Review of XMetaL Author 5.0 DITA Edition

Andrea Dickson, a technical and marketing writer based in Seattle, WA, has written a Review of XMetaL Author 5.0 DITA Edition. Dickson says “XMetaL Author 5.0 is chock-full of intuitive (and occasionally automated) features that make starting out in structured authoring much easier. With this release, XMetaL’s developers are striving to make sure that you don’t have to understand DITA, XML, or the underlying document structure.”

While Dickson provides some nice high level information, most of it is marketing fodder provided by JustSystemns sales staff. Our advice. Read the review, but don’t use it to decide which XML authoring tool is right for you. Do your own research. Test drive the product. Really kick the tires! Download the RenderX engine (the magic dust that allows XMetaL to print to PDF). Try printing some documents to your printer. Can you print? Open the files you create with XMetaL in different XML authoring tools. Do they behave the same? Import content from your current authoring tool into XMetaL. Do all of these things and more. And, make sure you get others in your organization—folks who are representative of the actual humans who will have to use to the software—to do the same.

Dickson introduces some confusing information near the end of the review about SGML. She writes: “It’s not uncommon to hire a contractor or specialist to handle the backend work, such as changing elements and element hierarchies. If you feel comfortable tackling these tasks, more power to you, but they usually are performed by someone who has in-depth understanding of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).”

While we agree it’s commonplace (and often a very good idea) to bring in a structured content expert—someone with skills and experience folks on your staff don’t likely have—we disagree with the statement about the need for SGML experience. What the consultants need is experience helping organizations create modular XML content for reuse.

Filed under: DITA : Technical Writing : Authoring Tools : XMetaL

Comments

By jsilver on March 14, 2007 -- 7:08pm

Hi Scott,

Glad you had a chance to read Andrea’s review. One clarification for your readers: there is no need to download RenderX for use with XMetaL – it’s automatically included when you install our trial, DITA Edition, or Enterprise Edition. The trial and DITA Editions include the RenderX trial version, which has the same functionality as the full version but leaves a small watermark in the output and limits the number of pages you can generate to 11.

You raise a good point on recommending that people should take advantage of free trials before investing in a full version. It’s a great way to test-drive a product, which is why we always make a point to provide prospective XMetaL users with a free trial version.

Thanks,
Jerry
Director, Product Management
JustSystems Inc (XMetaL)

By ScottAbel on March 15, 2007 -- 11:07am

Jerry:

Thanks for sharing this information with our readers. I am sure they appreciate a better understanding of the oftentimes confusing world of XML authoring tools. And, the information about RenderX is good to know.

See you at Documentation and Training Vancouver (April 18-21, 2007)!

http://www.doctrain.com