MadCap Software announced its roadmap for supporting the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard. With MadCap, authors will have a complete authoring and publishing suite of tools for creating, managing, translating and publishing DITA content. The products will use MadCap’s XML editor, which provides an graphical user interface for creating featured documentation that hides the XML being generated below. In the first phase of its DITA initiative, MadCap Software will add DITA support to four products: MadCap Flare, MadCap Blaze, MadCap Analyzer for reporting, MadCap Lingo. With MadCap Flare and Blaze, authors will be able to import DITA projects and topics as raw XML content, and using the XML editor, change the style sheets to get the desired look and structure. Authors will then have the option to publish the output as DITA content; print formats, such as Microsoft Word, DOCX and XPS or Adobe FrameMaker, PDF and AIR; and a range of HTML and XHTML online formats MadCap Analyzer will work directly with DITA topics and projects to allow authors to analyze and report on the content. Similarly, MadCap Lingo will import data directly from DITA topics and projects, so that it can be translated. The translated material can be published as DITA content or exported to a Flare or Blaze project. In the second phase, MadCap will enable authors to natively create and edit DITA topics in Flare and Blaze, as well as MadCap X-Edit, MadCap’s software family for creating short documents, contributing content to other documents, and reviewing content. Like Flare and Blaze, X-Edit will also support the ability to import and publish DITA information. In the third phase, MadCap will add DITA support to its forthcoming MadCap Team Server. This will make it possible to manage and share DITA content across teams and projects, as well as schedule DITA publishing. http://www.madcapsoftware.com
Category: Publishing & media (Page 32 of 53)
By David Lipsey, Managing Director, Entertainment & Media, FTI
Can anyone deliver customized content to its customers – in print, on the Web in rich applications, in social networking or to wireless media? To make matters more challenging, what if your customers are two-to-five year olds? Well, Sesame Workshop recently had to address this test to keep its brand relevant to precocious preschoolers. In fact, this non-profit organization behind Sesame Street took the bold view that multi-channel publishing is the future of the Workshop, and recognized that online will become its primary channel of distribution down the line. At the upcoming Gilbane Boston Conference (link to information on session), I will moderate a panel of multi-channel publishing experts, including the VP charged with Sesame Workshop’s internet initiative. We will provide you with the latest in content delivery, opportunities to serve more users and more applications, and insights to show that yes, almost anyone can do it. Please join me, Joe Bachana from DPCI (an industry leader in his own right) and the ever-innovative O’Reilly Press for a didactic and enlightening discussion that will get you mulling over ideas for enhancing your brand experience for customers.
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.
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.
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
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/
Increasing awareness, growth of technology adoption enables Gilbane Group to create landmark study of current ERM practice
Cambridge, MA, Sept 16 – Gilbane Group, Inc., the analyst and consulting firm focused on content technologies and their application to high-value business solutions, today released the industry’s first reliable picture of enterprise rights management adoption in its new study, Enterprise Rights Management: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness. The growth in the number of companies adopting or planning to adopt means that for the first time, enough data exists to produce a study that is meaningful for users and vendors alike. As a result, Gilbane Group’s new report presents the most comprehensive publicly available research on the ERM market ever undertaken.
ERM: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness is backed by qualitative and quantitative research on general awareness of ERM, the current state of ERM deployments or plans to deploy (or decisions to avoid the technology), and target applications. According to study data:
- Protecting confidential information from leaking outside the organization is the primary motivation driving ERM adoption.
- ERM is becoming important for supporting information usage regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (accounting) and HIPAA (healthcare).
- Apart from regulatory compliance, client/customer communications and financial processes are other types of business processes involving confidential information that are the most prevalent for ERM implementations.
- 55% of ERM implementations are integrated with content management solutions (including knowledge management and groupware/collaboration).
“The study reports increasing awareness of the significant risks associated with information leakage and the business processes that are most vulnerable. Our research shows that companies are taking more focused steps to address those risks, including implementation of enterprise rights management,” said study leader Bill Rosenblatt, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group, and President, Giant Steps Media Technology Strategies. “At the same time, infrastructure obstacles to implementation are eroding. This is making it easier for companies to adopt solutions, which is certainly good news for ERM vendors.”
“The study confirms the steady growth in the ERM market that we have been experiencing ourselves over the past few years,” said Dr. Kyugon Cho, CEO of Fasoo.com, one of the study’s Platinum Sponsors. “Moreover, the survey respondents cite a breadth of applications for ERM that go beyond what we have seen from our own customers. This makes us even more optimistic about the future of ERM.”
“This study reinforces GigaTrust’s focus on adding the types of extensions and enhancements for ERM that meet customer requirements and speed deployments. With these findings we think Gilbane will also help spur adoption as organizations see that their situation is not necessarily unique and that there are solutions out there to meet their needs,” said Brad Gandee, VP Product Marketing and Management at GigaTrust, also a Platinum Sponsor of the Gilbane study.
Gilbane Group’s study methodology included a survey of over 200 senior IT, security, and content management professionals across a range of vertical industries, conducted in cooperation with the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The research also draws on in-depth case studies on ERM deployments at six multinational companies; the case studies are included in the report.
Enterprise Rights Management: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness is available as a free download from the Gilbane Group website at https://gilbane.com. The report is also available from study sponsors EMC, Fasoo.com, GigaTrust, and Microsoft.
About Gilbane Group
Gilbane Group Inc. is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of content and information technologies since 1987. Clients include organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. Gilbane works with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other consultant and analyst firms. The firm has organized over 50 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Its widely read newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies and analyst blogs are available at https://gilbane.com.
We’ve all wondered about how many Kindle units have sold. One Wall Street analyst is willing to make an estimate:
And Kindle could sell 380,000 units in 2008, more than double what a Citigroup Global Markets research analyst had expected, he wrote yesterday in a research report.
“In its first year, that’s exactly how many iPods were sold,” analyst Mark Mahaney wrote. “Turns out the Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world.”
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