Re: Open doc format

[Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

"Bill Hall" <bill -dot- hall -at- hotkey -dot- net -dot- au> wrote in message news:177742 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 

> It also meets one of Andrew Plato's ideals - separating the authoring of
> content from fondling fonts and styles. In an XML world the establishment
> and maintenance of styles can (and should) be a task that is completely
> separated from the writing task, and is one that is best left to genuine
> graphics and design experts, such that writers can concentrate on distilling
> knowledge and creating content.

I don't believe I have ever uttered that ideal. I've railed against behaviors
and attitudes that try to emphasize stylistic concerns over content concerns.
My opinion has always been that stylistic issues are of considerably less
importance than content issues.

As for the whole "separation of style and content" I find that this method
often leads to increased "font fondling."  The writers develop some highly
complex single-source system that demands intensive administration and
management, which frees them from actually writing anything. Again, this is
another of the "Redirection" that is happening in tech writing. Tech writers
redirecting their jobs into something other than writing. In theory this sounds
good, and for places that have a mammoth ton of docs to manage, there is value.
But most organizations would not be well served by such methods because they
would create more work for already overworked (and poorly focused) writers. 

As for the open document format - one of the chief problems with open standards
is that they take too long to come to fruition. the W3C and all these other
consortiums posture and complain for years before they actually release a
standard. And by the time they finally do get the standard out, its already
obsolete. Microsoft and others have long since moved ahead with their own
implementations. This usually causes these consortiums to wail, throw a fit,
and generate thousands of nasty press releases about how evil corporations are
robbing us of our soul - or something like that. 

The problem with standards organizations is they are not very tolerant to the
whims of a free market. This is why corporations, which can be more decisive,
tend to bust out and do things their own way. They can make a "total package"
that's built around their own "standards."  And they can build value into those
proprietary methods. That value translates into money and that money pays
people and provides for research. 

Remember Andrew's 9th Rule of Prosperity: At the end of the day, somebody has
to sign the check. 

Which really boils down to a simple business issue: why would anybody pay money
for a product or a technology if it was freely available on the Internet? I
would think by now that the dot.com bust would have taught everybody this
phenomenally simple concept. 

Andrew Plato 


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