RE: MIL STD 38784 - Tech. Man. Style and Format Reqs.

["HALL Bill" <bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com>]

Justin, 

or for that matter, anyone doing large volumes of MIL STD Maintenance Requirement Cards (MRCs) using anything but an SGML or XML content management environment should read my May 2001 Technical Communication article: Maintenance Procedures for a Class of Warships: Structured Authoring and Content Management - http://www.tenix.com/PDFLibrary/91.pdf, and then talk to your client about solving 95% of your data management problems and radically reducing your change cycle times.

Given that we worked to DEF AUST standards derived from MIL STD 38784, and that our Maintenance Requirement Card solution was based on the original typewritten 3M formats, much of what we have done should be fairly easily portable. Although the content management system we used (Structured Information Manager) is Australian developed, it is good enough that Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has established a dedicated subsidiary, TeraText (http://www.teratext.com) to distribute and support the content management platform in North America and Europe.

Search Google [Tenix "anzac ship" maintenance sgml] all in one string for more recent presentations and discussions of what you can do with content management and structured authoring. For a prolonged (and somewhat acrimonious discussion) between me, Andrew Plato, and respective fellow travellers on potential costs and benefits from structured authoring and content management, search the Techwrl archives for "real value" in the archives for the year 2000. If you ignore the name calling, many good points were made on both sides that should be considered by anyone thinking of moving their documentation activities from a paper to structured paradigm.

The MRC solution wouldn't be cheap, even building on Tenix's existing solutions, but for large volumes of data I think we have proven that even considering the cost of converting legacy data, it can certainly be cost effective. 

Other than being a satisfied user of the technology, I have no financial interest in the TeraText product or its developers or vendors. On the other hand, I suspect that Tenix might be willing to sell some of its or my expertise in how to use the product. (We might even be interested to talk about possibilities to set up the system as an application service provider to deal with defense technical documentation).

People with a genuine interest are welcome to contact me directly for more information.

Bill Hall
Documentation Systems Analyst
Strategy and Development Group
Tenix Defence
Nelson House, Nelson Place
Williamstown, Vic. 3016
Australia
Tel: +61 3 9244 4820 (Direct)
     +61 3 9244 4986 (Office)
URL: http://www.tenix.com
Mailto:bill -dot- hall -at- tenix -dot- com


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