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Looking Fear Straight in the Eye
Monday, November 03, 2008 — posted by Simon Bate
Have you ever been really scared? I don't mean just the Halloween kinda scared, but really scared. That's how I felt at the Burlington Marriott when the hotel employee delivered the box containing the workbooks for my Introduction to XMetaL and DITA workshop. He stood in the doorway, smiled, and handed me a very beat up, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated FedEx box.The box looked like the driver had had a flat on Route 128 and used it to prevent the truck from rolling back while jacking up the front end. It was nice and damp too. With much trepidation, I opened the box and -- to my relief -- found that the materials were undamaged. Whew.
Following that, Wednesday's all-day workshop on XMetaL and DITA was smooth sailing. OK, we had a bit of a problem with powerstrips, but the helpful DocTrain folks got that taken care of. In retrospect, many of the questions I fielded in the workshop weren't so much about DITA or XMetaL itself. Instead many of the questions were about generating output. The fact is that unless you're willing to spend some quality time with CSS and the DITA Open Toolkit, your output from DITA will look very generic. XMetaL has a number of hooks that ease some of the pain in generating XHTML output. But even those hooks won't save you from FO issues if you want to generate PDF output.
In my presentation on Thursday comparing XMetaL and FrameMaker support in DITA, the questions returned once again to output. Of course, this time the focus was on using FrameMaker 8.0 as a PDF engine. In workflows where content is created and maintained in XML, but then has to be delivered in PDF (or print), FrameMaker 8.0 looks like an attractive possibility. There are a few flaws in this solution (such as translating xref elements for intra-document links into live links in PDF), but users are closer to a solution than they were six months ago.
We've posted PDFs of the slides from both sessions on SlideShare.
You can find the Introduction to XMetaL and DITA workshop slides at:
http://www.slideshare.net/Scriptorium/xmetal-dita-workshop-presentation
The slides for the session on DITA Support in FrameMaker and XMetaL are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/Scriptorium/dita-support-in-framemaker-and-xmetal-presentation
When you're done browsing the slides, take a look on our site for information about how we can help you with your FrameMaker, XMetaL, OT, PDF problems.
It's not that scary.
Labels: dita, doctraineast08, FrameMaker, xmetal
4:41 PM Permalink | |
Coming attractions
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 — posted by Sarah O'Keefe
DocTrain East kicks off next Wednesday, October 29. Scriptorium will be well-represented; Simon Bate is delivering a day-long workshop, Authoring and Publishing with XMetaL and DITA. If you have signed up for this workshop, expect details on the software you need in the next 24 hours or so. If you don't hear from Simon, please contact DocTrain to make sure that you are registered for the event.
Thursday morning (October 30), Simon will deliver a session comparing DITA support in XMetaL and FrameMaker. Meanwhile, Matt Arnold will be camped out in the trade show area. We're bringing tons of goodies, including the usual chocolate, so be sure to stop by and say hello. We're also doing several giveaways. (Yes, we will bribe you to visit us. Those trade shows can get really tedious...)
The following week, Matt and I will be attending tekom/tcworld in Wiesbaden, Germany. At this conference, I'll be doing a workshop on XSL and a presentation on Web 2.0 and technical communication. Both are on Thursday. Instead of bringing coals to Newcastle (and taking up precious space in our limited baggage), we'll be picking up chocolate for our booth at a local (and excellent) shop. I visited Kunder last year and, as usual, spent way too much. (Fair warning, they don't take U.S. credit cards, so bring euros. Lots of euros.)
Again, please stop by the booth and visit if you're at the conference.
tekom ends on Friday (November 7), but we're staying until Sunday morning to take advantage of cheaper airfare. Saturday, I'm planning a field trip to Bingen am Rhein, which has connections to the medieval Hildegard von Bingen. We can reach Bingen by train in about an hour. If you're interested in going, leave me a comment or send email and I'll attempt to coordinate.
Labels: conferences, doctraineast08, tekom, travel
12:21 PM Permalink | |
What's better than a discount? FREE tickets
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 — posted by Ethan Duty
Scott Abel has kindly offered us two free tickets for DocTrain East. We will hold a drawing on September 25 to give them away. If you're interested, email us at sales@scriptorium.com to enter the drawing.This year, DocTrain East is in Burlington, Massachusetts, from October 29–November 1. Come by and say hello while you're there. Matthew Arnold will be at Scriptorium's booth with plenty of free chocolate.
Simon Bate is giving day-long workshop on authoring and publishing with XMetal and DITA on October 29th. On October 30 at 9:45 a.m., he's back with a comparison of DITA support in XMetaL and FrameMaker.
If you'd like to set up a private meeting during the conference, contact Matt.
Labels: doctraineast08
11:39 AM Permalink | |