RE: Help with XML?

[Pam Mandel <pmandel -at- nimble -dot- com>]

<snip>Any tales of managing document creation this way is very welcome (and
not
just by me).  Any tales of managing documentation this way for the web is
very, very welcome.  And if XML is involved, I owe you drinks.</>

Metaxa sidecar, please. 
I can tell you what little I know. I shopped around for my single source XML
publishing tool and ended up with Arbortext. It's got a pretty friendly UI,
plus it's got a Word adapter so that you can work in word and generate
well-formed XML. 
HOWEVER, being a novice, I overlooked the data storage issue. I now know
that I also want Oracle iFS, which allows you to work in Arbortext, store
your content in Oracle, and manage your content through that iFS UI. Poet
works too, but it's darned expensive. The content management piece is
important to making the whole thing operate smoothly, but you want to be
sure to include that when you start your proposals. Me, trying to sell it to
upper management now, having already blown a wad on the editing software
end. And you need someone to act as basically a sysadmin for the stuff,
'cause the writers won't and as the tech comm manager, I can't get out from
under all those meetings, but that's another story. Luckily, I did get head
count for that - call them your tech pubs head count - and am moving ahead.
We've had to delay our implementation until that person can get an
infrastructure in place for us. Another aside is you might want to train
your writers in the basics of XML, what's a DTD, what are those element
tags, etc... just so they understand what's going on - it's a bit of an odd
disconnect at first. 
Okay, that's not much, can I buy the next round?


Pam



Any tales of managing document creation this way is very welcome (and not
just by me).  Any tales of managing documentation this way for the web is
very, very welcome.  And if XML is involved, I owe you drinks.