LEAD STORIES

Preserving Ancient Ways with 21st Century Technology

When a large systems integrator was looking for employment opportunities for several Native American tribes it seemed like document conversion might provide a solution. The first of a two part series looks at how DCL helped the tribes adopt new technology to help preserve their culture. DCLnews reports.

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S1000D or DITA - Which One Works for Me?; And Is Either One Ready for Prime Time

For companies wanting to move to a topic-based structured authoring model the choice between standards can be bewildering. In the first article of a series, DCLnews looks at a typical scenario facing a publications manager.

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EXTRA

DCL's "Digital Information" survey - Initial Results

Last month DCL asked its customers to participate in the latest "Digital Information" survey with the aim of obtaining a clear picture of the current challenges facing documentation professionals as well as an overview of the tools being used.

Thanks to all those who participated in the survey.

The initial results have been compiled with a more detailed analysis to follow.

To see survey results: http://www.dclab.com/survey_results.asp

Upcoming DCL Conference Participation

Drug Information Association
Philadelphia, PA, September 26-27, 2006
Meet DCL at Booth #2
http://www.diahome.org/

ATA e-Business Forum
Louisville Marriot Downtown, Louisville, KY, October 18-20, 2006
DCL will be exhibiting at the ATA e-business forum.
http://www.ataebiz.org/forum

Happy 20th Birthday to SGML

Even though the concepts behind SGML, XML's ancestor, had been around earlier, it was in 1986, when ISO 8879 was published, that the Standard Generalized Mark-Up Language (SGML) could be considered as having "arrived" on the global publishing stage. At the O'Reilly XML Blog, writer Rick Jelliffe looks back at those twenty years and examines some of the benchmarks in the development of SGML and how it laid the foundation for XML and today's mark-up driven world.

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Out-Of-Date Maps May Have Contributed To Kentucky Crash

Comair has recently issued a warning to its pilots to use airport maps with extreme caution. On August 17th a Comair jet crashed at the Lexington, Kentucky airport after taking off from the wrong runway, and 49 people were killed. It now appears that the airline had outdated maps of the airport which hadn't been updated since January even though there had been changes made to the taxiways.

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(Full Disclosure: DCL does offer a map revision service. http://www.dclab.com/jeppesen_map_revision_service.asp.)

LibraryThing - A MySpace for bibliophiles?

Are you the sort of person who when he visits a friend's house or attends a party spends your time standing by the wall with your neck at forty-five degrees, examining the contents of your host's bookcase? If so the LibraryThing.com is the website for you.

LibraryThing has become the fastest growing trend amongst internet-using bibliophiles as a way to catalog your books online and browse not only your own library but those of other users too. Having been online for just over a year LibraryThing already has over 5 million books cataloged by its community of 75,000 users. The creators of LibraryThing describe it as two sites in one; "LibraryThing helps you to create a library-quality catalog of your books. You can do all of them or just what you're reading now. And because everyone catalogs online, they also catalog together. LibraryThing connects people based on the books they share."

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Meet the New Editor

Please welcome the new DCLnews editor, Alan J. Porter. Alan has been involved with the technical documentation industry for over twenty years as writer, editor, consultant and trainer. He has also held senior management positions at several publishing software vendors and now heads up his own corporate publishing services and consulting company, the 4J's Group LLC, based near Austin, TX. He is also a published author with a couple of books and numerous magazine articles to his credit.

ASIDES

Expensive Typos

A couple of stories over the last few months have shown that you can never be too careful when it comes to proofreading and punctuation. One resulted in a little embarrassment and a large reprinting bill, but the other could end up costing millions of dollars.

In August, Honda issued a recall for 1.2 million car and motorcycle manuals as citing "incorrect information for a vehicle safety hotline." What the official release didn't say, but was quickly picked up and widely reported, was that the "800" prefix printed in the manuals, instead of the "888" toll-free prefix it should have been, led to a sexually-oriented, commercial pay "800" number.

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In June, Toronto's Globe and Mail reported on what could be "the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada," when a punctuation error led to the cancellation of a contract that could end up costing one of the companies involved as much as $2.13M.

The contract between Rogers Communications, Inc. and Aliant, Inc. covered the use of telegraph poles and set a rate for their lease, which Rogers believed was a five-year deal. Aliant however believed that according to the exact wording of the contract they could cancel the deal with just a year's notice - and that is what they did.

The offending paragraph was as follows: The agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five-year terms, unless and until terminated by one-year prior notice in writing by either party."

The inclusion of the second comma changed the meaning of the sentence from its original intent; if it hadn't been there Rogers would not now be facing potential lease rate increases which could cost them literally millions of dollars.

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How do you annotate a computer screen?!

Reflecting on a frustration we've all had, in a recent column IT Business Canada asked "What's become of real documentation?" The sort that you can write notes in the margins or add sticky notes to. It does seem that some have taken e-documentation a little too far.

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FAVORITES

Popular articles from recent issues

Converting From PDF To XML & MS Word: Avoiding The Pitfalls
http://www.dclab.com/converting_from_pdf.asp

New S1000D Specification Fuels Content Reuse and IETMs
http://www.dclab.com/S1000D_Standard_Interview.asp

Virtual Exercises Beef Up Your Biceps...
http://www.dclab.com/aside_biceps.asp

Quark to XML Conversion
http://www.dclab.com/QuarktoXML.asp

Adobe PDF Conversion: How, For Whom, And When?
http://www.dclab.com/pdfwhitepaper2.asp