December 17, 2007, 3:58 PM — "All our documents have at least one author. That is always true, surely?"
"There might be no authors at all! It depends on where the document is
in the workflow. Sometimes there is no author until the last minute."
"Actually, come to think of it, we have purposely published documents
without an author in the past."
"Ah, not really. It depends on how you look at it. A document with an
author field that just happens to be empty or a document with no author field."
"You are just splitting hairs."
"No I'm not. There is an important difference!"
"What about where we put the author information? Sometimes we need to
put author information after the publication date, sometimes after. We have
always had a mix in our published documents. How will we support that?"
"I don't see how we can capture everything we need about how that 200
page landscape table is formatted. We don't have enough layout control."
"If we used SGML rather than XML, some of our problems would be easier
to solve."
"No. What we really need is to dump XML XSD and go back to DTD.
We never should have listened to that content management consultant."
"You are both wrong! Relax NG is obviously the way to go..."
"What we need to do is get management to pay for top-of-the-range authoring
tools. That will solve our problems."
Sitting on front of Master Foo, using some of the poorest attempts at relaxed
seating positions Master Foo had ever seen, were four highly animated employees
of a manufacturing company from the valley below Pentimenti Mountain. To attract
their attention - and stop the cacophony that was at this stage beginning to
disturb the Koi in the fishpond - Master Foo tapped his green tea cup with a
USB key.
"Gentlemen", he began, raising both palms to face his visitors,
"Please can you slow down and speak one at a time? My poor old ears are
not what they used to be and my ability to follow N simultaneous dialogs is
not what it used to be."
The din subsided.
"All I have heard in the last five minutes is the four of you uttering
the phrase 'controlled vocabulary' over and over again. You do not seem to be
getting anywhere. Which, presumably, is the reason for this visit?"
"Yes, Master Foo.", the spokesman said. "We have made the journey
up Pentimenti Mountain to seek your guidance regarding how best to structure
our mountain of technical documentation. It has become clear to us that we should
be able to codify the structure of our documents and thereby increase the automation
we can apply. For example, we foresee being able to automatically generate web
pages, DVD-based libraries and so forth from a single master set of documents."
"Hmmm. Ok. Tell me more."
"Well, we have been doing some research and have had some external advice
and..."
"Yes?"
"Well, it looks as if we can only take fully advantage of all the great
tools out there - especially the XML tools - if we first formally describe the
structure of our documents. But..."
"But the 'structure' which you feel sure exists is proving difficult to
pin down? Difficult to reach consensus on?"
"Yes. That is it exactly. Every time we think we have it sorted, some
exception pops up that breaks the structural rules we are trying to create."
Master Foo's eyes widened, silently imploring the spokesperson to think it
through for himself.
"Hang on a minute. Master Foo. Just now you said we were all using the
phrase 'controlled vocabulary'. I never said that. We - none of us - said that.
What do you mean? I'm confused."
A quick look around at his colleagues confirmed the spokesperson's belief that
they too, were confused.
Master Foo sighed ever-so slightly. His face coming to rest with a faint hint
of a smile.
"Tell me. This 'structure' you seek for your documents what inheres within
that concept? What is its fundamental nature?"
"Well, when we say our documents have 'structure' we mean that they have
chunks that can be named. We believe that by naming those chunks we can better
automate the processing of large sets of documents."
