RE: Single sourcing vs. normalization

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

Rose A. Wilcox wrote:


> Hello, Mark, that leads me to another question.  The advantages of
> normalizing content for accuracy, completeness, and efficient process
> seem clear.  What are the effects on usability for the reader?
> Obviously documentation that is usable and complete meets two of the
> most important criteria, but does normalization have any implications
> for some of the other aspects of documentation that affect user
> understanding?  I am thinking primarily of organization of knowledge,
> and I am guessing the quality of organization could affect the usability
> of the normalized content objects.

In a properly normalized content store, the organization of content in the
repository should be neutral in respect to the organization of knowledge in
the output, which obviously give you a big advantage in organizing knowledge
to fit the needs of different users.

However, it is certainly the case that certain forms of content normalize
better than others and that normalization inevitably knocks some corners
off. Long narrative exposition, for instance, does not normalize well (you
can break it into pieces but those pieces may not go back together in any
way other than they way they went in). However, few technical documents
really need extended narrative exposition and it is generally something to
avoid unless it is the only viable approach to achieve some particular end.

My preferred approach with necessary narratives is to leave them whole, but
to use identity markup (markup that establishes the subject matter of a
piece of text) to associate items mentioned in the narrative with the
subjects managed in the normalized content collection. This markup is also a
perfect way to generate links from the narrative material to the reference
material.

> Other aspects, such as consistent use of terminology, etc., are probably
> taken care of in the model, although you didn't seem to call them out
> (forgive me if I missed them, it's Friday.)  That is when one normalizes
> the data, another rule to apply might be consistency in terminology.

Absolutely. This is an important advantage.

Ease of translation is another.

> Again, are there resources about this, or are you still writing that
> book?

There is a white paper available at
http://www.stilo.com/aboutstilo/singlesourcing.html. No, I haven't written
the book yet.

> Thanks for one of the most crun-chewy topics I have seen on this
> list recently.

You're welcome.
---
Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
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Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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