Reasons to Structure

[Steve Rickaby]

At 06:45 -0800 12/2/07, Rene Stephenson wrote:

>  * 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.

This is true, but is only part of [this part] of the story.

You can, if you choose, construct an EDD that applies all formatting, using the context-sensitive features that Rene describes. To see what this can mean in terms of productivity, consider the actions an author performs when working with unstructured FrameMaker:

. Write a bit (left brain, focus on content)

. Go to paragraph catalog, apply a paragraph format (right brain, focus on presentation)

. Write a bit more (left brain, focus on content)

. Think about character markup-up, select a word (right brain, focus on presentation)

. Go to character catalog, apply a character format (right brain, focus on presentation)

. Write some more (left brain, focus on content)

. Decide that you don't like the presentation (right brain), go mess with the Paragraph Designer, waste twenty minutes...

Thus the author is constantly switching mental modalities and is constantly distracted from the job at hand: writing.

Contrast this with using a structured document in which the EDD controls the formatting:

. Select an element (mid-brain ;-)

. Write (left brain)

. Hit return: EDD controls next element (no brain ;-)

. Write (left brain)

and so on... with absolutely no trips to paragraph catalog or Paragraph Designer, ever. And this is only one of a great many advantages of structure: others will elaborate all the stuff about validation, round-tripping, single-sourcing, standards and so on.

Forgive me if I've got left brain and right brain the wrong way around: I'm left-handed.

-- 
Steve