RE: Giving Up on XML

Subject: RE: Giving Up on XML
From: "Klasovsky, Nick" <nklasovsky -at- nordson -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:55:34 -0400

Eric Dunn wrote:

"I'd also wonder if writers who can't set-up the DITA implementations in

commercial software or get the open tool kit functioning won't have
difficulty grasping other basic changes in thinking required by working
in
a DITA environment."

There are many, many writers out here like me who are not programmers.
We can't set up the DITA implementations in commercial software, we
can't get the open tool kit functioning. We can't quite get our heads
around DITA or XML, possibly because its all too complicated and
requires too much fiddling around to get working. We write and
illustrate manuals in the old fashioned way, with software that allows
us to get 'r done with a minimum of fuss.

We don't want to have stop what we're doing to get under the hood of
tools and write custom scripts to do what most commercial software does
for us. We also work for employers who don't give us budgets and staff
to do programming for something that we can do in Word or our publishing
software. A lot of us out here work in industries other than IT, so the
programmers we may have in house don't do publishing software and don't
know what XML is. They are too busy writing controls software. Our
employers don't think spending a lot of time and money fiddling with
publishing software adds much value to what we do, and our users could
care less if we use Word or XML to publish the information they need.

Like other posters have said, when it is all reduced to an all-in-one
program that costs no more than Framemaker and doesn't require outside
consultants to set up and maintain, then it may be widely adopted. Until
then it is still no more than a programmer's dream and a user's
nightmare.

Nick Klasovsky
Senior Technical Writer
Team Finishing
Nordson Corporation
Amherst, OH 44001



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