RE: single-sourcing and humble pie

Subject: RE: single-sourcing and humble pie
From: "Bill Lawrence" <scribe -at- matrixplus -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:02:06 -0400




I replied to Timothy off-list about what we do and how, but I thought
I'd throw in a little tidbit here. I'm using XML-based single-source
documents, and they use quite a number of conditionalized passages of
text as well as conditionalized graphics. It would be terribly
difficult to work this stuff except that my XML editor, Arbortext Epic,
can quickly preview any combination of conditional variables. It was
precisely that capability that made us purchase Epic and it works quite
well. I use five separate attributes to conditionalize text, and each of
those has multiple possible values. There are something on the order 36
possible document variations that I can generate from the single-source
XML files.

With Epic, I simply need to add all of the variables to a configuration
file and it constructs a GUI with check boxes that let me pick what
variation I want to preview. I don't think I could deal with the
complexity without this feature.

Bill Lawrence

Senior Technical Writer
Matrix Solutions


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ROBOHELP X5 - ALL NEW VERSION!!

Have you tried the latest in Help Authoring from RoboHelp?
Try ROBOHELP X5 for Free - Now with Word 2003 support, Content
Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more!

Download a free trial today: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l4

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



References:
single-sourcing and humble pie: From: lyndsey . amott

Previous by Author: RE: Very poor JavaHelp performance
Next by Author: RE: Professional Organizations
Previous by Thread: single-sourcing and humble pie
Next by Thread: Sometimes docs make a difference


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads