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Subject:Delivery Formats (was: Who does layout?) From:"M. Dannenberg" <midannen -at- SI -dot- BOSCH -dot- DE> Date:Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:24:14 +0200
This relates to the discussion of whether techwriters should do layout,
i.e. be concerned with the appearance of their docs. I think that in
today's environment content and delivery format cannot be kept separate.
Gone are the days when you'd write a draft and somebody else would turn
it into a book, and books alone just will not do any longer.
The same content today has to be repurposed for manuals, sales
literature, online help, websites, CBT apps, presentations and you know
not what. What we have to do is leverage synergy across technology
platforms (just like Wally in the Dilbert cartoon). All this has to be
taken into account from the very beginning of content creation,
otherwise all you get is shovelware (and I know, I've just produced a
couple of megabytes of it).
What I'm dreaming of is a format that will make the transition between
the platforms reasonably painless - SGML isn't the answer for a small
company, but I have some hopes for HTML.
Mike
--
Mike Dannenberg
ETAS GmbH & Co.KG
midannen -at- si -dot- bosch -dot- de
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