I thought I would let you know about X-Pubs 2006 which is 'Europe's Largest XML Content Management and XML Publishing Conference to date'. I think that this could be a good event to visit if you have the time because there are areas of it which have some relevance to S1000D.
In looking through the programme there are numerous references to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) which is a parallel concept to S1000D. Born out of an IBM need to manage the internal Technical Publications for their software and applications, DITA is now in the public domain.
Some users claim that it is the answer to all Technical Publications needs and whilst it has the potential of meaningful metadata to provide some form of identification there is no uniform 'standard' for what this is. I understand that one or two proponents of DITA have put forward the idea that they should map DITA to S1000D.
DITA is almost exclusively XML based.
S1000D is already there
DITA is up and coming for some projects. S1000D is well established and provides a system of metadata which is very robust in its use.
DITA cross referencing is largely XML based which without a fair amount of work and agreement between its users is not likely to be suitable for projects such as the S1000D community are involved in which will span decades without hitch. That is what the refdm element gives us.
There was an internal discussion at Mekon where DITA and S1000D were covered in depth and I think that the consensus of opinion came down to a fairly simple rule of thumb:
If the equipment is purchased and maintained by part numbering the bits then S1000D is likely to be the answer. Where this is not the case then DITA could be the answer.
I did say that this was a simple rule of thumb.
Content Management
Given the versatility of some of the more recent Content Management systems it looks as though this area of the conference will yield a lot of interesting information and experiences.
Modern Content Management encompasses the identification and tracking of technical material and most application are extensible so it should not be rocket science to add onto some of these products metadata extraction and control functions to extend their use to S1000D. It could be that some of these applications work out cheaper and, perhaps, as versatile as some of the existing S1000D CSDB application.
Who is using it
I notice that in the Conferences' XML Technical Track, Scott Abel, a well known Content Management Technical Guy who is always looking to leverage maximum usefulness for the Publications Industry, is asking the Industry "Do software vendors who claim to support DITA actually use DITA themselves". This should result some interesting facts.
Incidentally Scott runs a well known Blog "The Content Wrangler". This is well worth watching and reading for the vast quantities of common sense that it has.
Choice of Event
In the meantime, if you have to choose between S1000D in Clearwater and this event, and if you are involved in the production of material to S1000D, then there is no competition - the Clearwater event is a must.
However if you can attend the X-Pubs 2006 event it looks as if a lot of very useful information will be on tap for you.
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