The Promise
The Promise; The Pain; The Payback
RICHARD PIPE
www.infogridpacific.com

Nobody actually wants XML
The Pain
 We want lower production costs
 We want more formats - sometime
 We need more business options
 Intelligent content is nice
 We want to survive

The Promised Benefits of XML
The Promise
 Lower cost of content ownership
 Content Reuse
 Content Objects (Chunking / Segmenting)
 Format production
 Content markup

The tangible Benefits of XML
The Promise
 Print output
 eBooks
 Content Objects
 Online strategies
 Mobile strategies
 Business Readiness

XML: A Quick History
DocBook
SGML
The Promise
XML 1.0 TE Lite
DITA
10 Feb 98
1986 SGML HTML 2.0 XHTML 1.1
ISO Standard
1995 31 May 2001 NOW
60s 70s 80s 90s 00s
TeX
Donald Knuth
SGML HTML 1.0 XHTML 1.0 ePub
conceived 26 Jan 2000
Mobipocket
The Proprietary Years The Open Years

The legacy luggage!
The Promise
 DocBook
 TEI – Text Encoding Initiative
 Custom “house” SGML to XML

The Pain

XML can be enjoyable
The Promise

XML is a TOOL
The Promise

Use the newest tools
The Promise
 XHTML
 CSS 2.1 – CSS 3.0 XHTML
 XSLT/FO - carefully
 XSL
 Python CSS XSL
Module
s
 Javascript

XML vs. XHTML
The Promise
 XHTML is XML – totally
 ePub is XHTML
 Online content is inevitably XHTML
 Why do things twice?

XHTML Benefits
The Promise
 Standards Controlled
 Easy to work with
 Lots of tools
 Lowers the technology costs
 Lowers the “expert” costs
 Delivers the goods from Novel to Textbook

What is a book
General Structural Perspective
The Pain
 Galley punctuated by...
 Titles & Headers
 Text blocks
 Lists
 Images & tables
 Special List structures
 Generated Content
 Links & references

A quick comparison
Content Perspective
The Pain
XML Approach XHTML Approach
<recipe subject=“snacks”> <div class= “block recipe snacks”>
<instructions> Do it this way.</instructions> <p class= “instructions”> Do it this way.</p>
<ingredients> <div class=“ingredients”>
<ingredient>Bread</ingredient> <p>Bread</p>
<ingredient>Butter</ingredient> <p>Butter</p>
<ingredient>Jam</ingredient> <p>Jam</p>
</ingredients> </div>
<cooking-time>5mins</cooking-time> <p class=“cooking-time”>5mins</p>
</recipe> </div>

Change Management
Current Workflow & XML First
The Pain

Change Management
Required Workflow
The Pain

The Payoff

SUMMARY
Which XML (XHTML)
The Payoff
 The system that gives everything now
 Including things you don't want
 Including things you think you will never need
 It must work out of the box
 It must be relatively painless

The Questions
The Promise
 Is your solution based on open standards
 Will it do all I need today... and more
 What XML strategy do you recommend
 Show me the ROI calculations
 What are the ownership costs
 What is the cost of change

The Payoff
Thank You