This presentation was delivered by Laurent Galichet of ISO during the NISO event, XML for Standards Publishers, held on Monday, April 24, 2017 in Washington DC.

1. Implementing and leveraging an XML
workflow
A brief history of publishing at ISO
Laurent Galichet and Serge Juillerat

2. Who is ISO and what do we do?
• Independent member-based NGO
• 163 national standards bodies
• Bring together experts to develop voluntary consensus-based
international standards

3. ISO in numbers
(2016)
• 21478 International Standards and standards-type documents
published
• Nearly 1 million pages (EN and FR)
• 3555 technical bodies
• 1509 technical meetings in 45 countries
• 144 ISO staff coordinate the worldwide activities of ISO from
Geneva

4. Why the XML workflow?
• Creation of a central repository of standards
• Improve speed to market also for national adoptions
• Broaden readership
• Reduce or avoid duplication of costs
• Streamline ISO production processes

5. How it all started
• Implementation of Typefi Writer + Typefi Designer
§ The problem: bottleneck end-of-chain with manual composition
§ With Typefi Writer in the hands of editors, one less bottleneck
§ Composition department disbanded
• Workflow choice
§ XML-first or XML-last?
• And which flavor of XML?

6. How it all started
• We chose XML-first
• And all the pieces came together
§ eXtyles, editorial and XML solution
§ Typefi, publishing platform
§ NLM DTD as a base and modifications by Mulberry technologies
• Genesis of ISOSTS: ISO Standards Tag Set

7. ISOSTS – the acid test
• Back-catalog conversion of over 30000 standards
§ Roughly split equally between MS Word, cPDF, scanned PDF source
files
• Equivalent of 750000 pages
• 2 years
• 99.995% character accuracy
• 99.95% mark-up accuracy

8. 2010 - 2011
It all begins
2011Dec Feb Apr Jun Aug Oct Dec
Typefi writer
ISOSTS kick off ISO
and Mulberry
XML schema
selection
Tendering process for back catalog
Innodata selected for back
Catalog Elaboration of SLAs
eXtyles presentation to ISO editors
I join...
Back catalog setup period
ISOSTS v.0.6 lands
Typefi 5 production chain
ISOSTS development end refinement by Mulberry
Coding instructions (ISO/Innodata)

9. Building the chain
Content
• .doc(x)
Structure
• XML
Layout
• PDF
• epub
Online Browsing Platform
www.iso.org/obp
MS Word eXtyles Typefi
MarkLogic

10. eXtyles from Inera
• Familiar working environment for end-users
• Integrated editorial tools
• Customizable
• Machine-generated XML
• In-house control

11. Typefi
• Layout automation
• High-throughput
• One source → Multiple output
• Brand-compliant publications
• No post-production work

12. Change and People
• Required a lot of support and help
• Need to be in the loop of developments
• MS Word skills are key
• Humans are creatures of habit, change is tough

13. Outsourcing
• September 2012: pilot to handle surplus
• 3 editors in Manila
• Trained remotely in ISO Directives, eXtyles, Typefi
• Team expanded to 5, then 11 then 14
• Handling majority of Final Draft International Standards (FDIS)

14. 2012
Building the chain
2012Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
eXtyles configuration meeting
Typefi configuration meeting
eXtyles initial build
Back cat
start mass conversion
ISOSTS v1.0
Online browsing platform
eXtyles + Typefi
subset of docs
Editorial outsourcing pilot start
eXtyles + Typefi
all docs except JTC1
eXtyles build update
eXtyles build
update
Typefi XSLT and InDesign templates
eXtyles refinements/advanced processes
ISOSTS development and refinement by Mulberry
Coding instructions by ISO and Innodata
Typefi 5 production chain
Back catalog - mass conversion
Remote training outsource team

15. Ramping up to full production
• Initially simple documents through the chain
• More complex documents requiring changes in configuration
• Building trust in the technology with both internal and external
teams
• Continual support structure
• In the end, there’s only so much testing one can do – take the
plunge!

16. Outsourcing
• Sensitive topic
• Complex to set up
• How much investment in IT infrastructure?
• Business continuity assured
• Flexibility

17. Accessibility
• Large and growing undersupplied audience
§ 10% of the world’s population experience some form of disability
§ About 65% of all people who are visually impaired are aged 50 and older.
This age group comprises about 20% of the world's population
Source: WHO Disability Report

18. 2013Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
JTC1 in XML
Accessible PDF kickoff
Redline project kickoff
eXtyles build update
Editorial outsource team expanded
eXtyles build update eXtyles SI
Typefi XSLT and InDesign
Remote training outsource team
Back catalog mass conversion
2013
Full production

19. New products
• Redline PDFs and online – DeltaXML

20. New products
• Colour standards
§ 2-column
§ Floating objects

21. New products
• Handbooks on implementation of standards
§ A5 format
§ Four-colour

22. eXtyles SI
• Request from ISO members for XML at Draft International
Standards (DIS) stage
• Integration of eXtyles SI at DIS
• Documents automatically go through eXtyles processes
• Manual completion of processing
• Significant time and resource savings

23. 2014
Experimentation
2014Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
End back catalog
Redline in production
Editorial outsource team expanded
eXtyles build update
NISO discussion kickoff
Typefi 7 upgrade
Typefi 7 in
production
Typefi Backcat for redline
Back catalog mass conversion
Draft in XML, pilot outsource team
DIS in XML in-house
Final publication outsource

24. Lessons learnt – Back catalog
• Don’t believe it when vendors say ‘100% quality and 100%
automation’
• Don’t accept it when your colleagues say ‘it’s digital to digital,
what can go wrong? No need to check!’
• Image/scanned PDFs are really, really tricky
• A prioritization of documents might be a good idea
• And don’t underestimate your content!

25. Lessons learnt – Back Catalog
And for the actuals…
Pages 750 000
Tables approx. 40 000
Equations approx. 15 000
Images approx. 76 000
Pages 675 000
Tables 156 000
Equations 180 000
Images 138 000
Our estimates for the contract

26. TMB Task Force on Quality
• Perceived loss in quality of ISO deliverables
• Task force created to gather feedback
• Majority of cases reported on MS Word files
• Corrigenda rates on PDFs remained at historical levels throughout
§ No spikes observed due to technology or workflow changes

27. 2015
More change
2015Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
eXtyles SI on DIS
TMB task force quality
A5 handbooks
Typefi Automatic DIS covers Change ISO leadership
eXtyles build update
NISO STS start
New table model
delivered
Accessible
PDF in
production
Final publication outsource
NISO STS
Draft in XML inhouse
Parallel DIS PDF/XML processing inhouse
New table model (eXtyles/Typefi)

28. Production chain evolution
• Processing of tables enhanced in eXtyles/Typefi
• Automation of epub generation
• Different workflow set-up with Manila team

29. Improving end-user experience
• Survey of end-users for all technology irritants
• Categorization into bug-fixing vs improvements
• Resolution plans made available to all
• Regular update meetings with end-users to track progress

30. 2016
Consolidation
2016Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
eXtyles build
eXtyles/Typefi table model update
Automatic epub generation eXtyles build
eXtyles running on Citrix
Table model update for ISO members
Multicolumn
vocabulary
NISO STS
Typefi 8 upgrade
Technology irritants

31. It’s all about interoperability
• NISO STS
• In 2017:
§ Typefi 8
§ MS Word roundtrip
§ Statistics
§ And NISO STS implementation!

32. What we should have done more of
• Communication to all stakeholders of impacts
§ ISO Members
§ ISO Technical Committees
§ Internal teams

33. Conclusions
• Simplification and flexibility
• Reduction processing time
• Harmonization of practices
• Adoption of publication chain tools by ISO Members
• Adoption of ISO STS as base for NISO STS standard
• It works!

34. Further thoughts – ISOSTS
• The development took some work but
§ JATS is comprehensive
§ ISOSTS covers all the tagging needs to date for ISO
§ Great to work with people who know their stuff!
And everyone needs to be flexible
…………including the tag set (sometimes!)

35. Thanks
To Holger and all colleagues in STAND PROD; and to Nicolas,
Trevor, David
To Debbie, Tommie, Bruce and the team, Chandi and the team,
Nette, Diwa, Ella, Sadhik, Rizwan, Saumya

36. Questions