Information design and development - your questions answered

Q: What is single sourcing?

A: Single sourcing, at the simplest level, means reusing the same content in different output media such as on-line help, printed documents, and browsable information pages. It also means using the same source to produce content for different audiences and for different products.

If, in your organisation, information is being copy-pasted from one document to another or rewritten for different documents and audiences, there may be significant cost and time savings to be made by adopting a single sourcing approach.

Single sourcing is not a technology or a set of technologies or tools, and it does not always require expensive solutions to implement. It's more about a practical approach to achieving simple goals.

Q: What are the main pitfalls to be avoided in single sourcing projects?

A: Many projects start off being too ambitious or complex. It is important to establish clear objectives and to take the time to capture the reuse scenarios and requirements against which the success of the investment will be judged. It is easy to over-engineer the solution and make it too complex to actually produce the information you need.

The impact on existing content is also easy to underestimate in large organisations. With every project, there is initial investment in terms of changing the way of working, writing methodologies, and adopting new tools. This investment needs to be realistically planned and taken into account in the cost-benefit analysis.

The challenge presented by changing the mind-set of content creators from crafting individually developed content to effective collaborative writing is often underestimated.

Once the tools and technologies are in place, single sourcing and the reuse of content do not just happen. They have to be planned and supported by the content creation or information development processes in the organisation. For example, to support single sourcing across traditional business functions such as training, documentation, and customer care, the origin and the lifecycle of the information has to be clarified and agreed between the functions.

Q: What is the significance of XML?

A: eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) is based on a subset of SGML and was created to simplify SGML. It provides a clearly defined way of marking-up content so that the content can be exchanged and transformed in different ways (for example, into both web pages and printed documents). XML gives structure to content, independent of formatting. The tags used can be defined and extended to meet the specific needs of the organisation. XML is platform-independent and tool-neutral and is increasingly supported by tools and systems, many of them open source.

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