RE: Queries on Single Sourcing

Subject: RE: Queries on Single Sourcing
From: k k <turnleftatnowhere -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 14:07:31 -0800 (PST)

>
> Yes, it takes time to chunk my information properly,
> and to always think of
> how and where I can embed existing material instead
> of writing new chunks
> from scratch. Also, thanks to the content vs. format
> split advocated and
> followed by single-sourcing tools, I can really
> focus on the content and
> worry about the format once the content is done, or
> inbetween, when I want
> to take a break from writing. I don't have to bother
> with importing and
> converting formats and tweaking until the cows come
> home to get the desired
> effect in the final outputs. I let the output
> templates (some of which I've
> customised or am in the process of customising) take
> care of that for me.
>

I would be really interested in hearing how you solved
the problem of tracking the chunks. I'm the sole
writer in a software development shop and the
documentation suite we provide with each product has a
LOT of common content. With no CMS software available,
so far the most I've been able to do toward a single
source process is to try to move stuff into FrameMaker
so I can use conditional text. Do you use a CMS
program?

The places I've worked that tried the chunking
approach in a single-source procedure, they abandoned
the attempt when it became apparent the overhead of
cataloging the chunks was just too much of a problem.
There have been posts on this thread that referred to
sorrounding the chunks with meta-data, and similar
actions. That is the kind of thing I mean. It seems to
me in order to use that approach, you have to add
database design and maintenance to the normal TW
workload. And those are full-time jobs in themselves.

So how do you use information chunking without having
to spend hours each day doing nothing but categorizing
and indexing chunks?



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References:
RE: Queries on Single Sourcing: From: Maritza van den Heuvel

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