A few years ago I was working a project where we were converting journal articles from an SGML DTD to an XML DTD. At that time we thought it might be useful to remove or add tagging as the case may be, based on business needs. One of the elements that was deemed to be too complex was the address.
Addresses are one of the first things that we all learn to tag when taking that initial XML class. It's mostly because everyone has one (or three) and thinks they know all the pieces of it; Name, Street, City, Zipcode, etc. Of course, once you do something in the real world that simplicity falls away.
I'll just focus on the piece that is most salient in my mind, the Organizational Name or OrgName. This is the university, business, etc. where the author is worked when (s)he wrote the paper. It normally included several levels of Organizational Division elements or OrgDiv. These were the department, college, divisions where the author specifically worked within the OrgName. Of course there were times when there were several of these and where defining which was OrgName or OrgDiv was complicated.
For simplicity, and since nothing had ever been done with the different elements, the difference between OrgDiv and OrgName was done away with and replaced with commas. It simplified initial markup of the documents and didn't impact the current (or foreseeable) ouputs.
Why is this important? Because, when developing, choosing, or modifying a DTD you must take into account more than just the "we might need it in the future" ideas. Those have to be weighed against costs of marking up the document, handling the elements for output, and increased quality control time for staff.
It seems like tagging everything is the direction we should be going but checking for a return on investment, even when it comes to markup is always a good idea.
Showing posts with label XML. Show all posts
Showing posts with label XML. Show all posts
Friday, September 12, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Balisage Poster
I registered for Balisage: The Markup Conference (which I still contend is repeating oneself) and almost immediately received an email from Debbie Lapeyre asking me to put up a poster. Being that I have a hard time saying no to Debbie (she can be persausive) I agreed.
Thank god she didn't ask me to get up and speak at the Speaker's Corner at the Versioning Symposium.
So part of my idea involves the a light-hearted look at the connections between things like DocBook, the NCBI DTD, and DITA (and others). But I was stymied by what to call them. Since I am steeped in NCBI I normally refer to these things as 'tag sets'. But I know that DocBook calls itself a schema and DITA is an architecture.
The former is too confusing with for my tastes and the latter sound like a marketing professional infiltrated the working group. So I asked a professional collegue of mine what she thought. She falls on the tag set side as well, but gave me the profound statement of the month:
"But there is nothing you can do that won't sound stupid to someone."
I think, as long as I keep the 'someone's to under half the room, I am in good shape.
Thank god she didn't ask me to get up and speak at the Speaker's Corner at the Versioning Symposium.
So part of my idea involves the a light-hearted look at the connections between things like DocBook, the NCBI DTD, and DITA (and others). But I was stymied by what to call them. Since I am steeped in NCBI I normally refer to these things as 'tag sets'. But I know that DocBook calls itself a schema and DITA is an architecture.
The former is too confusing with for my tastes and the latter sound like a marketing professional infiltrated the working group. So I asked a professional collegue of mine what she thought. She falls on the tag set side as well, but gave me the profound statement of the month:
"But there is nothing you can do that won't sound stupid to someone."
I think, as long as I keep the 'someone's to under half the room, I am in good shape.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Mini-bio
I came to the markup community by a circuitous route. In college I thought I was going to be a psychologist. My B.A. is in psychology and I basically double majored in it, taking almost every class available at my alma mater. Then I went to graduate school and learned what psychologists actually do all day; gradually guide people to overcoming their problems.
That's an over simplification of it and I do enjoy solving problems but not as a guide rather as an active participant. So I had an opportunity to work in Residence Life at my graduate school and jumped at the chance to stay on another year. Of course that career turned out to be less exciting than my graduate school days had suggested. The problem with grad school is they teach you how to be a Director of Residence Life and not how to deal with the day-to-day concerns of running a residence hall or dealing with University politics.
After a couple years of being an adult and living in the halls with college students, my patience wore thin. But psychology led me to The American Psychological Association and finally into their Electronic Publishing (now Full-Text Serials) Group. There I was first exposed to SGML, then quickly XML, XSLT 1.0 and the slippery slope that is markup lay out before me.
While at APA I earned my CompSci BS and learned more and more about markup and publishing. The time came for me to move, both professionally and physically, and my family and I relocated to the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. I started my own business and began working with various companies to forward their conversion and publishing goals. In the last year I've begun using XQuery more and more and had the opportunity to attend a MarkLogic developer training.
I don't consider myself an expert at any of these technologies. I know the experts. I've worked with the experts. I consider myself more of the journeyman apprentice. There are things that I know well and things that I know a little and, as I learn more, many things I know nothing about. Freelancing has taught me that there are more technologies in the world than anyone could possibly know, so focusing on XML and related techs seems like a good bet.
In many ways I've never left school. I've been using XSL-FO (or just XSL, depending on how dogmatic you want to be) for 4 years now and I still come upon properties that I've never had reason to use. XSLT still surprises me in how much of a "programming language" it really is. (Try calculating the Fibonacci numbers sometime and you'll see what I mean) And XQuery is challenging me left and right to think differently about things I thought I knew in XSLT.
If I weren't learning things anymore what reason is there to continue?
That's an over simplification of it and I do enjoy solving problems but not as a guide rather as an active participant. So I had an opportunity to work in Residence Life at my graduate school and jumped at the chance to stay on another year. Of course that career turned out to be less exciting than my graduate school days had suggested. The problem with grad school is they teach you how to be a Director of Residence Life and not how to deal with the day-to-day concerns of running a residence hall or dealing with University politics.
After a couple years of being an adult and living in the halls with college students, my patience wore thin. But psychology led me to The American Psychological Association and finally into their Electronic Publishing (now Full-Text Serials) Group. There I was first exposed to SGML, then quickly XML, XSLT 1.0 and the slippery slope that is markup lay out before me.
While at APA I earned my CompSci BS and learned more and more about markup and publishing. The time came for me to move, both professionally and physically, and my family and I relocated to the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. I started my own business and began working with various companies to forward their conversion and publishing goals. In the last year I've begun using XQuery more and more and had the opportunity to attend a MarkLogic developer training.
I don't consider myself an expert at any of these technologies. I know the experts. I've worked with the experts. I consider myself more of the journeyman apprentice. There are things that I know well and things that I know a little and, as I learn more, many things I know nothing about. Freelancing has taught me that there are more technologies in the world than anyone could possibly know, so focusing on XML and related techs seems like a good bet.
In many ways I've never left school. I've been using XSL-FO (or just XSL, depending on how dogmatic you want to be) for 4 years now and I still come upon properties that I've never had reason to use. XSLT still surprises me in how much of a "programming language" it really is. (Try calculating the Fibonacci numbers sometime and you'll see what I mean) And XQuery is challenging me left and right to think differently about things I thought I knew in XSLT.
If I weren't learning things anymore what reason is there to continue?
Greetings and Salutations
As this is the opening post to my company blog I imagine it is best to begin by introducing myself.
My name is Mark Shellenberger and I am a 'Markup Guy'. What does that mean to you? Well, as the reader of this blog it means that the majority of the posts here will be centered around the XML world. That means I will:
I'll do a mini-bio post soon but in the meantime see my company's website; Manorfield Consulting, LLC. And, if you happen to need XSLT, XQuery, XSL-FO, or any type of XML work, please get in touch with me through my contacts there.
My name is Mark Shellenberger and I am a 'Markup Guy'. What does that mean to you? Well, as the reader of this blog it means that the majority of the posts here will be centered around the XML world. That means I will:
- Discuss an interesting thread on one of the major XML-technology listservs
- Post a technique that I used to solve a problem
- Link to interesting uses of XML
- Semi-live blog any XML conferences I attend
- Link to other blogged XML conferences
- Discuss the business of being a business
I'll do a mini-bio post soon but in the meantime see my company's website; Manorfield Consulting, LLC. And, if you happen to need XSLT, XQuery, XSL-FO, or any type of XML work, please get in touch with me through my contacts there.
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