[austechwriter] Re: Can anyone help with some numbers?
- From: "HALL Bill" <bill.hall@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 10:42:49 +1000 (EST)
Elizabeth,
Of course Word sucks when you are trying to use it to author and link
structured knowledge - it is a paper format oriented authoring system
that allows you to do anything you want to the appearance of text on a
page.
The solution is to switch to a proper structured authoring system based
on SGML or XML.=20
Yes they are difficult and more or less costly (depending on your
requirements) to set up in the first place, but once this is done and
you have made the decision to separate formatting from authoring
content, any content author can be trained to use a system like
FrameMaker in a day or two (followed by a week or two of hand holding)
because the only thing they are allowed to do is determine the logical
structure of the document (within the constraints of the DTD/Schema) and
type text.
Content author productivity is increased by 50 to 100% in a controlled
structured environment because they no longer have the opportunity to
fuss with formats. With some work at the template level, you can give
the authors a WYSIWYG environment so they can see what they are writing
will look like - but they can't tinker with it. Also, if your delivery
requirements change, you can change the presentation style without the
need to do anything with the content.
Added to that, the structured environment facilitates single sourcing,
content reuse and repurposing, various kinds of automated quality
control, etc.
I still use Word or Front Page for my own writing because the
applications are provided to me at no cost, I keep my documents simple
and can avoid most of their pitfalls, and because my readers can read
them at any stage in the authoring cycle. On the other hand, we have or
are moving our mission-critical authoring of deliverable documents into
structure authoring environments (still all SGML). Eventually, I will
find a tool that I can even use for my casual and administrative writing
- when I will be very happy to see the end of MS Word.
Regards,
Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Head Office, Engineering
Tenix Defense
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Phone: 03 9244 4820
Email:bill.hall@xxxxxxxxx
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Honorary Research Fellow
Knowledge Management Lab
School of Information Management & Systems
Monash University
Caulfield East, Vic. 3145
Phone: 03 9903 1883
Email: william.hall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
URL: http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/km/
=20
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