variables in xml workflow

[Dan Dube]

Hi Sam,

I have managed many XML related projects over the years, although I
personally am not a technical implementor. The approach that has worked
best for my teams is to set up XML attributes that cover certain
conditions. 

For example, if you were writing a glove box manual for a Ford
automobile and you had a topic about "Using the Radio", you may want to
share this between Ford cars that share the same radio. However, the
Ford Taurus may have slightly different features than the Mercury Sable,
even though they are "sister vehicles" that share many of the same
components. (I realize my examples are becoming dated/obsolete.) Within
one topic, you could write a Taurus-specific sentence and set an
attribute that this sentence only appears in glove box manuals with an
effectivity set to "Taurus", while a different sentence could be set
with an attribute value set to "Sable". At publication time, when you
publish the Taurus manual, only the Taurus information will be
published; all other content will be filtered out.

This approach does work best with a CMS. It is the approach that we use
with our CMS (DocZone) most often.

Hope this simplistic answer helps. If you need more info, let me know
and I can hook you up with a technical person who could give you more
specific info on how to accomplish this.

-Dan 


_________________________________________
Dan Dube
Managing Director, US Operations
DocZone.com
 
Phone: +1 603 488 5008
Mobile: +1 603 785 3052
Fax: +1 603 488 5009
 
www.doczone.com
DocZone: A KMWorld Trend-Setting Product of 2006

-----Original Message-----
From: Samuel Wright [mailto:lykoszine at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 10:09 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: variables in xml workflow

Hi All,

I'm curious if anyone has a particular methodology for using variables
in an xml (docbook/dita/other) workflow.

A straight text replace is easy enough if you _make sure_ that your
variable strings are not used elsewhere, but what about a more granular
xml aware search? One that can apply a variable to an xml doc and all
included files for ex (a topic map and included topics for example).

In this manner I could reuse the same topic twice, with different
variables in each. Bonus points if you can do it to sub elements of a
tree, so that one could reuse the topic above twice in the same
document, with different variables.