In the past few weeks we’ve been helping a few clients navigate to a decision on structured (DITA, XML) or “normal” unstructured authoring.
**See the end of this post for a list of some popular structured authoring tools
I have plenty of colleagues that heavily favor structured authoring, and I agree that there are huge advantages to moving in that direction:
Advantages of Structured Authoring
- Economies of scale in large multi-author environments
- Better reuse of content
- Enforced content model
However, I feel the reasons that structured authoring has yet to take over the world are as follows:
Resistance to Structured Authoring
- Limited selection of tools for editing
- Higher learning curve for authors/editors
- Higher initial investment in formatting and templates
- Higher cost of coversion for legacy documents
So, how to choose?
Key factors in evaluating a move from unstructured to structured documentation
- Document length (longer documents may be more manageable in structured environments)
- Need for consistency of both format and content
- Number of authors and organizations involved in editing content
Structured Authoring Tools
Thanks to Yves Barbion (@yvesbarbion) for this short-list of tools and their weblinks
- http://leximation.com/dita-fmx/
- http://na.justsystems.com/content-xmetal-author
- http://www.oxygenxml.com/
- http://www.syntext.com/products/serna/index.html
