What would you do? Part 2.

["Kevin McGowan" <thatguy_80 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Thanks one and all...I've received a lot of feedback, and it's all 
excellent.

How's this for a thought?

Since I'm in Word now, and I desperately need to (1) get out of Word and (2) 
restructure/rewrite the information...would it be wise to come up with a new 
structure (DITA, for example) and move everything into a new structure in  a 
new tool ... all while rewriting it?

It sounds pretty insane when I write it out like this...but just how insane 
would it be? Let's say i wanted to rewrite everything in FrameMaker 7.2 
(which is structured, and can be output to XML/DITA/etc). Can i kill two 
birds with one stone here?

Kevin




>From: "Kevin McGowan" <thatguy_80 -at- hotmail -dot- com>
>To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>Subject: What would you do?
>Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:29:51 -0400
>
>Hi everyone...
>
>I'm in a bit of a bind, and I'd love to hear what y'all think I should do.
>:)
>
>I started this tech writing job last week. The company has several
>documents, all giant Word files. They want to move into an XML environment,
>so we can 1) maintain XML modules of information, and create printable user
>guides at will, 2) include some of these XML files as online help, 
>clickable
>from the UI.
>
>Translation is also a concern...as they want to maintain multiple languages
>(English, French, German, Dutch, etc...).
>
>So, here I am...with a bunch of crappy and poorly-maintained Word files, 
>and
>I need to create a state-of-the-art XML system. They keep talking about
>DITA...but I'm not convinced that the DITA format is the perfect way to go.
>Frankly, I'm not sure about much at the moment.
>
>Please share any advice/experience...
>
>Cheers,
>Kevin
>
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