atw: Re: XML software for Word-like formatting
- From: Peter Martin <peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:47:39 +1000
davebgar:
You wrote:
> It's a bit of a grand experiment why I'm moving to XML for editing. I've just
> finished
> a job which involved revising the edits of several authors for a book. Using
> the one MS
> Word document, this meant editing the whole document, then I'd put it up on a
> FTP site
> so that each author could download and revise their own chapter, then I'd
> revise the
> whole document again for consistency, then the authors would come up with
> ideas for
> images in the book (or revise figures), then I'd have to revise the captions
> and list
> of figures, then put it on the FTP site again.... Several times the authors
> asked for
> the whole document to be split up into chapters so they wouldn't have to
> spend time
> downloading the whole lot when they only needed their own chapter. They also
> wanted
> versions both with and without figures for ease of reviewing. This obviously
> took me
> quite some time and there was a lot of duplication of effort.
>
> My XML experience spans all of nine months, using EPIC and Documentum with a
> publishing
> firm. This software is clunky to use and very time consuming to tag and add
> attributes.
> And the DocBook schema I use is very inflexible for formatting content. So,
> I'm pretty
> sure I'd be happier with the DITA schema as it sounds like it's more flexible
> for
> different formatting rules.
>
> The editing I do for clients has always been one-off scientific reports. I
> envisage
> having a XML platform that would let me edit like Word, and to be flexible in
> modifying
> how content is marked up as everyone's report is formatted differently.
> Software that
> lets me tag content on the fly would be great (drag and drop markup, where I
> can pick
> tag sets from a palette), and being able to split up and print documents by
> chapter/section/paragraph (I think some form of content management system
> might let me
> do this, in addition to an XML package, but I'm not sure what). Having the
> ability to
> 'turn off' images for display/print would be useful too.
>
> And then it would be useful for authors collaborating to have one document
> sitting on a
> FTP site while they make changes remotely. That'd get around the problem of
> lots of
> shuffling emails and files back and forth with each draft as happens with a
> Word
> document. I'm especially interested in looking at Syntext Serna and Oxygen,
> as they
> claim to have WYSIWYG authoring that shows edits in some type of 'track
> changes'
> display. The authors are used to that sort of editing environment, so I'd
> like to
> explore whether this can be achieved with XML so that authors don't need to
> learn
> tagging.
>
> Realistically I may need to start off with a package to supplement Word (ie
> without
> looking too closely at the remote editing side of things yet). I can't see
> how XML
> would be feasible for every editing job (such as small, one-offs) and replace
> Word
> entirely, but I think for larger jobs with several authors it would be
> feasible.
> Suggestions on how to move into an XML environment for a single-person
> business would
> be great.
>
Letting a series of separate authors loose in making changes to Word docs is a
nightmare I'd move away from ASAP.
(God knows what would happen to the template styles etc etc....)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... If you think in terms for formatting all the
time, you're heading for trouble in XML.
Rather, think in terms of context. And note that the ability to deal with
very small components is what makes such
systems useful in big document contexts..... your component docs can be very
small and mapped into the larger context.
As an alternative, have you looked at having a single editor, taking in
comments/ change suggestions in context as is possible these days with Acrobat
Pro, where comments can be summarised and grouped by context, author, date
etc....
Webworks had / have(?) a tool called Final Draft which worked from FrameMaker
to give commentable webDav files in HTML format but not sure what's been
happening with that....
If you keep a single responsible author per document, you can avoid resolve
conflicts before they mess up your change control system..
-PeterM
peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at
it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. - Poul
Anderson
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