Articles

Effective Content Reuse: Storing Paragraphs, Not Topics, Is Key to Content Management Success

Friday, October 17, 2008

By Paul Trotter, CEO, Author-it Software Corporation

Various reports have shown that knowledge workers spend about 30% of their time looking for content that has already been created. If that sounds like a colossal waste of time and money, it is.

But in terms of ...

Filed under: Content Management : Content Reuse : DITA : Structured Content

Moving Legacy Content To XML: Affordable, Self-Service Analysis/Modeling Tools Needed, Survey Says

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler and The Content Wrangler Community

Moving to structured XML authoring is a challenge for many organizations, especially those with lots of legacy content locked away in unstructured, proprietary Microsoft Word files, a new survey ...

Filed under: Content Conversion : Legacy Content Conversion : Structured Content : XML

Content Remix: Floss Manuals Provides Community Technology, Community Writing

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Many technical writers, content managers and information architects work on software development teams, or at least tangentially to them. You may have heard of Google’s Summer of Code or BarCamp or PodCamp and wondered, like Janet Swisher did at A Techie Tech Writer, ...

Filed under: Content Reuse : Structured Content : Technical Writing : User-Generated Content : Wikis

Paradigm Shifts are Never Pretty: Advice on Making the Move to XML Authoring

Monday, June 16, 2008

By Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing Services, Inc.

Most people are risk-averse, and profound changes such as the move to structured authoring require new skills and workflows. To ensure a successful transition, XML implementers need to assess their team members, ...

Filed under: DITA : Adoption : Structured Content : Technical Writing : XML

Let’s Get Real: The Secret To Making The Case For DITA Adoption To The Rest Of The World

Sunday, June 08, 2008

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is seeking participants to help move the adoption of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) forward, pushing the value proposition of DITA ...

Filed under: DITA : Adoption : Usage : Structured Content : XML : Examples

How to Rewrite Content for Reuse

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

More than just discussing why reuse is valuable, in this article from DCL News Pamela Kostur tells you how to do it. Pamela advises on how to convert your unstructured (or loosely-structured) legacy documentation into something more suitable for reuse. Why not just ...

Filed under: Content Reuse : DITA : Lessons Learned : Structured Content : Technical Writing : Structured Authoring

Thinking Outside the (Tech Docs) Box: Structured Authoring as Competitive Advantage

Friday, May 23, 2008

By Jake Sorofman, JustSystems

From Cost Center to Value Generator

There was a time when technical writing was seen as a cost center—a necessary function, but hardly a key lever for competitive advantage. This is quickly changing as globalization and ...