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Subject:Structured authoring - more than just XML/SGML? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:29:24 -0400
Ian Saunders wondered: <<The term "stuctured authoring" is being
bandied-about here by certain managers. Am I correct in assuming that
this refers to authors using tools to produce XML or SGML output (e.g.
FrameMaker, which we use, but not its SGML capability)? Or is there
more to it - for example, is it also another "method" of writing, like
Information Mapping?>>
XML and SGML are definitely the current tools of choice in structured
authoring, but they're the technology rather than the approach to using
that technology, and it's important to distinguish between the two. All
too often we let the technology dictate what we do instead of forcing
the technology to do what's best for our audience.
There are two main aspects of structured authoring to consider. First,
there's the concept of structure itself. To work successfully in this
environment, you must learn to define both the content and the
relationships between subsets of the content for each project. For a
simplistic example, you might define "procedure" as a heading followed
by an introduction, cautions, the steps, and cross-references, in that
order; all procedures in your documentation would follow that pattern,
essentially with no exceptions.
In a GML context, you usually implement this via a DTD and an authoring
tool that either helps the author to follow the DTD or enforces
adherence to the DTD, and although it's not rocket science to create a
DTD, it does take training and a high degree of rigor in development
and testing.
Second, there's the concept of reuse and multiple use. "Reuse" means
that you may write one chunk of text with the intention that it will be
used many times; think, for one simple example, of a standard warning
message that will be used throughout a documentation suite. A more
complicated example might be certain steps that are reused in several
procedures. This poses certain design problems as a writer; for
example, you need to make the reusable text largely independent of the
context, since you can't rewrite it each time it will be used
(otherwise you're not "reusing" it), and you have to break certain bad
habits such as saying "see below" for cross-references.
"Multiple use" is best known under its alias "single sourcing".
Contrary to popular opinion, this ***doesn't*** mean creating a single
monolithic version of a document and using it unmodified everywhere.
(Think of dumping PDFs of printed manuals online. An ugly and
user-hostile practice that should be abandoned.)
True single-sourcing means presenting the same information in different
media (e.g., online vs. in print), but optimized for that medium. For a
simple example, consider creating a body of text that will appear, with
the content largely unchanged onscreen and in print; you might design
this so that the output format is landscape and portrait mode,
respectively, to take advantage of the different output media. (This is
a related aspect: the form is independent of the content to a large
degree.)
There are other aspects, and many details, but these strike me as the
most important ones. Since I don't do this kind of work, treat this
discussion as largely theoretical (based on moderately extensive
reading of the literature); the real practitioners will hopefully
refine and expand on what I've said with more concrete examples.
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