Re: [docbook] Software Review: InDesign + DocBook

[Dave Pawson <davep at dpawson dot co dot uk>]

On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 13:50 -0500, David White wrote:
>  I hate not knowing as much as I need to provide good answers, 
> which is why I'm posting on the forums and bugging good people like you! 
> grin
No problem David. We all need the idiot sheet once.



> 
> I talked to our main publishing guy and he described the types of people 
> we have..and how they work together. 
> 
> Essentially we have writers / editors that use MS Word.  They do copy...

The issues trying to get WYSIWYG people to even look at pointy
brackets is a people issue. 
  Please don't approach it as a geek. 
It is hard, if you want to make such a change. You need classic change
management approaches, an early adopter can work wonders for you.

Otherwise start to look for a WYSIWYG XML editor.

> 
> The copy goes to Layout

Opportunity for XSLT.
  Possible approach.
  Generate a generic layout, leave room for customisation
  and personalisation. 

> 
> We have images and illustrations that get done by a seperate department. 
> 
> The images/illustrations go to Layout

Joined at the same time as copy input, or later?
If later, are placeholders left for them?


> 
> Layout then brings it all together and outputs to PRINT/PDF

<ignorance>
  Can Indesign take the PDF output from XEP or Antenna House,
  and adjust it, as graphic artists/typesetters etc are wont to do?
</ignorance>
This is the stage we can media specific processing.
Needs the print|html|whatever specialist to take the styled
output and apply their own magic.

Can anyone help out here please?


> 
> This works well for us because we are all in the same area in our 
> building..there are about 20 of us in the entire publishing department 
> so its been
> a good structure.

Sounds like a good team. 

> 
> However, we need to modernize. 
Due diligence on change management. 
  Early adopters through to the 'NIH'
'good enough for grandad' brigade.

Is the need agreed? 
  Or is it felt by a minority?
Does the pointy head feel the need?

Is there a cost driver behind that need.

Who feels the need, i.e. the entire group,
or just ... a minority, shouting in the wilderness.


>  We have a need to get manuals into many 
> other languages and Frame isn't unicode and handles XML poorly.

Great selling point. 
  Jirka and others can help here on multi-lingual boilerplate,
  even handling n language input.

How do you merge it, process it today?
Let me guess (I'm a cynic)
  You start from scratch in n languages :-)

> 
> Hope that helps, I will answer any questions you have as I need as much 
> input as I can get to make the best response I can.

regards DaveP


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