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singlesourcing documentation
The biggest problem with most of the reference works out there about single-sourcing is that they are almost always limited to a choice selection of very expensive proprietary tools.LaTeX and DocBook and for that matter any manner of XML editors, which could be considered excellent single-sourcing tools, are almost never discussed. There is a whole array of interesting XML tools out there, or in development, that show great promise in taking single-sourcing to the next level, but they are similarly neglected by most reviewers of the craft.
There is a tremendous amount of single-sourcing development that could be accomplished, if peoples' development efforts were not hamstrung by parochial tool sets.
Single-sourcing is a state of mind that results in a process that uses tools. The biggest hump we all have to get over is in the generation of appropriate and useful source, which can be efficiently plugged into a variety of disparate outputs or formats or both.
The most common error in single-sourcing is to purchase a process and to expect the tool to do the hard work of thinking for you.
The next most common error is to blame the tool when the process fails. Certainly, there are tools, like Word, that can be impediments to the development of a single-sourcing thought process... but it is not the fault of the tool, even Word.
Copyright © by Henry Meyerding, Senior Tech Writer. Some rights reserved.
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This article posted originally in an email on the stc-singlesource listserv.
