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Subject:Re: What would you do? Part 2. From:Janice Gelb <janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:42:45 +1100
Kevin McGowan <thatguy_80 -at- hotmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> 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?
>
I wouldn't if I were you for a couple of reasons:
* Deciding which tool/approach you're going to
use for all of your future authoring is a time-
consuming process and therefore any improvement
in your currently badly organized and formatted
doc set would have to wait until you'd finished
figuring out which tool you're going to use and
gotten trained on it.
* Your attention would be split between choosing
and learning a new tool on one hand and evaluating/
rewriting/restructuring your information on the other.
My approach would be to evaluate and restructure
the information first. That way, you could even
be delivering better documentation to your users
in your current tool while you are researching
your new approach/tool. Then when you do have the
new tool in place and are trained on it, moving
the compact, correctly structured information will
be a much less painful process.
-- Janice
***********************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janice -dot- gelb -at- sun -dot- com | this message is the return address
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