The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals

Page 285 of 932

Here and There

So a number of client projects recently have me looking for certain info and tools. If you have some thoughts about any of these, please do get in touch or post a comment here.
In no particular order:

  • Does anyone have experience with the XSL-FO stylesheets that have been created for previewing content encoded with the NLM article DTD? In addition, has anyone extended the stylesheets to work with the book tag set?
  • In a related note, has anyone tried the Word 2007 add-in for the NLM DTD? Experiences? Good, bad, or indifferent? I also wonder if anyone has tried extending it to reflect customizations to the DTD/schema?
  • Finally, I am looking to talk to users who have created DITA content with Microsoft Word, either one of the commercial add-ins like Content Mapper or a custom add-in.

Publishers v. Google (Updated)

Publisher’s Weekly is reporting that a settlement might be at hand.

Nearly three years after publishers filed a lawsuit against Google over its controversial program to scan books from library shelves, a settlement could be near. Although rumors of a settlement have flared up and died down intermittently over the years, sources this week confirmed for Library Journal and Publishers Weekly that talk of a final agreement has indeed heated up, and one publishing insider with knowledge of the talks confirmed that a settlement announcement was “imminent.” Asked if the broad strokes of a final settlement with Google had indeed been reached, Association of American Publishers spokesperson Judith Platt suggested that the rumor mill was once again starting its run up to Frankfurt, which begins October 15. A Google spokesperson said the company does not comment on speculation.

If Google does stay in the scanning business, I wish someone would teach them how to scan physical copies of books to anything approach industry standard quality.

UPDATE (10/28/08): Wired News has a brief report on the settlement. The notion of a Book Rights Registry caught my eye. The Google Books website has a brief explanation of the settlement.

The World is Curved

The announcement of this new book caught my attention for a number of reasons, many obviously due to the state of the financial markets. More attuned to the Globalization practice is that we noted in our Multilingual Communications as a Business Imperative report that:

A common observation made during industry discussion of Internet-driven opportunities is that the proliferation of the worldwide web has made the business world “flat.” In other words, companies of all sizes can compete on a level playing field wherein everyone has the same access to technology and information. While our study respondents acknowledge the “flattening world” as Thomas Friedman has described it, they also recognize that different geographies and cultures have varying and distinct expectations. Thus, generalized information access does not equate to generalized information delivery. From this perspective, a flattening world requires far deeper levels of content relevancy, localization, and personalization than ever before. From this perspective, “one size fits all” is hardly the recipe for success in the global economy.

Risking the wrath of Friedman’ites, we contend that as far as multilingual communications are concerned, the world is most definitely not flat. Giving Friedman his due, David Smick contends that as far as global financial markets are concerned, the world is most definitely curved, where one “can’t see over the horizon and sight lines are limited.” Describing globalization as the great paradox of our time, this review quickly convinced me to put it on the “must read” list.

RSuite CMS Releases Adobe CS3 Connector

RSuite CMS now offers a CS3 Connector for InCopy users. The integration with Adobe’s CS3 enables InCopy users the ability to browse and open XML or InCopy documents in RSuite directly from the Adobe application. The RSuite CS3 Connector allows users to manage their content as XML within RSuite and to create a transformation to and from their own XML content model to the native XML file format of InCopy. This will help publishers who want to manage their content as XML throughout its life-cycle but also want to use the Adobe tools in their editorial and production process. Users can also store and develop workflows around InCopy and InDesign documents in RSuite. http://www.rsuitecms.com

W3C Publishes Proposed SMIL 3.0 Recommendation

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) SYMM Working Group has published the the Proposed Recommendation of “Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0),” pronounced “smile.” SMIL 3.0 allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 3.0, an author may describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. SMIL 3.0 is a modular XML application: its components may be used in other XML formats. SMIL also defines mobile profiles that incorporate features useful within the industry. Comments are welcome through 6 November. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/PR-SMIL3-20081006/

MadCap Software Launches Capture 3.0

MadCap Software announced the launch of MadCap Capture 3.0. Capture is MadCap’s screen capture and graphics editing software, which is designed specifically to address the needs of documentation professionals. With version 3.0, Capture adds several enhancements to provide image integration, quality, and control, including: Image text single-sourcing – Capture 3.0 expands on the integration with MadCap Flare, MadCap’s authoring software, which enables single-sourcing of content across the two applications. Now authors can enter a text description (screen tip or alternative text) for an image in a centralized location, so every time the image appears in a Flare project, the text automatically appears with it; System clipboard integration – Authors can now automatically save and insert screen captures into any application with direct system clipboard integration. Optimized size configuration for print and online publishing – Capture 3.0 allows authors to establish separate height and width settings for print and online publishing; Delayed capture – Capture 3.0 provides a time delay feature that lets you automatically capture an image after a certain number of seconds. This makes it possible to take screenshots showing elements such as drop-down menus and tool tips; Image blurring and magnification – In addition to being able to blur images around shapes, authors can now blur the area within shapes; Enhanced XPS support – Capture 3.0 provides the ability to save and load images in Microsoft XPS, providing a crisp image that does not become pixilated when someone zooms in. http://www.madcapsoftware.com/

The Future of Enterprise Search

We’ve been especially focused on enterprise search this year. In addition to Lynda’s blog and our normal conference coverage, we have released two extensive reports, one authored by Lynda and one by Stephen Arnold, and Udi Manber VP Engineering, Search, Google, keynoted our San Francisco conference. We are continuing this focus at our upcoming Boston conference where Prabhakar Raghavan, Head of Yahoo! Research, will provide the opening keynote.

Prabhakar’s talk is titled “The Future of Search”. The reason I added “enterprise” to the title of the post, is that Prabhakar’s talk will be of special interest to enterprises because of its emphasis on complex data in databases and marked-up content repositories. Prabhakar’s background includes stints CTO at Verity and IBM so enterprise (or, if you prefer “behind-the-firewall”, or “intranet”) search requirements are not new to him.

Here is the description from the conference site:

Web content continues to grow, change, diversify, and fragment. Meanwhile, users are performing increasingly sophisticated and open-ended tasks online, connecting broadly to content and services across the Web. The simple search result page of blue text links needs to evolve to address these complex tasks, and this evolution includes a more formal understanding of user’s intent, and a deeper model of how particular pieces of Web content can help. Structured databases power a significant fraction of Web pages, and microformats and other forms of markup have been proposed as mechanisms to expose this structure. But uptake of these mechanisms remains limited, as content owners await the killer application for this technology. That application is search. If search engines can make deep use of structured information about content, provided through open standards, then search engines and site owners can together bring consumers a far richer experience. We are entering a period of massive change to enable search engines to handle more complex content. Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research, will address the future of search: how search engines are becoming more sophisticated, what the breakthrough point will be for semantics on the Web and what this means for developers and publishers.

Join us on December 3rd at 8:30am at the Boston Westin Copley. Register.

Vignette Launches QuickSite to Speed Web Site Development

Vignette announced the worldwide availability of QuickSite, a new service offering that simplifies the Vignette Content Management implementation process and enables organizations to launch new Web sites faster. QuickSite delivers a consistent infrastructure, helping marketing departments to launch multiple microsites and branded sites without having to recreate Web pages from scratch. The service deployment includes content management processes, templates and business adoption workshops before the customer is asked to determine additional site requirements. QuickSite also includes support for multilingual Web sites, displays of content information through tag libraries and CSS templates to manage the look and feel of a site with limited help from IT. Site Cloning allows organizations to replicate a site within minutes rather than days by reusing the templates. http://www.vignette.com

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 The Gilbane Advisor

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑