XML Solves Tech Publishing Problems

If you are a technical writer or manager of a documentation group you have probably encountered or been faced with solving problems like: single-sourcing, collaborative authoring, cross-platform editing, multi-channel publishing, improving information quality and consistency, enhancing functionality of electronic output, negating technology lock-in, and even reducing costs without reducing team head count. This article explores how the use of XML technologies within your authoring system can help you achieve each of these objectives.

InWords TechDoc Solutions (2003). Articles>Content Management>XML

XML Syndication Set to Explode - Are You Ready For Big Change?

Since version 1.0 of XML was released by the W3C in early 1998, its use has been growing by leaps and bounds. Content managers and software packages were early adopters and enterprises are increasingly implementing XML-based systems. A number of events are now converging which will make available an unprecedented number of XML documents on the internet. The implications are numerous and will have trendendous impact on many of the fundamental dynamics of the Internet as we know it today.

Ismail, Salim. Rockley Bulletin (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML

XrML and Emerging Models of Content Development and Distribution  

With the publication of XrML 2.0, ContentGuard provides an open, flexible, and extensible means of expressing digital rights that not only addresses copy protection, but, as importantly, offers a much broader and powerful means for publishers to experiment with and deploy new business models.

Trippe, Bill. Gilbane Report (2005). Articles>Content Management>Standards>XML

XML Content Authoring: Interview with Michael Boses

An interview with Michael Boses about his new role with Quark, the need for user-friendly content-authoring tools, and the role of structured content in the dynamic-publishing paradigm.

Abel, Scott. Dynamic Publisher, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>XML

Dynamic Publishing Makes Creating Localized Communications Easy

International growth is the target for most small companies and is indeed essential in many industries if you want to compete and thrive in this global economy; however, international expansion brings many challenges, especially in terms of communication. For example, how do you implement consistent, global communications that maintain your brand identity, values, and messaging while still allowing for local markets and cultures?

Malagnac, Stephanie. Dynamic Publisher, The (2008). Articles>Content Management>Localization>XML

Making the Case for XML Content Repositories

As traditional magazine publishers continue to build out their e-media products, many are looking to new, more efficient ways to manage their content and bridge the gap between separate production systems. One solution is XML content repositories, which convert a magazine’s content to a format that’s easily reproduced both digitally and in print.

Fell, Jason. Folio (2008). Articles>Content Management>Business Case>XML

Well Formed XML

Business integration is at the heart of many of today's industry trends. As businesses consolidate infrastructure, and look at rolling out service-oriented architectures, they are finding they need to link previously isolated applications. It's not easy. You can't link applications without some form of middleware, an extra application layer that lets their various systems communicate. Whether you use web services, or a message-based solution, there's one key feature that's at the heart of modern integration technologies: XML.

Bisson, Simon. Guardian Unlimited, The (2003). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Reporting XML Errors: Optimizing the Workflow

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This paper describes how DITA-based documentation was implemented at CEDROM-SNi, one of Canada's leading on-line news content aggregators. The project delivers documentation as diverse as user training materials and Web Services reference guides targeted to programmers. We focus on the benefits, how tos, and lessons learned. Technical documentation has its own unique challenges. Its deliverables range from simple reference guides and educational material to complex, multilingual procedure manuals. Critical success factors of a documentation project are numerous and diverse – usability, deadlines, cost, language, delivery media (paper, online) – all of which have their own purpose and challenges. This paper discusses these issues and provides a framework for future DITA projects.

Allen, Sarah. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>Workflow>XML

Enterprise XML in Government Regulatory and Legislative Agencies

This presentation is based on a deployed enterprise system designed and integrated to support over 250 plus users for a west coast legislature. The system includes legislative authoring, legislative processing (Introducing, Amending, Enrolling, and Chaptering Bills), document publishing, and updating the State laws.

Vergottini, Grant. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>Government>XML

Building a Document Delivery System from Off-the-Shelf Standards-Conformant Parts

OK. So you have your documents in XML. How do you deliver them to readers? You've heard great things about separation of form and content, and would like different kinds of readers to see the documents styled in different ways. And in order to make the collection of documents more useful, you would like to have full-text search. The quality assurance people would like some help with tools for checking documents and finding errors and inconsistencies in existing ones. Oh, and by the way, we just took a budget cut, so can you do it without breaking the bank?

Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

XML and its Emerging Uses Within the Enterprise

In 2000, as one of the first speakers at XML One, Rod discussed the merging of the web, XML, and messaging into the loosely coupled applications that today we call web services. Rod's Emerging Internet Technology team has continued to explore new uses for XML beyond SOA for enterprises. His talk will cover how XML is a cornerstone for new types of web applications - Do It yourself applications - which include applications through dynamic scripting languages and the intersection with other emerging areas such as Rich Interactive Applications.

Smith, Rod. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>XML>Workplace

How XML is Shrinking The World Through Globalization

With XML, the flow of information and documents around the world has never been greater - with its robust and flexible format that enables sharing of data stored in multiple formats. As a result, XML is shrinking the global marketplace and opening doors to new markets that had previously been hindered by compatibility issues. The last and arguably most important mile in reaching new markets, however, is often in localizing or tailoring communications to fit the particular audience, whether by translating languages to ensuring sensitivity to local nuances and culture.

Seawick, Bill. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Content Management>Globalization>XML

Developing a Business Case for XML-Based Content Management Systems

One would think that with the magnitude of XML-based tools into the marketplace it would be easier to justify authoring and storing documents directly in XML. By now most managers have been exposed to the benefits of creating XML content management systems according to some agreed upon set of documentation rules. However, understanding the benefits of this technical approach and being able to justify the expense of implementing it are two different things. Many XML developers are not able to articulate the long-term advantages of converting corporate data repositories to XML in order to build a suitable business case to get such a project off the ground. This session will help business managers articulate the long-term advantages of converting corporate data repositories to XML in order to build a suitable business case to get such projects off the ground by outlining the many cost savings and revenue generation opportunities created by managing enterprise data directly in XML.This session will help business managers articulate the long-term advantages of converting corporate data repositories to XML in order to build a suitable business case to get such projects off the ground by outlining the many cost savings and revenue generation opportunities created by managing enterprise data directly in XML.

Buehling, Brian. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Content Management>Business Case>XML

Extending XML in the Enterprise

This presentation explores how recent advances in user interfaces have blurred the once clear distinction between structured and unstructured data. It examines how these tools can be used to empower a new class of user to participate in an XML workflow and a managed content environment.

Parsons, Jon. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Content Management>XML>Workflow

Making the Most of XML with Adobe InCopy and InDesign

This session provides an overview of several real-world case studies describing publishers who have implemented an XML-based process with Adobe InDesign, InCopy, and editorial and production management systems, such as K4 and Woodwing. The session also provides best practices for incorporating these products in a production workflow covering activities such as: How to import XML into the Adobe products; How to export XML out of the Adobe products; How to structure templates (styles to tag and tags to styles mapping).

Edson, Mike and Mark Jacobson. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML>Adobe InDesign

Content Management System APIs

Panellists talk about two vendor-neutral programming interfaces for content-management systems. Joel Amoussou discusses JSR 170, a vendor-neutral Java API designed to work across many different content management systems. Michael Wechner discusses Neutron, an Open Content Management User Interface based on XML.

Amoussou, Joel and Michael Wechner. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Content Management>Programming>XML

Managing XML for a Global Content Delivery Platform

LexisNexis, global provider of legal, news, and business information, has migrated the content of its non-US business units to a single product delivery platform. This paper provides an overview of how this was enabled using XML.

Basch, Marc. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML>Case Studies

Editing XML files on a WebDAV Server Using the Browser Plug-in

You can open and edit XML files stored on the WebDAV server using FrameMaker 9. When FrameMaker 9 is installed on your computer, the Edit with FrameMaker plug-in is added to the browser's toolbar and is listed as an option in the edit menu for XML files.

Adobe (2009). Articles>Content Management>XML>Adobe FrameMaker

XML and Marketing Materials

Marketing materials are always important, and in these difficult times, they are critical to the success of the organization, and there are huge pressures to do more with less and for less money. Enter XML. XML is often perceived as complex, rigid and horrible to work with (geeky, technical) — anathema to the average marketing communications author. But this is no longer true. XML and the tools that support them have matured to the point where the XML is hidden, much in the same way RTF is hidden from the average Microsoft® Word author. Using XML for marketing materials provides considerable benefits, including consistent messaging, reduced time to create content, reduced costs to maintain content, reduced translation costs, and powerful multichannel conversion capabilities. XML is creating a profound shift in the way we create, manage, deliver and control marketing materials. It is a shift that is resulting in significant ROI and increased levels of success.

Rockley, Ann. Rockley Group, The (2009). Articles>Content Management>Marketing>XML

Easy Command Line Processing with the DITA Open Toolkit

The DITA Open Toolkit can transform your DITA files into a wide variety of output types. When you first install it, it's easy to get the impression that you need to know Ant well to use it, but you can pack most of its available options into a single Java™ command line.

DuCharme, Bob. IBM (2008). Articles>Content Management>XML>DITA

Authoring with Eclipse

The topic of technical publishing is relatively new to the world of Eclipse. One can make the argument that technical publishing is just another collaborative development process involving several people with different backgrounds and skills. This article will show that the Eclipse platform is a viable platform for technical publishing by discussing how to write documents such as an article or a book within Eclipse. In fact, this article was written using Eclipse.

Aniszczyk, Chris and Lawrence Mandel. Eclipse (2005). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>XML

XML Content Management the Dr. Macro Way: Simple Is Good

Because most of CMS integration efforts will be concentrated on the boundaries, it further supports the engineering conclusion that minimizing the amount of effort spent on the core functionality is good because it maximizes the amount of the total implementation budget that can be spent on implementing the boundary functionality.

Dr. Macro's XML Rants (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML

XCMTDMW: Characteristics of an XML CMS

I feel that the term "XML CMS" is unnecessarily specialized. In my world, content management is a much more general problem and 90% of what you need to manage XML well applies to everything else too. That's another reason I chafe at over-specialized XML repositories--they really can't manage anything else.

Dr. Macro's XML Rants (2006). Articles>Content Management>XML

Converting to XML: Is it Always the Answer?

Although managing costs is important anytime, it is especially important in today's economic reality where budgets are shrinking drastically. Getting your money's worth as well as what you need to support your data should be a core factor of any data project. The two biggest cost factors are the type of conversion work you need done and how much of it you'll need. This article focuses on how your goals for your project relate to the output format you choose, and how that format impacts costs. While some outputs, like XML, provide higher capabilities, they also cost more to create.

Gross, Mark. Data Conversion Laboratory (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Alternatives to XML: Keeping Down your Document Conversion Costs

While I'm a big fan of XML for many purposes, it's a misconception that it's the single best solution in every scenario, and it's worthwhile to consider the alternatives in situations where the benefits of XML are not necessary. In this article, I discuss alternatives to XML, SGML, and HTML that might be suitable when budgets are more limited. While XML is perfect for highly coded information, other options can work well for many kinds of information. Markup languages are at the high end of the cost spectrum, so if you don't need the benefits they provide, you certainly should consider the alternatives discussed below.

Gross, Mark. Data Conversion Laboratory (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML