JustSystems Expresses Its Love for XML

July 26, 2010

JustSystems, now a unit of Keyence Corporation, posted “Beyond PDFs – Reach Your Audience with Multiple Output Formats” to pump up excitement for XML. The goslings and I love XML. We even have one or two clients who think XML is the way to handle content, not a “bohica”. The hitch seems to be getting legacy content into well formed XML without plunging the information technology department’s budget into the red inkwell.

According to one of my correspondents, the main point is:

XML, and particularly the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML language, enables you to optimize content for different media. Because an XML-based system handles formatting and content separately, it lets you create one set of source files and then generate PDF files for print and HTML files for the web” Background: “PDF is a print-oriented format, and what works for print often doesn’t work for the web, for mobile devices, or for other electronic media. PDF is not the answer to every content delivery question.

The article has a number of useful links, including the pointer to DITA on Wikipedia, which I can never remember. The run down of output features may be useful if you don’t think of information objects assembled into “documents.”

Worth a look.

Stephen E Arnold, July 26, 2010

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Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Database, News, Publishing, Technology, XML

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.