Quark and who owns the text.

Subject: Quark and who owns the text.
From: Joanne Wittenbrook <jwittenbrook -at- ameritech -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 09:04:24 -0800 (PST)

Quark is a layout program. In major document workflows, the writers write all the copy, even captions and miscellaneous call outs. The only way text should enter Quark is via the "get text" import command.

Text is created in word or in RTF and handed off to the designers to add to the layout. The notion of designers altering or writing text is fairly recent in the publication business. Writers have trained to write, designers are trained to make it look good on the page. The work flow can be handled a couple of ways. The layouts can be created and the writers provided with word counts for the text needed to fill the layout. Or, the writers could provide the text and the designers create the layout to fit the amount of copy. It is usually a combination. In catalogs and magazines, there is usually a specification for type size and style. The designers or art director provide word counts for the the writers to work with.

Your proposal would create a content management system for the copy. A lot depends on the project, but most professional writers have experienced writing to a word count. Your content management system could contain a database of copy of different lengths for the same item. For example: the printed catalog would need 200 words, the website would need 100. Both items of copy would be stored together in your content management system. This would keep your product descriptions or other copy consistent in tone and style.

The ideal system would be a database on a shared server in your company Intranet.
Joanne
--------------------------------------------
>I don't need Quark myself, but the folks who prepare the printed
>product (who are in another city) for printing (at a commercial printer) use
>Quark to create their documents with lots of complicated layout, color,
>and pictures. I use the text for upload to an application that inserts
>the text into our online product. Images, layouts, and etc. for the
>online product comes from yet another group of people (who are fortunately
at my location). (Maybe I should add that this confusion is partly the
result of the fact that the folks who do the printed product are
>employees of a company that was recently acquired by my employer.)

>As another person said, what we need to do first is determine who
>"owns" the text content. I'm going to make the case that my department owns
>the text content, but at the same time, I have to make a proposal for
>how to maintain, store, and distribute the text content to the various
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