FW: REquest for advice on Workflow & Tools

[HALL Bill <bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com>]

My response to Joe, following on from the additional detail he provided.

I have also been down the path of using Access tables and queries - with a
fair bit of access basic code to make it all work. As a proof of concept, it
worked brilliantly but the limitations of using relational tables to manage
reuse in even a comparatively simple document (e.g., equipment maintenance
routines) became critically evident by the time we had only around 100
documents in the system. The authors literally went on strike and refused to
use it, and finished the job in MS Word.

I really believe that a fully structured approach (SGML or XML) is the only
long-term solution for single sourcing or reuse.

Re getting into SGML/XML, probably your least expensive (and easiest to
learn) approach would be the combination of XMetaL, SiberSafe and the Doc
Book DTD. I believe that XMetaL can/does provide you with already developed
style sheets for Doc Book, which you can probably then incrementally evolve
into what you actually want. If you have no customisation issues and
initially want to work with less than 5 users, you may still be able to get
SiberSafe as freeware. Alternatively, use FM 7 as your formatting engine,
and provide XMetaL to your authors. Adobe should also be able to provide you
with Doc Book templates and applications. As long as you are working in the
non-proprietary standard and don't try to code application specific
formatting stuff in the .sgm / .xml files you should have no problems mixing
your authoring tools. It also might pay to hire a consultant to help you
with the initial implementation and at the same time provide some
handholding training.

The Yahoogroups's XML-DOC forum provides excellent support for DTD issues.

Re doing all of this as a 'single documentation/systems coordinator', I've
been in essentially that position for the last 12 years - where most or all
of the writers were logistic engineers and maintainers rather than
professional writers. Over the last few years we have had 2-3 professional
tech authors - one of whom has taken over supervising formats and the other
working as a part-time system administrator, but I have stayed in the
documentation systems analysis role, which has now been extended to cover
the entire multi-divisional Tenix Group of some 3,000 staff plus many
contractors.

Our experiences have been published to the public domain. See
http://www.binarything.com/binarything/openpublish/OpenPublish2001a.pdf for
a presentation and http://www.tenix.com/PDFLibrary/91.pdf for my Technical
Communication article on the project.

Regards,

Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Strategy and Development Group
Tenix Defence
Nelson House, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9244 4820
     +61 3 9244 4000 (Switch)
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Mailto:bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com

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