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Structured Authoring and XML: The Complementing Factors for Better Content Organization Structured Authoring and XML has been able to bring in an exceptional paradigm shift in content development. It helps the organizations to effectively manage most of their content organization needs effectively and as a result, the management of content and its uses are naturally improved. However, it is never easy to have this implemented whatever be the benefits it brings. And, to know the real advantage of the same, the efforts to bring it online and the advantages of the same must be weighed objectively. With larger organizations, the business benefits it can drive effectively outweighs the efforts required to get it implemented and for smaller organizations; it is still a dream only approachable in the future if the costs come down, hopefully.
So, what is structured authoring? Structured authoring, in a nutshell, is an effective publishing workflow that enables the users to create, define and implement constant organization of data, information or content into documents whether they are printed or online. In such a context, XML data comparison tool can be really helpful. When it comes to traditional styling and structuring, human editors take care of the content organization requirements by manually checking the content and confirming that the content adheres to the set and approved style and formatting rules of the business. Some of the common content regulations are as follows;
There should be an introductory paragraph immediately after a heading. There must at least be two items of a bullet list. An image or illustration must be supported by a caption. When it comes to structured authoring, there will be a file; either a schema or a document type definition, to capture and understand the content rules as specified. Authors create a lot of content on a software program that checks the documents to understand whether they conform to the established formatting rules of the business. The structure of xml schema also plays a vital role. In order to further ease the discussion, let us consider an example—recipe. It contains several pieces of information such as the name of the item to be prepared, the introduction, the ingredients to be used, its quantities and the method of preparation. In an unstructured environment, the editor has to ensure that the list of ingredients must come before explaining the method of preparation. While in a structured format, it is the specified design rules that ensure the organization of various content types.
Elements and Hierarchy It is based on elements that structured authoring works. An element is the most basic unit of content and it contains any type of images or texts. The hierarchy of elements can be viewed by anyone as a set of branches and nodes inside several other elements. Also, it is important to understand that these elements can be expressed as a hierarchical tree. It means that it naturally explains what type of content comes after another type of content as established by the content rules. It is the element hierarchy that allows the user to explicitly associate related data, information or content for the best experience for the ones using the same. It is the structure that specifies the Ingredient List element to be the child of the larger Recipe Element. The Ingredient List element contains various other elements such as Ingredient,
and each of the Ingredient Element contains two or more than two child elements such as the quantity, item, and at times, preparation. These relationships between the various elements of xml document present are implied in the topography of the elements in an unstructured and formatted document, where as in an unstructured publishing program, the relationships are never captured by the program.
Element attributes: It is also possible to store additional and required information and details about elements as attributes. Any type of name-value pair that can be associated to any particular element can be called as an attribute. In the example that we have used, attributes can be used to add details such as the name of the author and the type of cuisine as additional information of the elements. Attributes are also a type of classifying information of various elements and it is possible to locate all the elements having the same attribute easily. For example, if the attribute given is the name of the author of the recipe, it is possible to find out all the recipes created by that particular author by running a search on the name which is an attribute. If a person wants to sort all the recipes by a particular author, in an unstructured workflow, it is impossible unless the person tries to read each and every cuisine on the document.
Formatting of structured documents It is by associating formatting with element sequences or particular elements that the structured documents can be formatted by a person. All such types of xml formatting are impeccably automatic and dynamic. As soon as the author has assigned various elements
to any content, the rest of the tasks are carried out automatically to produce the required output file. Now, that you have understood about Structured Authoring, let us try to understand XML.
What is XML? An established standard that is created to store structured content as text files is known by the name Extensible Markup Language or XML. It is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that maintains this standard to be used by a myriad of users around the globe. A lot of companies are nowadays unhesitant to outsource xml conversion services to expert companies and the demand of XML has only increased over years. XML can be argued to be a distant relative of Standard Generalized Markup Language or SGML and the xml conversion process is very much similar to SGML conversion as well. SGML is highly complex and is restricted in its applicability to the fields such as telecommunications and aerospace.
XML Syntax As XML is a markup language, like any other markup language, it also is executed by enclosing the elements within the tags. It is the angle brackets that are used in XML to enclose the elements. A forward slash is used to in front name of the element to indicate a closing tag. The element tags are used to store the attributes inside them. XML does not provide any sort of predefined tags; it is the user that defines the tags and the relationship between the same. It enables the user to select the most effective and
conducive content structure that can impeccably match the requirements of the data or information being used. It is when the basic tag rules are carefully adhered to, XML can be hailed to become well-formed. All the opening elements must have a consequent closing element. All the empty elements must employ a terminating slash. Double quotes are used to enclose all the attribute data and information. Tags are always nested and they must not ever “crossover” with each other. It is when the specified structure of the structure definition matches the XML structure that it is said to be valid and when the match cannot be established, XML is considered to be invalid. There are countless benefits of xml conversion.
The relationship between XML and Structured Authoring Structured authoring is a technique conceived to enable the users to improve the quality and efficiency of content organization. It is XML that makes the entire concept of structured authoring by making use of plain text files a possibility. Though SGML used to be the major platform preferred to implement structured authoring, XML is the go-to platform now. Outside of the world of technical publishing, it is the XML that has most fans and users especially in web services and data interchange applications. This is testified by some of the most prominent digital publishing companies.
Defining Structure in XML It is by using either a schema or DTD that a user defines the structure in XML; in either case, it is the user who specifies the elements and the relationship between each of the elements. Once the structure has been defined by the user, documents that adhere to all the rules are created by the authors.
How structured authoring impacts publishing workflow? As you would know, before computer-aided and desktop publishing has become the norm of the industry, authors used to create text documents in various word-processing files. However, the formatting of such documents was only done in a separate, different and time-consuming typesetting operation. As time went on and more personal computers have been created, word-processing programs and applications began to emerge that had the ability to carry out a myriad of formatting options according to certain pre-defined formatting structures. This helped the authors learn to write and format their documents as they deemed fit and apt. It also brought about new stylistic options such as templates that are coded platforms that can be edited to improve the structuring and styling of all the elements such as the font, style, size, color and others, as required by the authors.
Workflow Options As structured authoring and xml document creation do not give any actual comprehensive workflow innately, they must be integrated carefully to create one. It is important to complete the following tasks before trying to create a structured publishing workflow; Content Source Definition Content Repository Establishment Content Reuse Implementation Formatted Output Delivery By paying enough attention to the above tasks, an organization can create an intelligent, comprehensive and effective workflow that can improve the prospects of the business for the better. Though structured authoring and XML can create exceptional value for all parties involved in creating a value-adding, enhanced productive scenario, it is important to consider the amount of efforts required to implement the same. It must always be based on the careful evaluation of the benefits that it must be implemented by any organization to derive the leverage the business hopes to drive from it. Implementation for the sake can only add it as a newer liability on the balance sheet of the organization. The primary fact that has to be kept in mind that only by entrusting the task to any of the best xml conversion companies, you can fetch expected results.