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Subject:RE: Queries on Single Sourcing From:Maritza van den Heuvel <MaritzaV -at- stt-global -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 13 Feb 2004 23:15:13 +0200
Maritza: Yes, exactly. And the type of objects you can "call" in this way
are manifold, depending on the tool you use.
On a more philosophical note, I was just thinking that language inherently
lends itself to single-sourced information management/documentation
approaches. After all, language uses a limited set of signifiers to refer to
a potentially unlimited pool of signified objects (to take a leaf from De
Saussure's book). In other words, in the English language we have 26 letters
of the alphabet that we recycle and re-use constantly in words, sentences,
paragraphs and yes, ultimately texts. So if information structure is
inseperably entwined with language structure (as some theorists would say),
then single-sourcing is inevitable ...
***
Maritza van den Heuvel
Technical Writer
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Software Training Technology (Pty) Limited http://www.stt-global.com
Al Geist wrote:
Good analogy. If I understand you correctly, single sourcing is much
like developing subroutines except the subroutine that is called from
the main program block is a chunk of text or an image.