the rub, isn't it. The whole idea of SGML and XML is based on the premise that structure and metadata are the important things, and thus all formatting information must be striped out of the stored content. But then the extreme difficulties and high cost associated with developing customized, adaptable XSL-FO, FOSI or DSSL appications forces companies to select a non-optimal "standard" DTD so they don't have to do any formatting development. Thus, the desira to create a customized DTD that provides the optimal structure for an enterprise must be abandoned snd replaced with a dreary "standard" DTD like Docbook or DITA. And they must also accept the dreary formatting produced by the "standard" formatting application. So the original concept that structure is more important than formatting, is, in reality reversed, and the typical enterprise is forced to accept an easy solution to the formatting problem by choosing a mediocre "standard" monstrosity such as Docbook or DITA. Does that make any sense? Not to me it doesn't. ======================================================= > By the way, I never recommend starting out with > out-of-the-box DocBook ================================================= That's like putting lipstick on the pig. It's still a pig. And each modification of Docbook or DITA may imply major costs in adapting the "standard" XSL-FO application which caused you to select the pig in the first place. Thus, significant modification of the pig is likely to be discouraged. Dan Emory & Associates FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing DW Emory <danemory7224 at sbcglobal.net>
