The Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication

STC Southwestern Ontario Spring Workshop 2007

Sarah O'Keefe is the founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing, a company that helps companies develop and deliver high-quality documentation for high-tech products. Sarah offers consultation on issues such as identifying the best tools and strategies for a company's documentation process and has coauthored several books. Within the STC, Sarah’s name has become synonymous with XML and moving documentation forward to meet multi-format publishing demands. For more information about Sarah, visit http://www.scriptorium.com.

Syllabus - Day 1 & 2

Day 1 & 2 is intended for technical writers and other content creators who are exploring the possibility of using Extensible Markup Language (XML) and structured authoring in their publishing efforts. The course provides a solid introduction to XML and explains how XML can fit into a technical publishing environment. Writing structured documents requires all contributors to look at content differently. This course explains how structure changes the publishing workflow and the advantages and disadvantages of these changes. This overview class does not focus on specific authoring tools; participants learn about the technology and the concepts underlying the tools.

The class format includes lecture and hands-on exercises.

Structured authoring concepts

  • Elements and hierarchy
  • Family relationships
  • Attributes
  • Formatting structured documents

XML concepts

  • XML defined
  • XML syntax
  • Valid and well-formed syntax
  • Entities
  • XML and structured authoring
  • Defining structure in XML

Workflow options

  • Defining content sources
  • Establishing content repositories
  • Implementing content reuse
  • Delivering formatted output

Structured writing basics

  • Modular writing
  • Audience-specific writing
  • Writing for reuse

Roles and responsibilities

  • Document architect
  • Template designer
  • Technical writer
  • Technical editor
  • Production editor

Making a business case for structured authoring and XML

  • Enabling content exchange
  • Extracting information from databases
  • Reducing content duplication
  • Extracting information based on structure and metadata
  • Improving formatting consistency
  • Reducing author learning curve
  • Improving compliance with document structures

Implementing a structured workflow

  • Analyzing content
  • Developing structure definitions
  • Designing a new publishing workflow
  • Rolling out the new workflow
  • Training users
  • Setting up a maintenance process

Syllabus - Advanced Day 3

Day 3 is intended for writers who are about to, or have already made the plunge into XML with Framemaker. This one day intensive course helps you plan your migration from unstructured to structured Framemaker, and will deliver practical tips and implementation tricks that can save time and effort when you need it most. From cost assessment to estimating how long the migration will take, this course will provide a realistic assessment of what to expect as you make the leap into XML.

The class format includes lecture and hands-on exercises. You will get the most out of this course if you also attend Day 1 & Day 2.

Topics will include:

  • Evaluating your current status
  • Structured FrameMaker or something else?
  • Choosing a document structure
  • Planning and implementing document migration
  • How much will this cost?
  • How long will this take?