Yes, You Can Do DITA With Microsoft Office and SharePoint!

June 1, 2011 Blog 2 Comments

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler Over the years, I’ve been quoted as saying, “You can’t do that with Microsoft Word and SharePoint”. More specifically, I usually said something like “If you want to move to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), then Microsoft Word and SharePoint are absolutely the wrong tools for the job.” But, that’s not true any more. With a little help from DITA Exchange, ”Yes, you can move to DITA using Microsoft Word and SharePoint.” This article seeks to explain, at a very high level, with Read the full article…

Monetizing Content: Leveraging Your Content Gold Mine

February 2, 2011 Blog 1 Comment

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler I’m going to let you in on a secret: You’re sitting on a gold mine of content that is just lying around hogging up server space. Some of it may even be hidden in physical archives, concealed in printed documents, or stored on microfiche. A gold mine, you say? Yep. A big, untapped source of revenue just waiting for someone to claim it. If you’re smart, you’ll tap it as soon as possible … before your competitors realize they should be doing the same Read the full article…

Marking Up The Fab Four: Just Imagine What XML Could Do For Your Books

February 2, 2010 Blog 9 Comments

By Alan J. Porter [This post is the first in a planned series of articles that examine how the traditional book industry could benefit from adopting XML.] Yesterday I posted on Twitter a couple of figures from the Association of American Publishers report of November 2009 book sales. The good news was that sales overall had in fact increased by 10.9%, but what really stood out was that in November of last year the sales of eBooks exploded showing a 199.9% increase and that they now account for about 2.5% Read the full article…

Reimagining the Book Publishing World With XML

February 1, 2010 Blog 2 Comments

By Dev Ganesan, President and CEO of Aptara Today’s content consumers are voracious digital omnivores, desiring to feed on all types of electronic content — from Twitter tweets to YouTube videos, from iPhone apps to Facebook updates, from mp3s to eBooks. Yet traditional publishers, particularly trade book publishers, are not prepared to serve digitally savvy audiences the variety of electronic products they demand. That’s because their production processes are traditionally rooted in outdated print publishing practices that are severely inadequate for tackling today’s publishing challenges. In order to profit – Read the full article…

CCM Takes Center Stage: Report Evaluates Component Content Management Systems and XML Editors

May 15, 2008 Blog 1 Comment

Component Content Management (CCM) technology allows enterprises to manage text content as componentized chunks of information rather than whole documents or web pages. It has become increasingly important to modern enterprises, especially given the rapid emergence of the DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) standard. However, CCM technology remains largely the domain of a wide collection of smaller software vendors targeting narrower use cases, according to research from CMS Watch, a vendor-independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies. These findings come from the XML and Component Content Management Report 2008, a Read the full article…

Is XML a Prerequisite to a Content Management System? A Point-Counterpoint Discussion

February 14, 2008 Blog 4 Comments

Reprinted with permission from DCL News While most people would agree that a Content Management System (CMS) would be good to have, how best to implement and to use a CMS is still for many a topic of confusion. In this lively discussion, Don Bridges of Data Conversion Laboratory and The Content Wrangler, Scott Abel, square off on the reasons for an organization to implement a CMS and whether XML is a prerequisite to a meaningful implementation vs. launching a CMS before you’re ready for XML. This spirited conversation may Read the full article…

Component Content Management: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

February 4, 2008 Blog 3 Comments

By Paul Trotter, CEO Author-it Software Corporation More and more businesses are expanding into international markets. A critical success factor for this expansion is high quality, cost-effective, and timely translated written content. Responsibility for this typically falls on internal translation departments or localization partners. Translation comes at a high price, exceeding the cost of writing the original content after only a few languages. Current approaches to localization rely on technologies and processes that have minimal scope for improvement. The localization industry is under increasing pressure to find new ways to Read the full article…