Structuring documents (was RE: Adobe's New Corporate Strategies)

Fri Apr 30 10:41:07 PDT 2010

Further to Matt's comments, I do conversion for clients, but usually 1000's of pages at a time, and sometimes it's Word, Frame, or
sloppy Frame source content. In almost all cases we look for patterns. If they can be id'd then we are sitting pretty. Regardless of
how good or bad the content is, if we can infer a structure (for example, even though Ctrl+b is used, if the content is in a step
then it will be a <uicontrol> and if in a figure title it is a <wintitle>) then there is a lot of good to come of it.

That's the discussion with clients part. I can set up a demo of the entire conversion of legacy content in under a few hours. Then I
show the results to a client. It has to be fast as I do this type of demo for free. This means it's my time if there is too much
manual process.

So, yes, I can say it's a simple, painless, and quick process to transition BUT that assumes I'm starting with good content.

It's also simple, painless, and quick to book a flight from my hometown to Dallas (which is where I'm headed as I type this
response) because the infrastructure is in place. If however there wasn't a collection of airlines with flights to and from the
cities, tools like Travelocity, AirCanada.com, United.com, and others then I have to pick up the phone. Call my travel agent. Leave
a voice mail, Wait for a call back, compare pricing and departure times, dates and durations, and so many other options. That's
work.

Same with conversion. Once a system is in place and it works well then more and more people can take advantage of the benefits of
structure. And, if it doesn't work, or doesn't add value, then I say don't do it. Sometimes a third-party demo of what CAN be done
makes it pretty clear that it should be done. Other times it shows you that it's a bad idea.

Ultimately it really is a choice to make between net costs and headaches versus net benefits.

And, as Matt mentioned, I'm also in Dallas, and also at the STC booth. Feel free to drop in if you are on the list and we Matt, Tom,
or I can help out, discuss ideas, and generally outline ideas that may be of use to anyone on the list looking to migrate to
structure.

BTW, with a system in place we converted 5,000 pages of legacy content that was in good shape to DITA in under a day. That included
splitting the files up into topics, converting task/concept/reference correctly, resolving all cross references between topics,
validating files, building XML, checking it into a CMS, and publishing to both PDF and HTML. Of course, another client with 500
pages of crap content took over a week to achieve half of those results.

Start with quality, life/job is easier.

Bernard

Bernard Aschwanden
Publishing Smarter
www.publishingsmarter.com

Write Less. Write Better.

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Matt Sullivan
Sent: April-29-10 16:24
To: 'Joseph Lorenzini'; 'FrameMaker Forum'
Subject: RE: Structuring documents (was RE: Adobe's New Corporate Strategies)

<from earlier post>
While there's structured framemaker, dita, and a host of third party plugins
can anyone really say its a simple, painless, and quick process to
transition from unstructured framemaker to either structured or dita? 

Sincerely,
Joseph Lorenzini
_______________________________________________
</from earlier post>

Hi Joseph,

I generally teach my students in a hands-on environment to convert legacy
documents to XML in under 2 hours, so I do see the process as painless and
quick.

I'll be in Dallas at the Adobe booth next week for the STC Summit if you'd
like a quick runthrough.

Tom Aldous will also be there, and he's actually scheduled to a 15 minute
runthrough of document conversion at the Adobe booth this coming  Monday
from 1:15-1:30

I have our complete booth schedule, including booth demos and Adobe
presentations schedule available in PDF by request or at
http://blogs.roundpeg.com/2010/04/adobe-stc-summit/

Of course the success of the conversion depends upon the extent to which the
content adheres to a standard. For example, if your Word docs all use
Normal+ for formatting, or if your FM docs are riddled with *Body, then no
logic can be applied and thus, no easy conversion exists.

So if your authors worked with style sheets, the supplied conversion tools
(FM conversion tables) are well-worth the effort and can convert any number
of documents to fairly valid XML with little relative effort. 

If they didn't, I know of no tool, for FM or any other editor, that will
analyze and structure documents using ad hoc formatting.

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