What You Need To Know To Get Started
Essential Tools of an XML Workflow
Topics We’ll CoverSteps before implementationWorkflow throughout the organizationCommon tools of a publishing workflowTagging – what it is and how to do itXML Functions – the acronyms
Steps Before Implementation
Where Are You?Existing IT infrastructure
StrengthsWeaknesses
Company’s appetite for changeCorporate approach to purchasingScalabilityOutput
What are you going to be producing?How much?
Some questions to askIs our database of products and components complete?Do we have any issues with versioning?How effective are we at meeting internal or external
deadlines?Do we face any issues related to content quality?How effective are we when it comes to retrieving book
content files?Who holds the PDFs and production files, and is this
working well?How often and how effectively do we use content to
market or sell titles?How effectively can we publish in new or non-standard
formats?
Workflow Throughout the Organization
Sample XML Workflow
Author
Acquiring Editor Developmental Editor
Production/Design
Marketing Subrights
AuthorsMost currently use WordMost publishers have author guidelinesWord has XML functionality – incorporate this into the
guidelines or revise guidelines to include XML editorSupply a list of keywords for the bookSupply a list of keywords for each chapterWork with editor to tag and “chunk”
Acquiring EditorsDecide whether the book should exist just as a print
product, or can be repurposed into other productsEbooks, chapters, iterative publications (O’Reilly’s
Rough Cuts), excerpts
Developmental EditorsTagging content for meaning/context (work with
author and copy editor)Confirming best use of content for acquiring editor’s
additional productsEnforcing author guidelinesProduct management of title
ProductionXML workflow is very concreteTagging for format – chapter head, front matter, etc.Apply a pre-defined stylesheet and transformWork with compositor and render the different
products
MarketingTarget specific audiences for the content (based on
the context tags)Work with acquiring and developmental editors to
create new productsWork with production to design new packagesSEO/SEM on individual books so that they come up in
search results (Google)
SubrightsRights information stored with the content, not in
separate filesYou know by looking at the XML for any document
which rights you haveNo more digging through files or contacting the
agent/author
What’s In Your Toolbox?
Common Tools of Publishing WorkflowWord processing (authors and editors)Design (stylesheets, transforms)ERP systemsTitle managementDAMConversionDAD
Word ProcessingMS Word 2007
Has XML export functionality Most commonly used word processor/people are used to itNot writing in native XML means exports are inconsistent due
to conversionOpen Office – XXE
Native XML word processorLearning curve on interfaceRequires you to know your doc’s structure before writing its
contentEliminates conversion issues – docs are tagged appropriately
at the outset
DesignAdobe InDesign
Create or import tag taxonomy in InDesignUse those tags to distinguish various attributes or
elements in the docEdit XML structure within InDesignExport an XML file
QuarkSimilar functionality to InDesignLess used in book publishing than InDesign
Open Source optionsNot a lot out there just now for production/design use
Third-Party SystemsERP – finance, inventoryTitle Management – production workflows,
budgeting, marketingDAM – digital asset managementDAD – digital asset distribution
What it is and How to do it
Tagging
Tag: You’re ItFormatting tags
Chapter headsSubtitlesSection heads
Context tags“This is a recipe”“This is about John Adams”Similar to indexing
Who Tags What WhenAuthors – contextual keywordsEditors – contextual keywords, structural elementsProduction/Design – structural elementsMarketing – SEO keywords, marketing termsSubrights – rights metadata and tags
How to TagCarefully
No standard tagging interface exists yet – must do in native XML (can be outsourced with lists)
No standard contextual tagging taxonomy (apart from BISAC categories) exists yet
No industry standard contextual taxonomy exists for chunk-level tagging
ConsensuallyTalk with other pubs about what they are doingNo one publisher will have the single solutionIndustry standards make books sale-able – without them,
pubs have to rely on viral salesBook Industry Study Group will have to get involved
The acronyms and gibberish
Alphabet Soup
XML FunctionsXPATHXQUERYXSLTXSL-FOSchematron
XPATHQuery language that selects certain nodes or tags
from an XML documentEx: if a user wants to display only the chapter
elements in a document, the XPath query goes through the document and selects only the chapter elements for display, leaving the rest of the document alone.
A way of navigating through an XML document and filtering what is not relevant at that particular time.
XQueryA query language for collections of XML documents in
a repository (as opposed to querying a single document)
Uses XPath syntax, as well as some SQL-type syntax to supplement
Crawls through multiple documents and selects particular attributes for display – useful for combining aspects of documents together to form new documents
XSLTExtensible Stylesheet Language TransformationsTranslates an XML document into a human-readable
document (or another XML document). Used as a conversion tool between different XML
schemasAlso a way of converting an XML document into an
HTML or plain-text documentUses XPath to identify certain tags and process them a
specific way.
XSL-FOA stylesheet language for formatting objectsLike XSLT and XPath, it is a component of XSL –
Extensible Stylesheet LanguageIs most often used to generate PDFs, which are then
used to print documents onto paperWas designed to format printed, paged media, as
opposed to screen-based reflowable media
SchematronA validation language that uses XPath to describe
patterns in an XML documentSupplements DTDs and XML schemas, and ferrets out
errors in XML filesSchematron rules can be converted into style sheets,
making the construction of XSLs much more automated
Useful LinksTOC/StartWithXML – http://toc.oreilly.com/startwithxml
Book Industry Study Group – http://www.bisg.org
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Email me w/questions – [email protected]