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| David Knopf <david -at- knopf -dot- com> asked, "What would a 1-page
| MIF file demonstrate?" I think it would only take a page or two
| of MIF to get a feel for how much tagging is needed on a
| day-to-day basis, which would assuage--or perhaps heighten!--my
| fears about non-compliance.
If I picked two pages at random from a current project, they would
probably look like standard pages for a printed document with no
conditions and no complex mark-up. You would not even be able to tell
they are part of a single source project.
| In supporting the Intercom article, I've certainly learned about a lot
of
| documentation that *isn't* suitable for single-sourcing. The
single-source
| advocates have backed away from:
|
| * Non-graphic WinHelp accompanying printed documents: "so 1997"
I don't mind of course if you disagree with me, but I wish you wouldn't
misquote me. I said that I suggested there are problems with this
approach to information design, yes, but I stated that it could
**easily** be produced using the single source approach.
| * Reference and procedural documentation: "why would you want to?"
|
| * Training documents accompanying product: "entirely unrelated"
Again, this is not what I said. I said that I did not think you (or
anyone else) would succeed in combining pedagogical, reference, and
procedural information **within a single text block**, which you
previously asserted was the point of single sourcing. It is not.
| * I can just guess what you'd say about the sales group's idea to
build
| their proposals from pieces of our documents 8^)
Generally, I would think that a poor idea. In my own experience,
pre-sale collaterals for sales and marketing *are* fundamentally
different from post-sale training and technical material. The audience
is different; the information needs are different; the goals of the
documents are different. Therefore, the overlap would be very minimal,
and single sourcing would tend to be the wrong approach.
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