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Subject:Re: Single-sourcing, take II From:Mark Baker <mbaker -at- OMNIMARK -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 14 Oct 1998 18:14:41 -0400
Geoff Hart wrote
>But I think my
>original statement is still valid: if you define something well
>enough to identify its role in the structure, it makes things much
>easier when it comes time to repurpose that information for a new
>medium.
Absolutely valid. The big question here is when we say "identify its role in
the structure", what structure do we mean. To be precise, what is the object
whose structure we need to identify something's role in. If it is a
document, we will likely find that no matter how well we define the role a
fragment plays in a document, it doesn't help us much in using that fragment
in another document.
Knowing what position Timmy plays on his soccer team is not much use in
deciding what position he should play on his baseball team. Both choices are
based on more fundamental data about Timmy's athletic strengths and
weakness, as well as the realtive strengths and weakness of other players.
Maybe Timmy is a natural center forward, but we have a better center forward
and the team is better balanced if Timmy plays midfield.
We can't usefully say, "Timmy plays midfield in soccer so he should play
short-stop in baseball". To make a valid decision for the baseball team I
need the original data about Timmy's abilities, as well as data about the
abilities of other team members.
No amount of information about the structure of the soccer team helps me
make decisions about the structure of the baseball team. No amount of data
about the structure of one document let me make useful decisions about the
structure of another document. I need the original data on which the
original decision was based.
Documents are structured for presentation in a particular order. All other
structural realtionships that the fragment in question might have enjoyed
have been suppressed when the decisions were made about how to structure the
particular document in which it appears. The key data required to decide how
to use a piece of information in a new information product has been
suppressed as a result of expressing what role it plays in the original
information product.
What we must do, then, to achieve true single sourcing, is express the
position of a piece of information in a media-neutral, document-neutral
information set where all the interesting structures and realtionships are
maintained. This allows us to use the rich structure of the information set
to build a wide variety of information products.
>
>In short, you use the computer to automate organisation and
>collection of the correct components, then you use the human brain to
>structure/format/etc. those components to take best advantage of the
>specific medium.
>
Yes, but if you manage the provenance of your components correctly and also
prove out your processing applications, you can do automated rule-based
generation of information products for individual users, without the writer
intervening to cherrypick individual components. This provides some very
powerful information delivery options.
---
Mark Baker
Manager, Corporate Communications
OmniMark Technologies Corporation
1400 Blair Place
Gloucester, Ontario
Canada, K1J 9B8
Phone: 613-745-4242
Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- omnimark -dot- com
Web: http://www.omnimark.com
