structured Frame

[Fred Ridder]

Since nobody else has chimed in on this one, let me offer a few
comments.

It seems to me that the big advantages of structured authoring
fall into a few general areas:
-enhanced ability to publish content in different forms
   (definition A of "single sourcing")
-enhanced ability to reuse content in different contexts
   (definition B of "single sourcing")
-reduced translation costs from direct reuse of existing
   translated content modules
-more consistent organization of information across different
   documents
-more consistent organization of content written by different
   writers
-more consistent presentation of similar information types
-content is (theoretically) portable across a range of different
   structured authoring/editing/publishing tools (i.e. you're
   not locked into a proprietary file format)

For a lone writer, unless you have a significant requirement for
single sourcing (under either or both definitions of the term),
or have your documents translated into a lot of languages,
the return on investment for migrating to a structured
documentation environment is likely to be rather small.

The big payoffs from a financial standpoint (the key ingredient
of the business case for converting) stem from the reuse of
content. This is a direct, demonstrable, quanitifiable benefit.