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I saw Oxygen at UA-Europe. They had an AWESOME integration of XML with SVN, that they use for their own doc development. The biggest win is that the doc source is kept with the code branch. So if the docs are up to date with the branch, then a build of that branch includes the correct docs. A host of version management and/or single-sourcing/conditional-text woes simply disappears. (To preempt the protests, I did not say *all* the woes disappear. Just many of them.)
I believe their doc delivery is a reader that loads the XML straight off of the disk, so they have no post-XML builds to convert it into HTML or CHM or whatnot. This really is the way to go IMO. But it isn't shrink-wrapped... yet. So while it's way cool, it may not be on your horizon. But it does indicate a direction to go.
IMOO (in my other opinion), I think products like Documentum and other specialized real-breed XML CMS's are for a given page count. The ROI simply doesn't work out until you cross a pretty high threshold. Yet another reason to look toward SVN... It may be appropriate for your scale.
cud
Subject: RE: Global Access to FrameMaker Source Files
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Doughty,
Oxygen comes with its own SVN client, and I believe will integrate with other SVN clients (like TortoiseSVN).
Mike McCallister
-----Original Message-----
Question:
If we decide to move to an XML-based tool, would SVN then become
unnecessary? Would some kind of built-in CMS replace SVN, or could it
work with Oxygen or XMetal, or similar tools?
Doughty
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