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RE: Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament
Subject:RE: Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament From:Sean Brierley <seanb_us -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 22 Sep 2003 10:09:40 -0700 (PDT)
Is your modular stuff really modular? Do you begin at
the beginning of an XML file at the top and finish at
the bottom? Do you write your discrete chunks in a
particular order or do you create a list, toss it into
a hat, mix it up, and write about your topic in the
order the you pull the chunks out?
Getting a bunch of unrelated topics and making them
relate in a printed document is, IMHO, more time
consuming and more difficult that building
random-access and non-linear navigation into content
that was written from start to finish in a linear
fashion.
That is, I think poo-pooing content because it is
"linear" shows a clear misunderstanding of how content
creation and content use can be separated.
Is that what you were looking for?
Cheers,
Sean
--- "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- Users -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Now, I've done linear to modular more or less by
> guess and by golly, and THAT doesn't seem to pose
> anywhere near as much of a problem as trying to turn
> modular help text into a manual.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: France Baril
>
> When I got to my new job, all documentation was
> linear. I am reorganizing it in modules with the
> intent to go XML (with DITA) and then single-source.
> I'm more than half way through..book?
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---
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