January Meeting Review

by Kathy Recchiuti

RMC President Ron Arner opened the January 2008 meeting with announcements. He mentioned that the next RMC program, A Whirlwind Tour of a UXD (User Experience Design) Methodology, will take place on February 21 in the usual location in the Tivoli. He displayed two FrameMaker user manuals donated by Tammy Van Boening which would be up for grabs at the end of the meeting. He added that if UCD is charging for parking on the night of a program, just mention that you are attending an event at the Tivoli and your parking fee might be waived.

Frank Tagader announced that 2008/09 RMC officer elections are not far off. He encouraged members to consider running for one of the following positions:  vice president, secretary, treasurer or nominating committee. Holding an officer position can be rewarding. If interested, please email runforoffice@stcrmc.org.

Ron added that the following positions will also need volunteers for 2008/09:  membership, programs, hospitality, newsletter, and website maintenance. If interested, please email him at president@stcrmc.org.

Before introducing the guest speaker, Kristy Astry let the attendees know that they would be receiving an evaluation survey via email. Feedback is appreciated, and one person who completes the survey will win a free program-only pass for a future program.

Kristy then introduced Andrew VanConas, Vice President of Business Development at Quadralay Corporation, where he has been working for over 8 years. Before Quadralay, he was a freelance technical writer and belonged to the Santa Barbara chapter of the STC. Andrew described Quadralay as a small company of less than 50 people who often wear different hats from day to day. For example, in addition to developing business, he also gets involved in documentation and development of the website.

In presenting this evening’s topic, Multi-Channel Publishing for XML Content, Andrew explained the workings of ePublisher, a tool that takes the content a writer has created in an authoring environment and integrates it with XML, facilitating various output formats.

He began by describing DITA, an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information, providing benefits such as single sourcing, conditionally processing content, repurposing content, and specialization.

With pride in his voice, he said that ePublisher is a powerful tool that allows you to publish DITA content in many formats, including OLH, HTML, PDF and PDA, without having to learn the DITA Open Toolkit, which can be somewhat difficult. ePublisher can merge material that has been written in DITA-XML, FrameMaker, or Word into a single online deliverable.

He described ePublisher as using the factory model of input and output, with many of the same benefits. For example, it frees writers from the task of coding and allows them to do what they specialize in—writing. The factory model has three components: the first defines the overall assembly line; the second creates the stationery, which is like a template; and the third generates the output.

For a more in-depth look, see http://www.webworks.com/
Technical_Assistance/Tutorials/ePublisher/StationeryWorkflow/

Andrew gave us a glimpse the product. He showed a list of existing styles that gets created when documents from different software are imported. He demonstrated how to use the easy dialogue box where you create and edit styles, and showed the tool with which you create drop-down content.

At 8:15 p.m., the speaker opened the floor for questions. An ePublisher user in the audience asked about how to place an image in both the header and footer and was delighted to obtain information that will make her life easier!

To wrap up the meeting, Andrew raffled off a free copy of ePublisher, which was exciting for people who would like to put it to use. David Wilks, who works at OpenTV, won the prize! Congratulations, David, and enjoy your multi-channel publishing!

Kathy Recchiuti is Secretary of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.