A box of beautifully enticing promise
Creating a documentation production system from a new DITA Open Toolkit reminds me of my son’s new Lego kit. Viewing it on the shelf at the store, he was enticed by the possibilities—it was a challenge (which he enjoys), and it would yield a beautiful product when finished.
The Lego Taj Mahal is a massive kit. On the shelf, the box was huge, with attractive color photographs of the finished project. The cashier smiled when we brought up the empty display box. He said he would bring one out of the back. What he brought was the same size, but it was a brown cardboard box and must have weighed forty pounds. We paid for it, and then we had to lug it all over the mall and back to the car. Buyer’s remorse was already starting.At home, my son opened the cardboard box and dumped out a jumble of tiny parts. Surely no graceful order could come of this (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The pieces
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The extended analogy