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Tools of Change for Publishing: The StartWithXML Report
The StartWithXML Report
This page includes a detailed outline of the research report that will accompany the StartWithXML forum. The outline will be updated as work progresses on the report. Your feedback is welcome in the comments section below.
Forum attendees will receive a copy of the the report on the day of the event.
Table of Contents
- What IS XML? (meta language representing structure and content)
- Why StartwithXML: The Business Perspective
- How to StartwithXML: The Operational Perspective
- Case studies
What IS XML? (meta language representing structure and content)
Its 11-year history
Precursors (GML, SGML)
Related (HTML, XHTML, JSON)
Current standards (DocBook, DITA, XHTML, ONIX)
Current and expected applications of XML
Outside the publishing business
Inside the publishing business
Characteristics of XML documents
Text-based
Structured, and well-formed
Used with schemas
Valid
Functional across platforms (viewing, editing, transforming)
Carrying content, context and rights information
XML Technologies
XPath
XSLT
XQuery
XSL-FO
RelaxNG
Schematron
Atom Publishing Protocol
Vendor segments (map?)
ERP
Title management
Production management
Conversion houses
XML workflow tools
Digital asset management/archive systems and services
Digital asset distributors
Aggregators
Search
Consulting services
Why StartwithXML: The Business Perspective
The Business Case
ROI Drivers (both high level and success stories)
Different impacts for different books: illustrated, “chunkability”, etc.
Different models for different publishing programs
Creating options for the future
Taking company culture into consideration
Balancing investment resources and strategic goals
Shortcomings of prevailing workflows – acquisition, editorial/production, publication (write once, publish once)
Optimized for only a single use of content
Difficulty outputting multiple formats
Cumbersome storage and retrieval
Lead times lengthened by process itself
Internal silos and resulting rework
Limits to marketing and product use
Inability to do one-to-one marketing
Inability to do many-to-many marketing
Benefits of adopting an XML workflow – acquisition, editorial/production, publication (write once, publish many)
Product benefits
Shorter lead times, improving market responsiveness
Readily identify, tag and monetize chunkable assets
Produce multiple versions from a single source
Support recombinant and reusable content
Enable one-to-one or many-to-many marketing (XML files include discovery and awareness tools and hooks)
Future needs/unmet needs more readily addressed
Process benefits
Readily support search
Reduce errors and make corrections more easily
Improve cross-departmental interaction (break down silos)
Easily embedded rights information
Longevity: non-proprietary standard with long-term support
Collecting data to support a business case
Establish and evaluate customer (end-user) requirements
Assess processes across functions (handoffs)
Model both current (operational) and future (strategic) benefits
Solicit senior-level support for sustained change
How to StartwithXML: The Operational Perspective
Planning for change
Establishing where you are (the current state)
What matters most?
What matters least or not at all (sacred cows)?
Determining where you want to be (the desired future state)
Enumerating your current problems
Describing the new capabilities you need
Setting priorities
Creating a plan to get to your future state
Quantifying the investments required in a staged transition
Reducing pain, time and cost
How deeply do you want to tag content?
Business goals and how they shape what you do
Developing taxonomies
Iterative nature of tagging
Impact of different types of publishing on the decision
Audience
Likelihood and frequency of revision or update
How much do you want to own?
In-house options
Office Open XML
InDesign CS export
Other emerging standards (OpenOffice etc.)
Outsourcing alternatives
Segments (overlap with section 1.5)
Vendors (overlap with section 1.6)
Working with vendors in a mixed approach
Operational planning and transition management
Estimating project development timeframes
Estimating project costs
Working in XML when you both internal and freelance resources
Implementing XML while still publishing
Determining levels of document access
Who can make changes?
What changes can they make?
A publisher checklist
Buy-in, sponsor support and continuing dialogue
Ranking key benefits derived and measuring progress toward them
Early wins, ideally spread across multiple functions
Value of prototyping
Case studies
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September 24, 2008 10:43 AM
The whole effort looks very valuable. A few suggestions:
To make this more relevant to 2008, it would be worthwhile to think about what's different now from 1996, in which SGML provided an independent standard to store media-neutral content as text files that could provide the central hub in a wheel-and-spoke model for single source publishing, thereby providing most of the benefits listed in your "Benefits of adopting an XML workflow". It's easy to go through the outline and pick out tools that are available now that weren't then, although rough equivalents of all of them did exist then. Modern tools also cost a lot less, but addressing of this 1996-SGML vs. 2008-XML issue should go a little deeper than those obvious issues, especially considering how many publishers want to move into modern XML systems but currently have SGML systems now that aren't broken.
I found it interesting that the outline never mentions DTDs and only mentions schemas as one of the "Characteristics of XML documents." Publishers want to know about DTD/XSD/RNG issues, so the outline should provide a place to give some perspective on this.
Providing some structure to think about content vs. metadata would also be valuable. The concepts are very separate in old school document management systems, but the flexibility of XML adds a lot of gray area here, so publishers would be happy to see some guidance in how to plan out these relationships.
Let me know if I can help...
Bob
December 2, 2008 4:41 PM
I look forward to seeing the final version. Meanwhile, we have a significant amount of content targeting at the technical publishing market that is quite similar to where you're heading. Might want to see if https://www.scriptorium.com/papers.html can help.