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

[Ed]

Just yesterday I dove again into the Frame 7.2 structure folder, looked at
all of the files - DTD, EDD, MOD, etc. Started reading the XML cookbook, and
you know what? It's just not worth it to me as a solo writer. 

Copy and paste is easy and free (unless you're on a 3G iPhone...), and if
the company's going to invest in my job (which they're not), I'd much rather
it be a salary increase. Some of my work includes creating one-page "cheat
sheets" in Adobe Illustrator, and that's one-way content; I'm pretty sure
you can't import XML into Illustrator. 

I do see the benefits of the structured approach - I did it at a prior job -
but the barrier to entry is just way too high if you're the only one that's
going to be implementing it.

-=Ed.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-
> bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Bernard Aschwanden (Publishing
> Smarter)
> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 2:53 PM
> To: 'Alison Craig'; 'Matt Sullivan'; 'Joseph Lorenzini'; 'FrameMaker
Forum'
> Subject: RE: Structuring documents (was RE: Adobe's New Corporate
Strategies)
> 
> The "we" in this case is a company we. So it was me. And one part time
> resource who did a few hours of work on things I didn't want
> to work with. A lot of review or fixes to content the client had flagged
as a
> possible concern. In this specific case the content
> was a collection of references for command line info, but it had a
pattern.
> Once we id'd it all and knew what went where it was
> mostly painless. And the "we" has years and years of experience on all
this.
> I've worked with Frame since 1992 and with structured
> FrameMaker (FrameBuilder at the time) since then as well.
> 
> Writers who simply need to use the DITA stuff, not convert it, set it up,
> develop templates, and lots more can learn the basics
> pretty quickly. There are good and bad to go with it, but all in all it's
not
> a bad system. Once you know what you can (and cannot)
> do it's pretty smooth.
> 
> Bernard