Mark Logic Corporation announced the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word. Distributed under the open-source Apache 2.0 license, the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word delivers a free, simple way for developers to combine native XML-based functionality in both MarkLogic Server and the most common content authoring environment, Microsoft Office Word 2007. Developers can build applications for finding and reusing enterprise content, enriching documents for search and analytics, and enhancing documents with custom metadata. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word includes a pre-built plug-in framework for Microsoft Office Word 2007, a sample application, and an extensive library for managing and manipulating Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents. Intelligent Authoring – the MarkLogic Toolkit for Word provides the ability to build a role- and task-aware application within Microsoft Office Word 2007 to improve the content authoring process. This functionality allows users to easily locate and preview content at any level of granularity and insert it into an active document, as well as manage custom document metadata. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word allows developers to build content applications that leverage Office Open XML, the native XML-based format of Microsoft Office Word 2007. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word includes an add-in application for deploying web-based content applications into Microsoft Office Word 2007. This enables developers to use web development techniques, such as HTML, JavaScript, and .NET to build applications that work in concert with the Microsoft Office Word 2007 authoring environment. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word also provides XQuery libraries that simplify working with Office Open XML for granular search, dynamic assembly, transformation, and delivery with MarkLogic Server. By leveraging the underlying XML markup, content applications built with MarkLogic and Microsoft Office Word 2007 can “round-trip” documents between various formats. The MarkLogic Toolkit for Word allows developers to inspect, modify, and even redistribute the source code to meet specific needs. You can download the latest release of MarkLogic Toolkit for Word at the Mark Logic Developer Workshop. http://www.marklogic.com
Category: Content creation and design (Page 48 of 60)
Technologies and strategies for authoring and editing, including word processors, structured editors, web and page layout and formatting, content conversion and migration, multichannel content, structured and unstructured data integration, and metadata creation.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 software, an upgrade of its solution for authoring, reviewing, managing, and publishing rich technical information and training content across multiple channels. Using the suite, technical communicators can create documentation, training materials and Web-enabled user assistance containing both traditional text and 3D designs along with rich media, including Adobe Flash Player compatible video, AVI, MP3 and SWF file support. The enhanced suite includes Adobe FrameMaker 9, the latest version of Adobe’s technical authoring and DITA publishing solution, Adobe RoboHelp 8, a major upgrade to Adobe’s help system and knowledge base authoring tool, Adobe Captivate 4, an upgrade to Adobe’s eLearning authoring tool, and Photoshop CS4, a new addition to the suite. The suite also includes Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended and Adobe Presenter 7. Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 is a complete solution that offers improved productivity along with support for standards-based authoring including support for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an XML-based standard for authoring, producing and delivering technical information. It enables the creation of rich content and publishing through multiple channels, including XML/HTML, print, PDF, WSF, WebHelp, Adobe FlashHelp, Microsoft HTML Help, OracleHelp, JavaHelp and Adobe AIR. FrameMaker 9 offers a new user interface. It supports hierarchical books and DITA 1.1, and makes it easier to author topic-based content. In addition, FrameMaker 9 provides a capability to aggregate unstructured, structured and DITA content in a seamless workflow. Using a PDF based review workflow, authors can import and incorporate feedback. Adobe RoboHelp 8 allows technical communicators to author XHTML-compliant professional help content. The software also supports Lists and Tables, a new CSS editor, Pages and Templates, and a new search functionality. The Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 is immediately available in North America. Estimated street price for the suite is US$1899. FrameMaker 9, RoboHelp 8 and Captivate 4 are available as standalone products as well. Estimated street price for FrameMaker 9 and RoboHelp 8 is US$999 for each, US$799 for Captivate 4. http://www.adobe.com
Today I will address a question I have grappled with for years, can non-structured authoring tools, e.g., word processors, can be used effectively to create structured content? I have been involved for some time in projects for various state legislatures and publishers trying to use familiar word processing tools to create XML content. So far, based on my experiences, I think the answer is a definite “maybe”. Let me explain and offer some rules for your consideration.
First understand that there is a range of validation and control possible in structured editing, from supporting a very loose data model to very strict data models. A loose data model might enforce a vocabulary of element type names but very little in the way of sequence and occurrence rules or data typing that would be required in a strict data model. Also remember that the rules expressed in your data model should be based on your business drivers such as regulatory compliance and internal policy. Therefore:
Rule number 1: The stricter your data model and business requirements are, the more you need a real structured editor. IMHO only very loose data models can effectively be supported in unstructured authoring tools.
Also, unstructured tools use a combination of formatting oriented structured elements and styles to emulate a structured editing experience. Styles tend to be very flat and have limited processing controls that can be applied to them. For instance, a heading style in an unstructured environment usually is applied only to the bold headline which is followed by a new style for the paragraphs that follow. In a structured environment, the heading and paragraphs would have a container element, perhaps chapter, that clearly indicates the boundaries of the chapter. Therefore structured data is less ambiguous than unstructured data. Ambiguity is easier for humans to deal with than computers which like everything explicitly marked up. It is important to know who is going to consume, process, manage, or manipulate the data. If these processes are mostly manual ones, then unstructured tools may be suitable. If you hope to automate a lot of the processing, such as page formatting, transforms to HTML and other formats, or reorganizing the data, then you will quickly find the limitations of unstructured tools. Therefore:
Rule Number 2: Highly automated and streamline processes usually required content to be created in a true structured editor. And very flexible content that is consumed or processed mostly by humans may support the use of unstructured tools.
Finally, the audience for the tools may influence how structured the content creation tools can be. If your user audience includes professional experts, such as legislative attorneys, you may not be able to convince them to use a tool that behaves differently than the word processor they are used to. They need to focus on the intellectual act or writing and how that law might affect other laws. They don’t want to have to think about the editing tool and markup it uses the way some production editors might. It is also good to remember that working under tight deadlines also impacts how much structure can be “managed” by the authors. Therefore:
Rule Number 3: Structured tools may be unsuitable for some users due to the type of writing they perform or the pressures of the environment in which they work.
By the way, a structured editing tool may be an XML structured editor, but it could also be a Web form, application dialog, Wiki, or some other interface that can enforce the rules expressed in the data model. But this is a topic for another day. </>
JustSystems announced XMetaL Author Enterprise for Documentum Webtop now supports Documentum ECM 6.5 and Windows Vista, and has new usability features and quality enhancements. XMetaL Author Enterprise for Documentum Webtop is designed for full-time content creators who require a desktop authoring application supported by the Documentum content repository features including seamless search, link management and navigation capabilities. The latest enhancements include: Documentum ECM 6.5 support – Now supports Documentum ECM 6.5 SP1 and continues to support Documentum ECM 6 SP1; Windows Vista compatibility – Now compatible with Windows Vista in addition to continued compatibility with Windows XP.; New operations – From the docbase tree-view in XMetaL Author Enterprise for Documentum Webtop, users can now create new folders or documents-from-a-template, or initiate import operations by simply right-clicking on the item in the docbase tree-view; Quality enhancements – Now offers improved DITA authoring, with quality enhancements to file check-in operations, reusable component creation, and DITA operations. The latest version of XMetaL Author Enterprise for Documentum Webtop is available today. http://www.justsystems.com
Robert D Anderson from IBM, Chief Architect of the DITA Open Toolkit, writes:
Hello,
This note is to announce that after some time off, the Boston area DITA
Users Group will be starting up again in 2009. To get things started, we
have created a new group Yahoo, so that we will be in sync with and
searchable by users of the many other Yahoo DITA lists. If you are
interested in joining the DITA Boston Users Group, please visit this page
for sign-up info.
We will soon be sending a survey to that list with proposed meeting topics,
so please sign up in order to help us decide what to feature. We will also
be looking for companies willing to host a meeting; if you already know you
are interested in hosting, please join the group and send a note to
ditabug-owner (which will go to me as well as to Liz Augustine and Lee Anne
Kowalski).
I always took footnotes for granted. You need them as you’re writing, you insert an indicator at the right place and it points the reader to an amplification, a citation, an off-hand comment, or something — but it’s out of the way, a distraction to the point you’re trying to make.
Some documents don’t need them, but some require them (e.g., scholarly documents, legal documents). In those documents, the footnotes contain such important information that, as Barry Bealer suggests in When footnotes are the content, “the meat [is] in the footnotes.”
The web doesn’t make it easy to represent footnotes. Footnotes on the Web argues that HTML is barely up to the task of presenting footnotes in any effective form.
But if you were to recreate the whole thing from scratch, without static paper as a model, how would you model footnotes?
In a document, a footnote is composed of two pieces of related information. One is the point that you’re trying to make, typically a new point. The other is some pre-existing reference material that presumably supports your point. If it is always the new material that points at the existing, supporting material, then we’re building an information taxonomy bottom up — with the unfortunate property that entering at higher levels will prevent us from seeing lower levels through explicitly-stated links.
To be fair, there are good reasons for connections to be bidirectional. Unidirectional links are forgivable for the paper model, with its inherently temporal life. But the WWW is more malleable, and bidirectional links don’t have to be published at the same time as the first end of the link. In this sense, HTML’s linking mechanism, the ‘<a href=”over_there”>’ construct is fundamentally broken. Google’s founders exploited just this characteristic of the web to build their company on a solution to a problem that needn’t have been.
And people who have lived through the markup revolution from the days of SGML and HyTime know that it shouldn’t have been.
But footnotes still only point bottom up. Fifteen to twenty years on, many of the deeper concepts of the markup revolution are still waiting to flower.
DocZone.com announced the release of DocZone DITA, a new Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for creating, managing and publishing DITA content. The new DocZone DITA product is integrated with JustSystems’ DITA authoring tool, XMetaL Author Enterprise, component content management (built as a layered application onto the Alfresco open source CMS), workflow, and single-source publishing to the DITA Open Toolkit. DocZone DITA is bundled with full support for DITA features such as conref and DITA maps, so that it is ready to use “out of the box”. DocZone.com and JustSystems announced a new partnership where the companies will work together to enable businesses to leverage the value of DITA. Under the terms of the partnership agreement, DocZone.com is an authorized worldwide reseller of JustSystems’ DITA authoring tool, XMetaL Author Enterprise. http://www.doczone.com/
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