atw: Re: XML software for Word-like formatting
- From: "davebgar" <davebgar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:32:49 +1000
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.
Thanks for your advice so far.
Dave Gardiner
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