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For once, we're not the laggards
Thursday, June 14, 2007 — posted by Sarah
Over on the Really Strategies blog, there's a discussion about assumptions and best practices in "print composition." The company is somewhat similar to ours, except that they are focused on the publishing industry (magazines and books) rather than technical content.The post basically lays out the argument that content should use consistent styles and file naming conventions, partly because it's A Good Idea, but also because this helps lay a foundation for an XML workflow.
I like to assess the "technical quality" of files using four levels:
- No consistency. A document created by Author A looks nothing like a document created by Author B.
- Visual consistency. A and B's documents look the same on paper (or whatever the final deliverable format is), but the implementation in the files is inconsistent.
- Template-driven authoring. Information is consistent on paper (orwtfdfi) and formatting is implemented consistently with paragraph, character, and other styles. It's easy to reproduce the correct look and feel by applying the appropriate styles.
- Structured authoring. Information follows the required structure, and formatting is driven by the hierarchical relationship of the various elements.
Why the difference? I believe it is because the publishing industry is still focused on print as a primary deliverable (this makes sense when you're selling magazines!) and is unwilling to compromise look and feel to gain automation. In our industry, that is not usually the case.
Labels: xml
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