DocBook and DITA Editors: Is Their Future Online?

Thanks to my Google News Alert service, I recently discovered some on-demand XML Editors supporing DITA. While Salesforce democratized software on-demand in the CRM market, I am still perplexed on the future of on-demand pure play software. So let's see first what makes on-demand software, also known as Saas (Software as a Service), so attractive nowadays. I see five compelling reasons.

Talbot, Fabrice. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Information Design>Software>DITA

Document Analysis, Modelling, and Markup  

Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is an ISO standard for document publishing. SGML allows you to port your documentation from one plagorm to another easily. Another benefit is that SGML lets you write the information one time and use it in many places. After planning your SGML implementation, the first step in your implementation is to create a Document Type Definition( DTD). In order to create a DTD, you must complete several steps: identify project parameters, analyze your documents, model your document, convert your model to DTD mark up, and test your DTD.

Dimick, Sharlyn A. and Lori A. Stertzbach. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Information Design>SGML

Documenting in N-Dimensional Space

As technical communicators, we are being challenged with how to structure information in a multiple dimensional space made possible with Web technology.

Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2005). Articles>Documentation>Information Design

Documenting Schemas  

The issue of documenting schemas—or any machine readable language—goes beyond simple additions of comments. Thereal challengeistocreateschemasthat arereadablebothdirectlybylookingat their sourcecodeandbydocumentation extraction tools.

van der Vlist, Eric. O'Reilly and Associates (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML>Documentation

Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss

With training in everything from stage design to Egyptology to hypertext games to web projects, Reiss has had extensive practice in finding out what makes an experience work. Could these be the principles I've been waiting for? I tracked down Reiss in Vancouver to find out.

Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Theory>Minimalism

Doing Today's Job with Yesterday's Tools

Where is the software that can help us cope with the massive amounts of information that we deal with on a daily basis? Patrick Dubroy points out the problems with current personal information management, and makes suggestions about how to improve the situation.

Dubroy, Patrick. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Information Design

Dublin Core Conference Summary 2003

What is Dublin Core? And why would you need a whole conference about it? The end of September and beginning of October brought representatives from various countries around the world to a sunny and warm Seattle, Washington, host of the 2003 Dublin Core Conference.

Gonzales-Chan, Madonnalisa and Sarah Rice. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML>Metadata

Dublin Core Corporate Circles of Interest

The 2002 Dublin Core annual conference and workshop marked the beginning of a new effort by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) to involve members of the corporate world in the evolution and application of the Dublin Core standard. The first meetings of two DCMI Circles of Interest were held on Monday, October 14, 2002, followed the next day by a panel session with several members of the Circles presenting their initial observations and conclusions to the wider conference.

Crandall, Mike. Montague Institute Review (2002). Articles>Information Design>XML>Metadata

DUX—Five Lessons Learned

Normally I would write a traditional conference overview to inform people about the recent Designing for User Experiences conference (DUX) held in San Francisco, June 6-8. Instead, I would like to impart a few of the impressions I came away with and recommend that everyone go to the AIGA Case Study Archive to read the papers that were accepted.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Interface

Dynamic Hypertext: Querying and Linking  

There are many models of hypertext, distinguished by a number of factors such as the underlying semantic data model (link typing and node typing), the degree of dynamic linking in the hypertext, and how dynamism and other behaviours are implemented. This essay examines a particular approach to dynamism in hypertext, based on the degree of similarity between a text passage in a source node and the text of a target node. It reviews work carried out over the past decade in creating systems for markup-based querying and dynamic hypertext, with particular emphasis on a model of dynamic hypertext that computes hypertext links on the fly using queries.

Bodner, Richard and Mark Chignell. ACM Computing Surveys (1999). Articles>Information Design>Hypertext>Semantic

Edit XML Documents with Emacs and nXML

The nXML mode for GNU Emacs provides a powerful environment for creating valid XML documents.

O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML

Editing Forms in Acrobat 6  

The Form tool as we know has been abandoned. There is now a Field tool which is subdivided into tools for the individual field types.

Wyss, Max. PDFzone (2004). Articles>Information Design>Forms>Adobe Acrobat

Educating the Information Architect

The good news is that the job market for information architects is exploding. Searches on sites like Monster.com regularly turn up 200 to 300 postings for "information architects." From consulting firms like Argus and Scient to e-businesses like LookSmart to Fortune 500's like Cisco, everyone is desperately seeking information architects. The bad news is that there's no established educational degree program geared specifically to meet the needs of aspiring information architects.

Morville, Peter. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Education>Information Design

Education for Librarianship and Information Studies: Fit for Purpose?    

As this issue of the journal goes to press, the Europe-wide professional bodies representing the Schools of Librarianship and Information Studies (EUCLID -- The European Association for Library and Information Education and Research) and the Library Associations (EBLIDA -- the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations) will be meeting together for the rst time since they were both founded some 15 years ago. The meeting is intended to focus on the effects of profound social changes related to digitization, multiculturalism and the growth of the knowledge economy.

Johnson, Ian M. Information Development (2007). Articles>Education>Information Design

Effective Data Filtering

This article discusses writing software that helps the user effectively work with large amounts of data. The approach that I will describe is called filtering.

Rowe, Robert. VBMySQL.com (2004). Articles>Information Design>Databases

Effective Search Engine Submission Strategies

Now that you've got a website it's time to start thinking about promoting it. Search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to your website.

stevenforsyth.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

The Electric XML Acid Test

This will be the story of my life from the time my boss came to me and said, 'Hey, maybe we could do that Knowledge Base in XML. I hear good things about that XML,' to the time that I figured out everything I needed to know and deployed a fully functional XML knowledge base to the world.

Robotti, Anne. KeyContent.org (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML

Electronic Publishing of Scientific Manuscripts

To write a chapter about a topic which is so new and developing so rapidly that changes take place just about everyday is an interesting challenge. What I hope to accomplish in these few pages is to explain what electronic publishing is and explore a number of issues associated with this new area of information dissemination. Yes!, this is a new area of dissemination! And perhaps this is the place to start - by defining electronic publishing. Electronic publishing is a new form of communication. Electronic publishing, for the purposes of scholarly scientific presentation of results, is the creation of a scholarly work which is in a totally electronic (non-paper) form from its creation to its publication or dissemination. An electronic journal is a product that was specifically developed and designed for the Internet, a product which is not re-worked printed material that is delivered electronically. As I hope to show in this chapter, electronic journals and electronic publishing is much more than an alternat

Heller, Stephen R. hellers.com. Articles>Scientific Communication>Information Design

The Elements of User Experience  

The Web was originally conceived as a hypertextual information space; but the development of increasingly sophisticated front- and back-end technologies has fostered its use as a remote software interface.

Garrett, Jesse James. JJG.net (2002). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>Web Design

Elitism in the Stories of U.S. Art Museums    

Institutions familiar to the public are defined by master narratives that describe their activities and imply who is invited to take part. For art museums in this country, a master narrative of elitism was established in the last century, when museums organized and began building their collections. Because art museums were designed by the rich and subsequently forced to depend on the rich for financial support, the stories of elitism and exclusion have been perpetuated over the years. Whereas little narratives, or local stories, defining the daily operations of museums do not receive attention, stories of exclusive social events and obscure art exhibitions take prominence and discourage the participation of the general public. With diminished funding for museums and fewer courses devoted to art appreciation in public schools, museums will likely be unable to attract wider audiences to support them, and the master narrative will continue to define museums' image.

David, Carol. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1999). Articles>Information Design>Instructional Design

Empirical Evaluation of Concept Mapping: A Job Performance Aid for Writers    

The usefulness of concept mapping as a job performance aid for writers of technical documents was examined. Thirty-four writers were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The experimental group received 2 hours of training in the use of concept mapping. Both groups revised the same chapter from a computer manual, and an experienced technical editor blindly evaluated each revision. In part two of the study, revised texts were given to two groups of users. One group received a concept-mapped revision, while the other group received a text revised by a writer who had used conventional revision techniques. Readers' comprehension was tested and compared. Revision time was not significantly different between groups, and the editor's ratings of quality were not different. However, readers' comprehension was significantly higher with the concept-mapped versions. These results suggest that concept mapping is a useful revision tool for writers.

Crandell, Thomas L., Naomi A. Kleid and Candace Soderston. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Information Design>Writing>Assessment

Enabling Mass Customization for your Technical Communication: a Paradigm Shift  

Today technical communication departments are facing the challenge of producing a continuously increasing volume of technical documentation. Indeed, as companies accelerate the pace of new product launches in response to changing markets and competitive forces, so must the technical authors produce more, and faster, the accompanying documentation for these new products. We also recognize that information users are not a uniform group; they have different product knowledge, different backgrounds and may have different reasons for using a product. As such, they need specific, personalized documentation rather than a standard one-size-fits-all document.

Rombauts, Yves. tekom (2005). Articles>Information Design

Enterprise Agility: SOX and Enterprise Information Integration  

The intent of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) can be characterized as risk reduction: reduce errors, inhibit fraud, and provide shareholders with transparent equal-access to material knowledge. But implementation is principally procedural controls and documentation, under threat of penalty. The vague parts of SOX are where the real leverage lies: principles of intent, and corporate transparency.

Dove, Rick. Paradigm Shift International (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Documentation

Enterprise Architecture Essentials, Part 6: Manageability

Organizations today face the challenge of two important enterprise architecture requirements: the need for agility and the overhead of regulatory governance. These requirements can be seen as mutually antagonistic -- if business processes must be flexible, then governance of those processes may be difficult. This article, part six in a six-part series, explores the notion of using manageability as a key enterprise architecture (EA) quality attribute to solve this problem. EA development is an ongoing process, and the central idea of this article is that by applying manageability as an EA attribute, the organizational processes, systems, and software become manageable.

Morris, Stephen B. IBM (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Regulation

Enterprise Information Architecture: A Semantic and Organizational Foundation

People disagree on what happens when IAs grow up, but Tom Reamy offers a foundation for information architecture as it advances, grappling with problems across the enterprise.

Reamy, Tom. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Web Design