Re: [docbook-tc] align common elements?

[Steven Cogorno <Steven.Cogorno@Sun.COM>]

On Jul 21, 2006, at 12:45 PM, Dick Hamilton wrote:
> I think the interoperability group demo puts a spotlight
> on the most important areas of focus.  Namely, making it
> possible for someone working in one standard to include
> fragments authored using one of the other standards,
> generate a combined document, and produce useful output
> (web pages, help systems, printed docs, etc.).



This is a bit of a digression, but I thought I would share some of  
our experiences including content from outside sources.

As more of our products are "open-sourced" (is that a verb now?), we  
are getting content from external contributers in many formats.  We  
encourage people to use DocBook, but sometimes we take content in  
other formats too.

The challenge has turned out not to be the tagging.  Even if there  
were a way to import the content exactly as it is without  
transformation, we wouldn't do it.  The content just isn't up to our  
editorial standards or localization requirements. I'm not saying the  
content is necessarily poorly written (though sometimes it is) --  
it's just different than what our Style Guide requires or recommends.

We can't expect other people to adhere to our style guide, so we end  
up massaging the content to meet our requirements.  The least of our  
worries is how the content is tagged!

IMO the holy-grail of content interop between organizations often  
falls short for completely non-technical reasons.

-Steve