Re: The dream of auto-updates

Subject: Re: The dream of auto-updates
From: David Knopf <david -at- knopf -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 10:49:16 -0800


technical -at- theverbalist -dot- com wrote:

Heya all,
So here's a little mental mind game--I'm not even sure if what I want to
do is possible, but I'm hoping it is and that one (or more) of you can
point me in the right direction for doing it.

What I've got is a looooong document that shows the names of about 250
business objects (for example, DogContactMethod) and then the elements of
that transaction (<name>, <leashrattle>,<"who wants a cookie?">). Now the name of the business object stays the
same from release to release, but the elements associated with it are
often added to, subtracted from, and otherwise changed (add <whistle> to the list
of elements, delete <name>). Currently, the method for keeping those changes
updated are for my poor SME to spend hours cuttin' and pastin' relevant
info from the DTD into a Word doc and sending them on to me to include in
the doc. She'd like to change the way things are done, and so would
I--poor girl works too hard as it is.


Since you mention a DTD, you are presumably working in an XML environment. It should be relatively straightforward for whoever created and maintains the DTD to produce a summary of changes automatically in XML format and do an XSL transform to produce text or RTF you can import into Word. No reason this should be done manually on an ongoing basis.

Regards,


--

*David Knopf ~ Knopf Online ~ San Francisco*
mailto:david -at- knopf -dot- com ~ http://www.knopf.com

Consulting & Training for Technical Communicators
RoboHelp ~ FrameMaker ~ WebWorks ~ Structured Authoring ~ XML
WebWorks Publisher Certified ~ Adobe Certified Expert: FrameMaker
Member, JavaHelp 2.0 Expert Group
Moderator, HATT, wwp-users & Techshoret



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