Re: What happened to information architecture and design

[th -at- tino-haida -dot- de]

Hi Steven,

this could be an interesting discussion.
Being a layouter, not a tech writer, I can only provide an example of 
what I see from my customers concerning semantic writing.

So, one of my customers once migrated to structured documentation, long 
time ago, and the structure was implemented conforming R. Horn's 
"Information Mapping".
But today, there is nothing left in their documentation of the idea of 
semantics and semantic writing. The moduls ("Maps" and "Blocks") that 
originally would create different content now are regarded simply as 
being suitable or not suitable for layout purposes.

The question is: Would a semantic differentiation lead to a 
distinguishable output? My customer does not see or does not have this 
requirement, or any sufficient reason that would justify the effort. So 
they think about switching to a less complicated, less semantic DTD.

I tried to find out when the idea of semantics came up (correct me if I 
am wrong):
It seems that from the beginning of SGML until the late 90's, the main 
advantage of using structured documents was associated with the 
separation of content and machine-related layout information, so-called 
"generic writing (or tagging)". Then there are some hints that the 
authors of the time thought, the "Internet" and "HTML" or "XHTML" would 
bring a new infrastructure where semantic differentiation might be 
useful, could be used efficiently. (This was before Google, of 
course...)

And today? I searched the net, but there is not much.
One blog even confuses "semantic" with "generic" or with tagging in 
general (HTML itself is not semantic, and the tags are hardly generic 
either).
(--> https://webdesignfromscratch.com/html-css/why-write-semantic-html/)

I read a book called "DITA best practices" lately. The authors advise to 
only use the DITA topics according to semantic rules.
But they do not provide facts how this could be used later on. Not very 
persuasive...

Is the idea of semantics "defunct"?
I would like to hear about your and other writers' experiences.

Best regards -- Tino H. Haida, Berlin


Janoff, Steven: