RE: Queries on Single Sourcing

[k k <turnleftatnowhere -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> 
> 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?



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html