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RE: XML-based Help Authoring tools for customized help
Subject:RE: XML-based Help Authoring tools for customized help From:"Bill Lawrence" <scribe -at- matrixplus -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:50:59 -0500
I was going to stay away from this, but...
OK to a small extent, yes a complex tagging structure is a bit more
difficult to learn. Is it as difficult as a full-blown programming
language? No. Is it as difficult as a scripting language? No again.
The great advantage of Docbook, TEI, DITA, ThML, and heaven knows what
else is that they are standards. There are readily available tools,
books, training courses, discussion lists, users groups,
people-who-already-know-the-technology-to-be-hired, etc. A custom
built, scaled-down, lean tagging structure carefully tailored to an
individual environment and task is certainly grist for the mill of many
papers (and will line the pockets of many consultants), but the ongoing
maintenance is going to be a nightmare. You'll be endlessly refactoring
the thing and all bets are off when the creator/maintainer goes away.
All of your transformation and data manipulation tools must be built
from scratch. Trust me, I've done it both ways and you really need to
put a gun to my head to get me to build a schema from scratch again.
If custom DTDs or schemas were truly a good idea for the bulk of the
organizations in our business, most big software and hardware companies
would do that instead of embracing a standard such as Docbook or TEI.
Instead, they embrace the standard and place people on the committee for
that standard.
Bill Lawrence
Senior Technical Writer
Matrix Solutions
>
> Mark Baker wrote:
> > On the contrary, our ability to learn language is at
> its highest in our
> > youth and declines rapidly as we age. This is a
> consideration that has to
> be
> > taken seriously when designing a language based
> solution to a problem.
>
> Not so fast. I and others like me have mastered a
> number of markup
> languages and even programming languages. We have done
> so because we are
> either passionate about what we do or have been driven
> by a need. As
> technical authors, I think we have very well developed
> brains. We are also
> extremely adapt at learning and understanding new
> things.
>
> Granted any language has to be designed, but then so
> does any tool.
> Usability increases accessability.
>
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