S1000D and this years X-Pubs Event - More Detail

Following on from my last post about the X-Pubs event I notice from recently updated X-Pubs Website that they have firmed up on the S1000D and related Content. Their programme is now published atthis place.

S1000D Specific Content

Specifically of interest to S1000D users is the announcement that Svante Ericsson is to give a paper on "The S1000D X-Road" (follow
this link for the Paper Outline). He is going to give an overview of what S1000D has been doing to the present date together with the reasons for going down the XML route.

For some the paper provides a practical viewpoint with particular focus on four questions:

• Has data quality increased?
• Will the data modules be more available?
• Will presentation of information be better?
• Has the maintainability of the Specification increased?

For those of us involved in the industries which use S1000D these questions are very important, particularly the first three.

Svante is, of course, a member of the Electronic Publications Working Group, the body of people who are charged with all the technical maintenance and development work associated with the ASD S1000D Specification. It will be good to hear straight from the source rather than by whispers third or fourth hand.

Other content of interest to S1000D users

A number of contracts both in the UK and elsewhere specify that Simplified English is to be used in the generation of the technical content.

In this programme this area is represented by the paper "Simplified
Technical English: How Controlled Authoring Facilitates XML" given by Berry Braster who works for Tedopres International. This company has a well known Simplified English product. A number of Mekon's clients use this tool and always speak highly of it.

In particular Berry is going to focus on the benefits that Simplified English can bring to a project. This will be of interest to any person generating technical documentation which may require translation into a language other than English.

Some of his focus will be n:

• Quality assurance
• Reducing time to market
• Cost savings

Berry is apparently going to use a case study to support his claims. Hard facts are always useful for supporting a department's claim for introducing new technologies to a company.