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Really... more or less WAS Less Real Value is More
Subject:Really... more or less WAS Less Real Value is More From:Bill Burns <bburns -at- scriptorium -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 29 Nov 2000 19:03:10 -0700
A lot of hyperbole and a little fuzzy math in this debate about structured
documentation and content management. I might as well inject my own.
Andrew's right about the cost of employees in general. Salary isn't the
only cost by any means. I think his numbers are a bit high, but that's
really not the point. The cost of having those writers is only an
*additional* burden if they are less productive using the structured
documentation tool. And the total cost of the system will not likely be a
yearly expense, nor will the cost of conversion.
But I also agree with a lot that he's saying.
To quote a former member of the list, Chet Ensign (who had a lot more
experience in the realm of structured doc than I), you have to make a
business case for moving to structured docs and content management. If
you're in a .COM startup and have a single product that will be obsolete in
two years, the content-management route is not for you. If you have
documents with a short life span and little-to-no potential for reuse, it's
also not for you. If you're a mediocre writer, at best, you'll produce
thoroughly tagged, well-structured, mediocre text.
Structured-documentation tools (like Frame+SGML) only enforce a functional
structure. Conceptual organization can't be enforced by the tool. (And you
can cheat and place empty elements if you really want to. A DTD can only
verify structure, not coherence.)
Now, I also agree that there can be an enormous benefit to using such a
tool, and they don't have to be time-consuming to learn or soul-draining to
use. (I've seen them used in this way, especially with that dreadful
DocBook EDD that Adobe insists on shipping with Frame+SGML.) The benefit is
only useful to the writers if it really DOES take them away from the layout
and allow them to focus on content and organization. (Yes, you still have
to organize the content, even if you do it on a module-by-module basis.)
Content management produces the big gains in a number of situations:
- where documentation is a profit center (legal doc services)
- where thorough documentation is mandated by law and becomes part of the
overall cost of the product (health and avionics industries)
- where the lifetime of the documentation exceeds the lifetime of the
technology (both of the above)
- where the potential for reuse and repurposing (ugh) is very high
- where business conditions require that information is malleable (that is,
can be converted easily and shared), carefully tracked and maintained, and
archived for extended periods (manufacturing)
- where the localization costs require reuse of translation assets (hence
reuse of the source materials from which they were translated)
For many of us, these conditions don't exist. For those of us who don't
work under these unique conditions, our skills and adaptability are our
best tools.
As far as the brain being the best *content-management* tool, I'd only say
that until the collective unconscious becomes a corporate asset, companies
are going to be at the mercy of the wetware.
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