Palimpsest
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
 
A Quarky new approach?
Recently, Quark has announced their new dynamic publishing concept and/or solution.

Where to start?
Although traditional publishing allows each author to hand-craft the appearance of each page, the limitation is that it ties information to the way it is presented. This means that if you want to publish the same information in print, Web, and electronic formats, then you have to create an entirely separate version of your information for each media type.
Fascinating, but it sounds oddly familiar. Where could I have heard this before? Wait! This sounds like an argument for...single sourcing!
[S]ingle sourcing means writing information once
and using it many times. It does not mean writing it and
then copying and pasting it into another source, or modifying
the information for different needs such that you have
multiple sources.
That would be from The Impact of Single Sourcing and Technology by Ann Rockley, published in Technical Communication in 2001.

The term "single sourcing" also appears in Designing Windows 95 Help: A Guide to Creating Online Documents, which was published in 1996 (!). You can see excerpts via Google Books. I'm sure there's more, but 1996 is plenty early.

Anyway, back to Quark:

Dynamic publishing is a different way to create and share information. Dynamic publishing lets you create information as reusable components of information that you can easily combine for different uses - different types of documents and different audiences.

Dynamic publishing also automates the page formatting process, so you can automatically produce print, Web, and electronic content from a single source of information.

Sorry, guys, but what you're describing is "single sourcing" and it's been around for a while. And I don't think redefining "dynamic publishing" is going to work, either, because that term already means something. Dynamic publishing can refer to the following:
Wikipedia has a definition of dynamic page publishing. RR Donnelley has dynamic publishing products. Here's a discussion of low-end dynamic publishing inside Six Apart (blogging platform). The RenderX engine has dynamic publishing ("For high volume, mass composition of personalized correspondence..."). For one-to-one marketing, we have PageFlex from Bitstream and Fusion Pro from Printable. Here's Arbortext and their discussion of dynamic publishing.

Arbortext. Hmmmm. There's something about Arbortext....

And here is where the situation gets truly weird. Take a look at the Quark executive biographies page. Of the ten people listed, five are ex-Arbortext, including the CEO, CIO, marketing VP, and two of three sales VPs.

So, Quark is the recipient of some sort of a multiple-organ management transplant from Arbortext. Given the rumors that the Arbortext-PTC merger hasn't been exactly a lovefest, the departure of senior management and others isn't surprising. It's their reappearance at a single company that's striking. And furthermore, it appears that they are trying to create Arbortext, MarComm Edition.

Will this work? The landscape is pretty bleak.

Here is an excerpt from Eric Kuhnen's analysis (published on TheContentWrangler.com, and you should read the entire thing):
Quark, in proposing to integrate a CMS into its Dynamic Publishing Solution, has just added a well known set of problems to their offering. There are literally dozens of CMS-enabled solutions on the market already; Quark’s entry is nothing new (well, it is to Quark but not to its customers). It’s not that adding the CMS itself is the wrong idea, but that incorporating a traditional CMS will yield fewer benefits to the customers in the markets it serves, and will not do much to displace the leading ECM vendors in the markets it would like to serve. So, Quark will follow the road it has always taken.
(Emphasis mine)

A variation on this theme is found in an interview with Raymond Schiavone conducted by Pariah S. Burke, editor of QuarkVsInDesign.com (again, read it all, especially the analysis of the interview on the third and fourth pages). This excerpt is from Burke's analysis:
I think QuarkXPress will continue to have utility on its own, but its primary role will be to function as a desktop client for an as-yet unrevealed enterprise-grade suite of systems.

XPress 8 will be the first stage, I predict. [... Schiavone's] realistic goal for the XPress 8 generation of products will be to make the market take notice of Quark again, to open a dialog with large workflow managers who will help refine Schiavone’s vision for XPress 9.

By the time XPress 9 and its matching systems do release (probably less than 12 months following the release of version 8), QuarkXPress will be little more than a client application. All the real power will reside on the server-side systems. More importantly, by abandoning the so-called “feature war” with InDesign, Quark will create a lopsided conundrum for potential users—you can have near total automation of your publishing and production, with output to print, PDF, PDF/X, HTML, XML, and everything else you can think of, but without certain creativity, composition, and proofing features the competition will have had for generations.
The existence of InDesign Server notwithstanding, I think the overall analysis makes sense. Basically, transitioning Quark into a server-based publishing system requires moving away from freelancers and small business customers. They can't afford and don't need server-based publishing. Instead, Quark needs to make inroads into large companies with large marketing departments. And there, they run up against the twin buzzsaws of InDesign and existing competition in the content management space. This might work if Quark's offering was deeply compelling, unique, and game-changing. In its current version, it appears to be none of the above.

The most difficult part of any change in technology is end user adoption. I've discussed change management on this blog and elsewhere. Bringing XML and automation into a marketing or publishing workflow is going to present some unique challenges.

In publishing (not technical publications), the deliverable is in fact the product. As a book publisher, you care greatly about the appearance of your final product, the book. In technical publishing, the appearance of the documentation is often negotiable, and making the inevitable compromises on formatting to get better automation is an acceptable tradeoff. This may not be true for most magazine and book publishers. (It's worth noting that the most technical of trade book publishers, O'Reilly Media, was also the first, as far as I know, to move to XML-based publishing.) Quark grudging acknowledges the challenge in the description of their solution:

Dynamic publishing started in the realm of technical documentation, where large manufacturers and some types of publishers have implemented dynamic publishing to produce user guides, service manuals, parts catalogs, legal documentation, and similar types of information.

Some publishers have built their own dynamic publishing systems for publications that have more elaborate layout requirements than technical documentation, but these systems have been cobbled together from multiple technologies. In many cases, they have achieved some of their business goals but at the expense of far higher process costs.

"Cobbled together"?

"Pot? This is Kettle. How you doin'?"

Here is a description of what's in Quark's DPS (from the Quark DPS FAQ)
Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution (DPS) is publishing software. It consists of multiple software components, some from Quark and some from third parties, including:
  • Optional desktop products for creating content: QuarkXPress, QuarkCopyDesk®, Xpress™ Author for Microsoft® Word, Adobe® InCopy® and InDesign®
  • Standard server-based publishing software: QuarkXPress Server and Quark Transformation Engine, for publishing to print and electronic media
  • Standard server-based product for automating workflow: Quark Publishing System
  • Optional browser-based product for content creation, final document edits and reviewing
  • Integration with server-based products for content management partners such as Alfresco®
(emphasis mine)

visual of Quark Dynamic Publishing System from Quark
(Image from Quark's web site: http://dynamicpublishing.quark.com/dps/how_it_works.html)
OK. Moving on.

Here is a really accurate bit of information. In response to the question, "How will dynamic publishing affect me and my employees?", we have this:
The primary impact is on the authoring process. Dynamic publishing shifts the authoring focus from hand-crafting pages to creating information that is independent of any specific media type, which means that authors stop worrying about how the information looks and instead focus on writing it. Authors also shift from creating monolithic documents to writing small, reusable components of information.
There is a world of pain hidden in those three sentences. In my experience, the more creative technical writers have a more difficult time with XML than the more engineering-oriented writers. Let's graph from most technical to least technical:

engineers >> technical writers >> marketing writers

Uh-oh. Getting marketing people to follow structured authoring concepts is going to be really difficult.

A couple of final notes:
All in all, I'm none too impressed with Quark DPS version 1. Now, if the "dynamic publishing" bit in the name is a preview of coming attractions rather than an accurate label for what they have now, then perhaps there's hope. But I'm glad I'm not the one trying to pull this off because from out here, it looks like an extreme long shot.

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- posted by Sarah @ 2:55 PM |
Saturday, May 10, 2008
 
Coming attractions
I greatly enjoyed my time in Vancouver for DocTrain West.

Unfortunately, the process of getting to and from Vancouver is shaping up to be one of the "typical" travel nightmares. Outbound, I missed a connection (because of weather) by a few minutes, which resulted in a six-hour penalty in travel time.

Inbound back to RDU, I'm writing this on the Vancouver to Dallas plane, which is currently parked at the gate in Vancouver and shows no signs of departing anytime soon. Now, I'd prefer that they fix the hydraulic leak before we go, but it seems as though lately, the on-time rates have gone south. (Hmmm. I live in the South and it occurs to me that this metaphor is a bit locale-ist.) let's try again...the on-time rates have gone down the toilet. (oops. That's sure to offend someone and also lead to Google search hits I'd prefer not to have.) ....the on-time rates really s*** (this is getting worse instead of better). ...the airlines appear to be having some challenges (cough, cough) with their already lousy on-time operations. [Update: We departed almost three hours late with a new, non-leaking hydraulic component.] [Update2: I'm posting this from DFW.]

Anyway, I assume I'll get back at some point. Meanwhile, the conference itself was fun. Got to catch up with lots of people, saw some interesting presentations, and did two sessions that seemed to go reasonably well.

This is only the second time I've done a hands-on workshop in a conference context. Attempting to do one of these sessions is right behind high places, spiders, and eggplant on my list of phobias.

Why? I have little or no control over installation and configuration issues. For an XSL workshop, the minimum requirements are a Java runtime and an XSL parser (both free and open source and therefore a bit challenging to install). A text editor intended for programming (such as Oxygen) would be nice, too. It's impossible to get everyone configured ahead of time, so we end up scrambling to make everything work at the beginning of class. And then we have essentially infinite possible problems ranging from problems with wireless connections to platform variations to security problems (as in, you can't install anything because IT has locked your machine down).

This time around, things actually went extremely well. We had the usual issues, but everything got resolved (which isn't always the case). Although I had rather a large group for a hands-on session, we stayed on track with the schedule and even crammed in some extra material. (Private note to participants: Sorry about the exploding brain problem.) My favorite "problem" in this workshop was in attempting to help one participant. I started typing something and got unexpected input, which was because my touch-typing doesn't work on a non-U.S. keyboard. My attempts to locate the <, >, :, and = keystrokes were truly pathetic. The keyboard owner was nice enough not to laugh at me as she pointed to the correct keys.

Anyway, I'll be attempting this particular trick again at the upcoming Trends in Technical Communication (STC UK) event in Birmingham, so if you're interested in a fun-filled day of declarative programming, you should join us!

After Birmingham, I'll be attending X-Pubs in London. At that conference, I'm presenting the live version of our Web 2.0 white paper. We are attempting to provide some insight into how technical communication and user-generated content will intersect.

If you'll be at either of these events, please let me know.

And finally, after a nudge from a coworker, I have set up a Twitter account. You can find me at okeefe_scr. I'm not sure where that experiment will go, but I thought I'd give it a try.

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- posted by Sarah @ 6:20 PM |
Thursday, May 08, 2008
 
Doctrain: In.vision Xpress Author for Microsoft Word
Michael Boses, CTO
Invision Research (www.invisionresearch.com)

Yes, Virginia, you can author XML in Word.

Company founded in 1996. Xpress Author for Word launched in 2002. Early markets were defense intelligence, central government, and pharmaceutical industry.

Focused on enabling Web 2.0 technologies with structured authoring.

In.vision provides structured authoring interface inside Word. Toolbars configured for XML are displayed. Menus are also tailored for XML authoring. Based on the cursor location in the document, only valid items show up in the menu. So you can't insert a figure where only a title is valid.

Authoring based on styles. The styles drop-down list shows valid elements based on where you've clicked in the document.

Templates available. For example, create a document using the text book template, [Type title here] is displayed where you'll type the chapter title, placeholders for objectives, review questions, further reading are also displayed. Boilerplate text can also be saved in the template.

You can copy and paste content (including graphics) from other types of documents -- standard Word documents, spreadsheet, browser. Even a table with merged cells can be copied and pasted into structured doc. Structure is automatically applied.

Word's beloved revision tracking and commenting features are supported. This information is stored as metadata in the document, and you can specify the type of comment based on your defined structured (such as a legal or draft comment).

Spell checking and thesaurus are also supported.

You can display a document map, which shows headings in the document. Click on headings to navigate through document.

What happens when you paste content into an invalid location? When you right click to paste the content in an invalid location, the drop-down menu Paste item is grayed out. If you Ctrl-V to paste, the cursor flashes to indicate illegal action (too subtle an indication for my tastes), or you can configure the program to display a friendly dialog box.

How do you see the XML tags? I found Michael's response entertaining: We have a promise to the users never to show the tags. Not the answer I had hoped for!!!!! You can, however, export the document to XML and then display and/or edit the file in an XML authoring tool (Oxygen and XmetaL are my personal favorites, BTW).

Unfortunately the demo ran short, so we didn't get to see much else, which is unfortunate. The web site (http://www.invisionresearch.com/xpress.html) doesn't offer much detailed information, but do check out the brochure: http://www.invisionresearch.com/pdfs/xpressauthor.pdf. I have to chuckle at the front page of the brochure. Envision a suited gentleman with white hair and furrowed brow. "If you're frustrated with XML authoring, we have a Word for you." The photo says it all.

Based on what I saw, Xpress Author might be a good alternative for technically challenged content providers or companies married to Word. It isn't, and doesn't pretend to be, a heavy-duty XML authoring tool.
- posted by Loring @ 6:30 PM |
 
Doctrain: Documentation Planning and Library Design in a Web 2.0 World
Nicoletta Bleiel
Senior Information Developer
ComponentOne

Quick summary: Web 2.0 technology can enhance technical documentation, but the disorganization and narrow focus make it a poor replacement for sound technical documentation.

Wikis, podcasts, community forums, widgets/gadgets, blog, and social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are all examples of Web 2.0. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you already know this!

The bottom line is always giving your customer what they need. Nicky provided a refresher course in product and user analysis: scheduling site visits to watch the customer use your product, reading the customer forum on your company's web site, asking tech support for common customer problems, and so on.

Find out how users interact with your product. Do they have the time or inclination to flip through a book, or do they prefer short training videos or cheat sheets? Are they comfortable navigating online forums to find help, or do they prefer online help? Do they have an Internet connection to access online forums or content? Customers with lots of feedback are more apt to participate in forums or blogs, particularly those who are passionate about the product.

Advantages of wikis: users contribute at their convenience, way to build communities of practice (COP), keeper of group memory.
Disadvantages: wiki syntax not intuitive, can be difficult to learn, malicious comments require censorship or some response, often unstructured and disorganized.
Check out this wiki: http://wikihow.com (collaborative attempt to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual, everything from surviving a riot (http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Riot) to crocheting a cat hat (http://www.wikihow.com/Crochet-a-Cat-Hat).

Advantages of podcasts: informal, very useful for certain audiences, easy to create, free or inexpensive, easy to find on iTunes, keywords in podcast increase findability.
Disadvantages: might not work for your customer (computer with no soundcard), need to generate material frequently.
Notable podcasts/podcast tools: talkshoe.com (live shows on web kind of like Webex, recorded as podcast), audacity.com (free podcast recording software), Odiogo at http://www.odiogo.com (text-to-speech converter)

Advantages of blogs: can optimize search engine results, used to promote/educate customers about product features, casual way to communicate with users.
Disadvantages: require frequent contributions or lose audience, must respond to feedback.

In summary:
Always maintain solid user assistance as a foundation.
Web 2.0 enhances but doesn't replace what we do.

See the slides at http://www.doctrain.com/west/program_detail/documentation_planning_and_library_design_in_a_web_20_world/.
- posted by Loring @ 5:40 PM |
 
DocTrain: Document Engineering in User Experience Design
Bob Glushko
blog: Doc Or Die
University of California, Berkeley

Has a history as a consultant in hypertext (Hypertext Engineering), Passage Systems (single-source publishing and SGML), and then Veo (business-to-business commerce stuff), which was purchased by Commerce One. "And I made a gazillion dollars."

He has just started a company called Document Engineering Services.

What is document engineering?
Designing the information models and repositories that enable document-centric applications.
Building an information supply chain
Examples: tracing lettuce origins because of contamination concerns, simplifying passenger travel (and then some wildly entertaining attacks on TSA, the agency everyone loves to hate), integrating web-based stores and retail stores (purchase something online and return at the local store)

Information tech and business process are co-evolving
Document exchange patterns
Interesting discussion.

Document design questions are fundamentals.

"Drop shipment" pattern
* web store takes the order and validates it
* warehouse has the stuff
* web store notifies the warehouse
* warehouse ships the stuff

"hidden documents in business processes"

overlapping info models from shipping note, purchase order, transaction advice

traditional design approaches were preventing him from seeing the whole problem. Focus on documents is wrong. Need to focus on user experience -- not the interface, but Did the Product Arrive on Time and was the order fulfilled properly? Does the right person pay? Does it go to the right address? Did it arrive on time?

Traditional User Experience Design
* emphasis person-to-person interaction
* focuse on touch points where service is delivered or received
* implies that a richer or more personalized user experience is usually better

The need to bridge the "front stage" and "back stage"

* focus on the service encounter implies a sharp distinction between the interaction between customer and provider and what makes the interaction possible.

compare restaurant experience: MacDonald, gourmet restaurant, Japanese steakhouse -- amount of "front stage" varies greatly.

"Radical Claims Start Here"

* Many design ideas and methods need to be substantially rethought.
* Moment of truth reveals service quality but rarely determines it.
Front stage/back stage is not an architectural distinction -- it is just a point of view.
* It embodies some design biases that cause problems in service system design.

hotel service
* quality of check-in service
* Ritz higher than Motel 6
but missed the point of quality of experience.
Losing the reservation: Bad. No amount of nice will help with that.
kiosk check-in: low interaction/high quality

four encounters at hotel check-in:
* employee looking up reservation
* hotel systems talking to Expedia
* and some others I missed

all have to work for the front stage to work properly
quality is enabled or constrained by all of the service encounters.
even though many encounters don't involve or are invisible to the customer

service encounters are information exchanged
* person-to-person and machine encounters are less different than you might think.

Service system
* abstraction of service encounters are information exchanges

front stage/back stage distinction is a point of view
tension between front and back stage is not intrisic
merge the mindsets between front and back
services should be modular and configurable
information flow and process models across both
actionable user models
model-based user interfaces

customization and personalization
what information is required to do this?
where can this information come from?

ask question or fill out form?
one form or many over time
how about using information we can already to make it unnecessary to collect information from the user

mass customization/segments of one

model-based UI and UX

personalized banking...specific accounts but generic offers

traditional service design concepts -- moment of truth, front stage/back stage

need a methodology for designing service systems that are more horizontal or end-to-end
all services can be viewed abstractly as information exchanges.

Very interesting presentation.

His book is Document Engineering.

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- posted by Sarah @ 1:43 PM |
 
DocTrain: Dynamic Publishing
Once Content is in XML. Now what?
Learn How Dynamic Publishing Can Help You Improve the Re-use and Value of XML Content
Joshua Duhl
Quark

He begins with a lengthy explanation of why single-sourcing is a Good Thing, which I rather think might be unnecessary for this audience.

According to Mr. Duhl, most organizations are using print-based workflows or print-based workflows with an add-on for the web. Again, wrong audience.
The web mobile devices, and electronic communications have altered the fundamental principles of publishing: Content everywhere.
Pitfalls of traditional publishing
He appears to be describing the world before single-sourcing workflows. Think 1995. Other places in the organization, people are creating content you can use. He's defining the problem as sharing content between engineering and marketing. Lots of work and planning are required, but "staggering" benefits

Graphing complexity against volume
Tech pubs
Wouldn't it be great
"automation and collaboration are two sides of the same coin"?

Core principles

Content is created regardless of format, layout, or media (content first)

single source

plan for reuse, support for variations and alternatives

leveraging XML

format versus structure

What is Quark Dynamic Publishing Solution
* QuarkXPress
* plus workflow
* dynamic publishing

OK, so I finally understand my issues with this...in a world where people are componentizing and picking and choosing their solutions, why would they go to a monolithic approach?

Create
* QXP
* Indesign
Word
XML
WEb

manage
workflow system/check-in/out etc

publish
QXP server
* Quark transformation engine
* XML transformation rules

delivery
rendered formats

Sorry the notes are so messy; this presentation went very fast due to some scheduling issues that were not the presenters fault.

But overall, Quark is proposing a "dynamic publishing solution" that enables single-sourcing workflows based on XML.

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- posted by Sarah @ 1:34 PM |
 
DocTrain: Social Media 101/Now Everyone's a Technical Writer
Darren Barefoot, "recovering technical writer"
Capulet Communications

User-generated content is not new...Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was reconstructed based on a sketch made by a random Dutch person who attended a play at a contemporary theater and drew a sketch.

Most of human history is "few-to-few" communication. Humans sitting around the camp fire and grunting.

Then came broadcast media: "few-to-many" communications.

But now, we have "balkanization" and "diversification." The model is now "many-to-many" communication.

(I have a very similar discussion in our Web 2.0 white paper. Link below.)

Free and cheap tools (blogging software, cheap digital cameras) have made "many-to-many" communication possible. This is sometimes called the "rise of the creative class." People are shifting from being consumers to creators.

Seven concepts that differentiate social media:
Social media components (the usual):
Who make social media? "the people formerly known as the audience"

Why do people blog?
Corporate blogging is a tiny slice of social media.

Great video on Wikis in Plain English

More examples of social media being used for technical documentation tasks.

Very interesting presentation, with quite a bit of intersection with our Web 2.0 white paper (PDF, 1.7 MB). (Sorry to keep linking to it, but this is clearly the current hot topic.)

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- posted by Sarah @ 1:44 AM |