freelanceprogrammers.org Forum Index » XML / XSL
Don Day - DocBook redux
Joined: 13 Jun 2003
Posts: 14
Don Day - DocBook redux
Thanks for the reference Don. Now I see where your
direction is coming from, not to mention your writing
style. :)
Some of us have been claiming that documents as
inherently multi-dimensional, made up of multiple
taxonomies, and that a framework, not just a single
schema, is really needed to reflect that and allow
us to talk in terms of realms or domains. The paper
you referenced and DITA work go a step further in
dealing with the problems of multiple domains.
DITA seems to be a serious attempt to address this,
and I appreciate your willingness and efforts to hold
that exploration in public through your website and
the materials available there as well as your
participation in groups like this.
However, one thing I haven`t been able to gleen so far
is "what next?" DITA seems like an architecture is an
IBM buisness (product and services) in the making. May
I ask, is that were you are heading? If so, I`m afraid
DITA will join other "big solutions" that tend to seek
out "deep pockets" but leave individual professionals
and small to medium site shops (as big as $1 Billion
plus in revenue) in the cold wondering "it would be
exciting to hire consultants, buy big products and
up the organization`s maturity model but these things
don`t scale to my situation; so how do I participate?"
The realm of professionals and smaller shops interests
me since they are the most typical, and it have been
my experience that the benefits of advances in our
thinking about documentation, ways of working with it
and tools and technologies are much more "mission
critical" in an immediate sense for them than for
large, better funded companies like IBM or government
agencies.
Some of these smaller enterprises are doing important
work, are very successful and even occupy dominate
positions in their particular markets yet their
documentation departments and professionals associated
with them are under funding pressure as a "cost of
doing business" expense. They could do more with their
limited resources if they could utilize advances in
information production and management but the efforts
of vendors and consultants are usually directed
towards
bigger pickings.
So, ways of re-organizing and re-deploying resources,
combined with homegrown tools, point products and
standard authoring tools combined into workflows plus
deeper understanding of the issues and technologies
and with a hard eye on real cost-benefits (I`ve asked
for the business case for DITA several times now with
no response) seems to be the way forward for
individual professionals and smaller organizations.
Such a path is feasible, again, thanks to forums like
this, participants like you, and the current
willingness to keep work in public view (the DITA
website, for example).
Tim
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com
Joined: 14 Jun 2003
Posts: 4
Don Day - DocBook redux
--- In xml-doc@yahoogroups.com, Binisiya <binisiya@y...> wrote:
> Thanks for the reference Don. Now I see where your
> direction is coming from, not to mention your writing
> style. :)
Surely you do not imply that my writing style (often parenthetical),
laced with tangential commentary--which, by the way, often represents
my own mental traffic jams--and the kind of grammatical affections up
with which we all hate to put, has anything to do with overlapping
hierarchies? ;-)
> However, one thing I haven`t been able to gleen so far
> is "what next?" DITA seems like an architecture is an
> IBM buisness (product and services) in the making. May
> I ask, is that were you are heading?...
Those are very good questions, Tim. If DITA weren`t to be shared for
the benefit of others, to be validated by their experiences and
through discussions such as this, don`t you think it would risk
becoming provincial and insignificant? Even big companies can no
longer afford the risk of good ideas becoming marginalized by
avoiding community exposure. Public advocacy becomes the security
and lifeblood of any entity like DITA that is the product of
investment and collaboration.
And where are we going from here? As DITA`s design improves, along
with our understanding of it`s capabilities, we`ll keep putting those
updates into the toolkit on developerWorks. Already, using the
provided CSS stylesheets, DITA is pretty easy to configure for some
XML editors, even the free ones, and it has begun to appear as a
configurable option in others. Moreover, we are striving to make
DITA even more open and stable, and to make it an embraceable
publishing option with wide scaleability and utility, from SOHO users
to research teams to consultants to other large companies. Being
standards-based for processing and authoring, it has no particular
platform affinities. And everyone is equally welcome to explore the
next frontier for DITA: using it as a grammar to model, test, and
advance our ideas about markup, hierarchies, and semantics.
> ...If so, I`m afraid
> DITA will join other "big solutions" that tend to seek
> out "deep pockets" but leave individual professionals
> and small to medium site shops (as big as $1 Billion
> plus in revenue) in the cold wondering "it would be
> exciting to hire consultants, buy big products and
> up the organization`s maturity model but these things
> don`t scale to my situation; so how do I participate?"
The truthful answer is probably, "It depends."
Get the toolkit, subscribe to the forum, and help engage the
community in exploring DITA and defining reasonable processing
models, from direct rendering to multi-pass builds with conditional
profiling. DITA can be a simple solution to a simple problem, or you
can make it to be a complex solution to a complex problem.
The "delivery context" tends to be the integration layer where
scaling and investment most come into play. Umm, tooling and
training aren`t small potatoes either.
> So, ways of re-organizing and re-deploying resources,
> combined with homegrown tools, point products and
> standard authoring tools combined into workflows plus
> deeper understanding of the issues and technologies
> and with a hard eye on real cost-benefits (I`ve asked
> for the business case for DITA several times now with
> no response) seems to be the way forward for
> individual professionals and smaller organizations.
For some companies, the actual business cases they develop likely
involve trade secrets. Don`t feel too badly. The information just
might be confidential.
Within IBM, we`ve had to take into account migration costs, whether
the original source material was adequately topic-oriented to begin
with, whether there was a justifiable requirement for the change in
deliverables (ie, why switch from books for 20-year-old functionally
stable products with no modern user interfaces), etc.. Deployment
can be gated by factors such as whether writers/planners understand
what they are getting into and can plan topic-based projects rather
than conventional book-based projects, getting a grip on the actual
costs of authoring a good (freely reusable) topic, whether there is
time between releases to completely retool or phase in a DITA
methodology, and so forth. It is reasonable to say, Stay with what
works if there is no need to change (edict), no sense in changing
(User Assistance models might not fit the available display
technologies), no long term value in changing (the info is already
stable or approaching sunset), no resource for changing (especially
for small shops), no time for migration, and so on. DO consider
taking the bite if there is value to presenting your users a good
user assistance system, if the information has a good chance of being
reused, if you have new content to develop, if you have time and
training in place, etc..
> Such a path is feasible, again, thanks to forums like
> this, participants like you, and the current
> willingness to keep work in public view (the DITA
> website, for example).
>
> Tim
Hanging in there, Tim.
--
Don Day
Lead DITA Architect
IBM Corp.
All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Freelace Website Designer - Customer web design and software building.
English Courses in England - reservation calendar script
Land Surveying -Stonex instruments and equipments
China Wholesale - Electronics Products
Character Studio - Tutorials and Help
English Courses in England - reservation calendar script
Land Surveying -Stonex instruments and equipments
China Wholesale - Electronics Products
Character Studio - Tutorials and Help