Better tools ‘distancing’ editorial staff from the need to ‘know’ XML are becoming available and will help, as will greater adoption of ‘standard’ schema’s. However, it is inevitable that there will always some degree of a ‘technical’ slant when dealing with some XML’s.

You put your finger on a major issue. Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle to moving to XML is getting past the idea that it’s “too technical.” That goes hand-in-hand with the idea that XML will make you write differently, which implies that it will restrict your style.

Neither is true:

- For a writer, XML is just a way to mark up text, and the best XML editors make XML easy to author and edit. Any competent writer who can use Word or Frame can learn to use XML.

- Some XML schemas (I’m thinking of DITA here) were designed with a particular methodology in mind. But other schemas (e.g., DocBook) are agnostic about methodology. Some organizations choose to adopt a new methodology at the same time that they adopt XML, and that is often a good idea, but XML, even DITA, does not enforce any particular methodology; you can be as disciplined or as sloppy as you choose.

The XML community in general has not been very good at making these points; we tend to be techies who have a hard time understanding writers’ concerns, and are often dismissive of them. Even if these concerns are not “technically” valid, in practice they remain a true obstacle to XML adoption that managers must address.

My take on this is that Microsoft will start to make Word more powerful – in the real sense – or offer an entry-level version of Sharepoint to capitalize on what it offers.

The business benefits are obvious, i.e. with content distribution.

It when you mention the tools, such as XML, that people switch off.

They assume it’s too technical and not for them.

Ivan

I think as editorial staff become more understanding of what it means to get the ‘coding’ right at the beginning, the better and easier it will become; but there is still a long way to go to marry the ‘open’ editorial world of Microsoft Word with what publishers need, XML.

Two projects I am currently working on are addressing this through plug-ins for Word that from a simple template driven Word file, full blown XML against a rich DTD can be extracted (no RTF involved) and the XML reused for multiple publications. However, there will still be a need for some in-house editorial clean-up, sometimes using Word and sometimes using XML editors for complex ‘stuff’ as at the end of the day a publisher will sacrifice any kind of format control on its contributors if the content is so valuable, and they will ‘tag’ it up themselves. But XML really is the only way to go.

I think from my discussions, XML could get a lot of focus this year. I’ll follow this conversation with interest and post some more at another time, but an interesting topic for discussion.

Thanks for your comment, but I hate when people say “Word styles would be fine”. Actually, that’s not going to provide much benefit to the company as a whole, nor help them remain competitive. Look to these pages in future days as we clearly spell out the challenges publishers are facing, how they are actually already using XML inside their own companies, and how doing this would provide them with myriad benefits. Also watch as I attempt to make the case to shareholders and investors that putting money into companies that aren’t using efficient processes wastes money, time, and human resources — and fails to provide them with maximum ROI.

Thanks for your comment. I do know where you are heading with your comment, but, in today’s world, it’s just not good enough — and good enough, ain’t all that good.

Regards
Mike McNamara