anticipating a move to Structrued Frame

[John Sgammato]

Fred said:

But the point remains that the best way to prepare depends greatly on what your goals and objectives are. Just as one example, if you are not planning to adopt topic-oriented authoring and topic-level reuse, then spending time learning about DITA would be a digression rather than progress toward whatever your real objective is.

There are many different things that can be accomplished by the implementation and use of structure, and it is not necessary to know a lot about the techniques and workflows that don't relate to your specific business need.

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I think the single biggest obstacle to my adoption of Structured FrameMaker has been exactly this sort of discussion. I have searched and searched and failed to find a straightforward high-level doc that tells me what the project is based on my business needs. 

It would make a fabulous Intercom article for STC members. In truth, it is up to Adobe, which has failed egregiously by producing a product and failing to market it (but there is no need to flog that dead horse again). 

All I need is an article that introduces the various concepts and tells me which structure concepts belong in my project and which I can safely ignore for now: 

Structured authoring can do many things. Here are some case studies. 

Alice needs A; here is an effective solution for A, using DITA. 

Ben needs B; here is an effective solution for B, using DocBook. 

Charlie needs C; here is an effective solution for C, using a modified DITA with this special XSLT. 

Anna B. Carruthers need D; here is an effective solution for D, ....