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Using Effectivity to Meet the Single-Source Publishing Challenge
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Since it became a W3C standard in the late 90s; there’s been a push to utilize XML to solve those problems that desktop word processing tools can’t. One of those problems faced by organizations is getting the correct information out to the right people on time. The solution has to be both scalable and cost-effective. This guest article from X.Systems discusses the benefits of using Effectivity to overcome these difficulties.
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A Popular Topic
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Google is a great tool to find out if a topic has gained conciseness. A recent search for the terms effectivity single source yielded over 100,000 hits; so a lot of people are reading about this (even though Word 2002 thinks it is a mis-spelled word). You can read about the related subject of Content Reuse in these DCLnews articles:
You can also attend the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) conference on Content Management Strategies on April 3-5 in San Francisco where the topic will be discussed at length. More details on the conference are at http://www.cm-strategies.com/index.htm
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The Challenge
As we move towards an increasingly electronic world, the publishing industry faces the challenge of tailoring its products to specific audiences with differing needs. This process, sometimes called Single-Source Publishing, has become increasingly difficult as use of the web and other electronic media for information publishing has grown. For nearly 15 years, technical data publishers have tried different ways of meeting the challenge of Single-Source Publishing without raising their costs
The experience of a major automobile manufacturer illustrates how the need for Single-Source Publishing can be met. For many years, this manufacturer has maintained 12 model years of owners’ manuals including eight years back, the current year and three years into the future. Although these document versions are often up to 80 percent the same, the rest of the content varies. Even past model year versions sometimes require changes caused by vehicle recalls and other safety issues.
The manufacturer outsourced the development of its owners’ manuals to a publications contractor in Michigan. The contractor had met its Single Source Publishing need for several years by maintaining a complete version of the manual for each model year. The firm required its authors to manually keep these files synchronized as content evolved, as illustrated below:
The contractor had installed a content management system (CMS) from XyVision to make it easier for staff to keep the content properly synchronized. Despite this, authors and production workers still faced problems maintaining accuracy and meeting publication schedules.
The manufacturer and its contractor recognized that a better solution was needed. The new solution had to be simpler and more flexible than the way the documents had been handled in the past.
The Limits of Content Modularization
The prime contractor first thought the answer lay in breaking content down into smaller pieces. This meant it could be collected in different ways to represent the different model year versions. This method is illustrated in the figure below. Unfortunately, this approach required the creation of many more “pieces” of content, making authoring and management more difficult and error-prone.
To make things worse, a single piece of content could contain smaller pieces to describe variations at three, four or more levels. This made the very act of creating content pieces difficult and very complicated. This “nesting” of content is illustrated below.
The contractor’s staff also found that while they could make test projects work, using this method, they could not get acceptable results in production. The sheer volume of content pieces became so great that even the content management system couldn’t keep up with it. The cure threatened to kill the patient.
Commercial Aviation Provides A Solution
In the commercial aircraft industry, situations in which different parts of documents apply to different parts of the audience are known as Effectivity. Up until 10 years ago, no one in the aircraft industry was using Effectivity at the level required by the auto manufacturer. But all that changed in the mid-1990s, when Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC,) a jet engine manufacturer, implemented a new detailed Effectivity scheme using SGML tagging. This new scheme allowed creation of different versions inside master SGML documents and was compatible with the current CMS–also from XyVision–so that existing procedures didn’t suffer. This new technique used SGML tagging in the document itself so that Effectivity could reflect differences at any level of detail. The simplified diagram below illustrates how Effectivity tagging can be inserted in a master SGML document. The document is then processed by “resolve” software to produce the desired output versions.
X.Systems worked with PWC and XyVision, on the new concept and developed software to support its use. With the new system, PWC could use Effectivity to publish up to 20 individual versions of its manuals from master SGML documents. In some cases, the new scheme was used to record variations as small as a single character. The new technique spread to other aircraft firms, including Boeing, Sikorsky, Rockwell and Kidde Aerospace. In each case, the user added modest tagging to the industry standard DTD in order to achieve the desired level of detail. This additional tagging was then deleted before electronic data was delivered to clients.
Effectivity is Applied to Automobiles
The publication contractor decided to use PWC’s approach to Effectivity when they published their automobile owners’ manuals. Content for the 12 individual model-year files was collapsed into a single SGML master file from which any desired year could be called. The system had to be easy to use because the authors were distributed between the prime contractor and several other technical data subcontractors. X.Systems customized the Effectivity software to meet the contractor’s unique needs.
When the basic software had been completed and tested, the contractor conducted a two-day training course and workshop for its staff. They, used copies of live data converted to include the new Effectivity tagging. During the course the authors learned about techniques and software they already understood –Arbortext’s Adept Editor – so the training went well and the staff was ready to begin limited production within a week
After the contractor’s in-house staff had begun production, the subcontract vendors’ staff were trained, using the same basic course. As an extra precaution, however, it was mandated that all subcontracted content be fully validated using the new software tools before being checked in at the end of each day. Although this meant some extra work for the outsource authors, it ensured that all content stored on the contractor’s system was structurally accurate at all times.
Simple Tagging, Complex Process
In the original aircraft engine Effectivity implementation, PWC had learned a hard lesson. Although the tagging for complex Effectivity was simple enough, the process of inserting the tags and then keeping them valid could be a real challenge. To solve this problem, X.Systems developed software to provide the authors with visual and logical tools to make sure that his or her work stayed productive and accurate throughout the entire information life cycle. With this software, the authors could use a number of primary tools, including:
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Visual displays of the Effectivity in force at any point in the document. The window illustrated below appears when the cursor is positioned where Effectivity setting is not allowed. It allows the author to determine the current Effectivity settings anywhere in the document but does not allow the author to makes changes.
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Effectivity setting and change tools that enforce the Effectivity rules. For example, in an area effective only for options 1,3 and 5, the author should not be able to insert content effective for option 7, etc. The window illustrated below appears when the cursor is in a position that will accept direct Effectivity setting or change.
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Validation software in the editor to check elements or entire documents. These tools produce analyses of located errors and provide a quick jump to the spot of the error.
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Visual resolution tool, so that authors could see how the document would appear in one or more desired versions (“show me year 2000, etc.”) This tool allows the author to run a full validation of the document produced in a resolved output version; something that cannot be done in the combined master document.
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Tagging simplification tools to allow authors to create “clean” versions of selected content. This tool is especially useful when a major change in a single document version requires a major revision.
With these tools available through the editor menu, as shown below, authors could do their jobs accurately and within the deadlines imposed by the manufacturer.
Combining Content Modularization and Effectivity - Powerful Duo
If it is properly used and supported, Effectivity can improve an organization’s ability to serve diverse audiences while allowing its authors to remain productive. In addition, using Effectivity with a CMS can prove cost effective. The development and processing load on the CMS can be taken away, by shifting responsibility for the most complex variations to the editing software, where they are simpler and less expensive to develop.
Moreover, with Effectivity, the tagging required to produce all desired output is stored in the documents themselves. This protects the integrity of the content because any software that can process the SGML or XML tagging can be used to manage and publish the documents. Other ways of managing and publishing multiple output versions, often based on proprietary software and data formats, make the entire process more complex and vulnerable.
Barry Schaeffer
February,28th 2006
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