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Subject:RE: single sourcing in Intercom From:eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:03:37 -0400
Neither Sean nor Goober really elaborated in a way that answers my
question.
Sean suggests, if I understand correctly, that a separate glossary be
maintained with markup including use. I can see the advantages. But why do
it separately when you can use markers in FrameMaker and maintain the
definitions across all documents as you create content? Autogenerating the
glossary based on such markers you can create a glossary of whichever
documents you include in a book. There's no way XML or other markup
provides any benefit that surpasses autogenerating a TOC from FrameMaker,
and the same goes for an index. Not a whizz in Word, I will still hazard
the guess that Word's tools would also be the easier and superior choice.
If you were to create a glossary separately, why not use a database?
Access, Filemaker, even using Excel you could have a better more user
friendly glossary/term repository in a very short time.
Perhaps the nonsense cries of "Sounds like a job for XML!" are getting to
me. Single-sourcing, database publishing, customising output, can indeed
all be done using XML systems. But they can also be done without any XML
at all. The very good combination of tools such as FrameMaker and WWP or
MIF2Go are just some of the methods possible.
While I have not read the Intercom article, it certainly seems to be a
bogus, misinformed, and misdirected use of XML. Seems the only reason it
was used is due to some severe emotional attachment to a particular tool
that is no longer supported.
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