structured Frame

[russ at weststreetconsulting.com]

Fred,

Good summary. I have one thing to add and one disagreement...

For the average author, the biggest advantage of structured Frame might be simply the superiority of the authoring environment. It is so much easier to navigate, select, cut/paste, move, and format your content when you have a structure tree to work with (things which, as an author, I do A LOT). It takes time to get to know all the little tricks, but once you do, you'll never go back to unstructured Frame.  When I do, I get frustrated by the inefficiencies much the same as going back to working with Word. This holds true whether or not you ever actually save as XML and presents a compelling reason to use structured Frame, no matter what. There is an investment involved, but the payoff in authoring/editing efficiency pays you back over and over again.

My disagreement is the point about the lone writer. I am a lone writer and I depend heavily on structured Frame. Were I to use unstructured Frame, I would simply not be able to get my job done. It's all about how quickly I can get content on the page and how effectively I can use various single-sourcing techniques that make my workload possible.

Russ

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From: "Fred Ridder" <docudoc at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: structured Frame
To: miriamb at austin.rr.com, framers at lists.frameusers.com
Message-ID: <BAY106-F367835C9077974FC4F2780BAC00 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

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.


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