Reasons to Structure

[Max Dunn]

Structure gives you the benefit of separating content from presentation.
Sounds trivial, and you may think you've accomplished this without
structure, but that is the primary reason to structure content: so your
XML abstraction is as agnostic as possible to the form of rendition that
you will publish in.

Typically, most unstructured forms of content management blur the
distinction between the XML abstraction and the XML (or other)
rendition.

Structuring content using XML standards also enables interoperability
with the ever-evolving publishing tools at our disposal. We don't really
know what cool publishing application will come up next, but we can bet
it will import and export XML, thus it will be interoperable with
systems based on structured content.

Not that structured content is always the right path... The sorts of
question to ask are:
* How many output formats do you have? (if it is just one, perhaps
unstructured is best!)
* Is translation required? (XML content management can definitely reduce
cost of translation)
* How much content reuse is required/implemented? (the more reuse, the
more benefit structure provides)

I would encourage you to explore the Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 Application
Pack for DITA, in particular its Open Toolkit integration. I think when
you generate different forms of help using the OT, combined with PDF
using the Framemaker rendition engine, you will understand the benefits
of structured content. http://www.adobe.com/go/dita/

Thanks,

Max

--
Max Dunn
Silicon Publishing 

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+maxdunn=siliconpublishing.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+maxdunn=siliconpublishing.com at lists.frameusers.c
om] On Behalf Of Rene Stephenson
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 6:46 AM
To: MATT TODD; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Reasons to Structure

Matt,
   
  I'll start the ball rolling, but I'm sure you'll get tons of responses
from folks more savvy about structure than myself.  ;-)
   
  * Dynamic formatting: you can use structured FM to create formats that
behave differently depending on various surrounding factors, like indent
to a certain level if it follows X paragraph but to a different level if
it follows Y paragraph.
   
  * Ability to produce cleaner XML for flexible web output.
   
  Rene
   
  

MATT TODD <mtodd at arielcorp.com> wrote:
  All right...tell me good, solid reasons why a company would want to
structure their documents. With my limited knowledge, I know structure
effectively controls styles, fonts, etc...but I could manage that myself
without structure. By extension, I know style control also controls
content location because particular types of writing usually use a
particular style...but I can also manage that myself. I know structure
is designed to encourage single-sourcing, but I'm already headed in that
direction without structure. I'm convinced with time and continuing
documentation analysis, I can parse our documentation so duplicate
verbiage in all our documents imports from one source. I can do that
without structure. I can use conditional text to further cut down
duplicate verbiage; it requires no structure. I can buy scripts or
third-party software to automate documentation procedures without
resorting to structure.

So tell me...why structure documentation? I don't know enough to answer
that question, and neither do my bosses. What's so great about it? What
capabilities does it offer that demand its use? Right now, I'm just
doing what I'm told, but it's always nice to found actions on solid
reason.

Matt

> I'm working with legacy documentation created in Word and FM 7.0 
> unstructured. The goal is FM 7.0 structured.

Whose goal is this, and why? I've seen the gee whiz demonstrations from
Adobe reps and been utterly convinced that I Need Structured Docs Now!
only to return to my pdf-output-only client projects that have no real
need for structured Frame. Before committing, make sure there's a
business case for structuring.

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Rene L. Stephenson
eNovative Solutions, Inc.
Business Phone: 678-513-0051
Email: rinnie1 at yahoo.com



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