RE: Evaluation of Arbortext and XMLSpy

Subject: RE: Evaluation of Arbortext and XMLSpy
From: Chris Despopoulos <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 08:23:43 -0700


Ack! I'm chiming in.
First off, if anybody wants to pay me six figures to integrate Maker with Documentum, please let me know! Come on out and visit - I'll buy you a ticket to Spain, and put you up for a week (I hope you like kids).

I don't have direct experience with the Documentum API. If they use COM, then it's a no-brainer to get Documentum commands on the Maker menu. But there are bigger issues than that, and I presume they relate to all XML systems. You'll note that ArborText includes a dev environment roughly analogous to the FDK. Care to guess why? At some level, there is no horizontal solution to the SGML/XML problem - it's all vertical. While much of high-tech has been commoditized, markup is still sufficiently esoteric that the world hasn't settled on a general use and/or description.
Ok, back to Earth... different products have different problems. One known problem in Maker has to do with ID/IDREF attributes. Maker generates these values, and can guarantee unique values within a document or a book. But with doc mgmt you typically pick out small chunks of a book to edit them. Within the system, Maker cannot guarantee unique values. Explicitly setting ID vals for all element-creating actions (copy/paste, new elem, etc.) is non-trivial. (I've done it - didn't get six figures. Should I sue?)
OTOH, the Native XML/Proprietary Format issue that has generated so much noise (and has inspired Adobe to Save As XML by default) is a red herring. No system represents the markup internally as "native XML", and so if a product is more comfortable saving in a binary format or in XML, who cares as long as you can get valid XML when you want it? Any bonehead FDK programmer could have trapped SAVE and turned it into Save As XML... It so happens the bonehead who thought it worthwhile was an Adobe employee.

The point is, every "product" will have snags coming out of the box, and some are real while others are market smoke. You need honest descriptions of what it takes to get what you want using the various systems. You started out correctly by asking for testimonials from experienced users. But I don't think you got the answers you wanted... You need to find people who are getting the results you want, and a chance to see how they do it. Start with the output, and the legacy. Who has similar end-points, and what lies between? Remember, the devil is in the details.

And now I'll stir things up further by suggesting that if you already have Maker, maybe you should look at keeping it. Why re-train and re-tool? Make sure the re-tooling is actually less expensive than keeping on with Maker. Well, you have one reason to re-tool - especially if you work for Apple. That's a concern for the future of Maker. But if Adobe maintains Maker (updates for Win 2008) for the next five years, then I believe you can get perfectly good service out if it for that time. By then I certainly hope something will arise that leaps far ahead of Maker or Epic or XMLSpy.

Maybe Chris Despopoulos can chime
in and shed some light on what the FDK can enable in such an

and

Ah yes. The wonderful choice of whether to spend six figures on software and training or to spend six figures on in-house development. ;)
I think the discussion about Documentum is a little above the intent of the initial inquiry.






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

SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION: RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward
in Help authoring technology, featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo
From a single set of Word documents, create online Help and printed
documentation with ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 7 Professional, a new yearly
subscription service offering free updates and upgrades, support, and more.
http://www.doctohelp.com

---
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.



Previous by Author: RE: Toggle on/off or Turns on and off
Next by Author: Re: FrameMaker chapter file size limitation?
Previous by Thread: RE: Evaluation of Arbortext and XMLSpy
Next by Thread: Camtasia problem


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


Sponsored Ads