Unstructured to structured FM?

[Art Campbell]

Bottom line is that he's correct, but the implementation is pretty labor
intensive especially if you're a small shop, and the payback he's thinking
about may not materialize. Basically, you're adding a set of rules to your
documents that control the formatting and possible uses of different chunks
of (often nested) text.

I'd start by reading up on Docbook and DITA, which are two of the most
popular standards.
I would avoid any proprietary or non-standard implementation like the
plague...  Even if they're in use in other parts of your company.

And the other obvious question is whether the sharing/reuse is one way or
two, so that you need to implement or share an existing set up.


Art Campbell
          art.campbell at gmail.com
  "... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52 Vincent and
a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
                                                      No disclaimers apply.
                                                               DoD 358

I support www.TheGrotonLine.com, hyperlocal news for Groton MA.


On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Laura Fergusson
<l.fergusson at codestuff.net>wrote:

>  Hi all****
>
> ** **
>
> My boss has mentioned the possibility of transferring our unstructured
> Frame docs to structured XML format. I have NO experience of structured FM
> and to be honest I’m a bit intimidated by it! (Boss is technical but knows
> little about tech writing tools btw)****
>
> ** **
>
> He thinks that it will make it easier to share our doc set with other
> parts of the company which has just acquired us – but he’s not totally sure
> – so I’m looking into it. I’m not even sure this is correct. ****
>
> ** **
>
> I am the sole author here and make heavy use of conditional text as we
> have several different clients and many product variants. I currently use
> Frame 8 on Windows.****
>
> ** **
>
> Could you kind guys please tell me the pros and cons of transferring from
> unstructured to structured? Any caveats or things to watch out for would be
> appreciated .As I say, I know nothing about structured FM or XML at all,
> but have many years of experience in unstructured.****
>
> ** **
>
> Many many thanks****
>
> ** **
>
> Laura Fergusson****
>
> Technical Author****
>
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