Infobridge Solutions - areas of technical expertise

Project planning:

During the project planning phase, we consider the goals of the project and the scope in terms of:

• document/content analysis/mapping; targeting current formats to XML elements (using DITA, DocBook, or other standard); to start, within current documents (to avoid publishing gap)
• client-specific requirements; customization/specialization of DITA or DocBook to meet client-specific needs
• content migration requirements; for example, what documents need to be converted first? how to handle boilerplate?
• content re-architecture issues; storing content in reusable chunks instead of monolithic books/chapters
• CMS implementation
• task-oriented, topic-based help system navigation design
• publishing requirements; where will the content be used? What output formats (e.g. PDF, HTML, EPub) are needed?

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Evaluating tools

The tools you use have a major impact on your productivity and your ability to meet business goals for reusability and ease of localization. We can:

• help clients evaluate authoring, publishing, CMS, and translation management tools.
• clarify client priorities for different tool features, to ensure that tool choices will meet long-term strategic publishing goals.

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Content Analysis

Content analysis is the most essential and most complex part of moving a body of content to structured formats. It involves figuring out what kind of information you have, in relation to what kind of information your users really need. This process often leads to the discovery that some types of information that your users need are missing from your current content set, which is a task to be addressed as part of a >user asistance design and re-architecture project.

We work with you to:

• analyze your current content to identify the types of information you currently have.
• decide how to map your content to the target XML structure.
• identify areas where more information is required by users.

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Prototyping your conversion strategy

Prototyping should take place soon after content analysis and development of a conversion mapping strategy. It allows for validation of the chosen conversion mapping - what elements of current documentation are to be converted to what XML elements in the target architecture - on a small but representative portion of the total content to be converted. It also reveals pre-processing and post-processing that may need to be done on the content by authors. Part of the prototyping effort is creating the DTD customizations and/or specializations required for your implementation.

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Customizing output stylesheets

• XSLT, XSL-FO, and CSS for online and print output
• experience with standard stylesheet sets - DITA Open Toolkit, DocBook stylesheets

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Automating document builds

• Develop batch processes for building user assistance
• Work with other engineering organizations, in particular QA and system test groups, to integrate user assistance/document builds into standard product builds

Integrating UA builds with product builds promotes early testing of user assistance, better review, and generally higher visibility of UA as an integral part of the product

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Training

Various types of training:

• basic XML for tech writers
• information modeling - task-based user assistance, topic-oriented document design
• DITA - introduction, basic topic types, support for reuse, single-sourcing, content re-purposing, best practices for localization,
  • introduction to modular document design, basic topic types
  • support for reuse, re-purposing, and single-sourcing
  • specialization of elements, attributes, constraints
  • using and customizing the DITA Open Toolkit
  • best practices for localization
• DocBook -
  • DocBook document model; using and extending it
  • understanding DB elements and packaging
  • using and customizing standard DocBook stylesheets
• using and modifying XSLT / XSL-FO stylesheets

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User asistance design and re-architecture

Work with clients to develop an optimal design for chunking and putting together their content. In many cases, it is better to separate the initial conversion process - moving content into XML but retaining the overall book/chapter storage model - from the work of re-architecting and redesigning a body of user assistance. Once content has been converted to topics or individual sections, then the entire body of content can be re-architected to use a task-based model.

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Eclipse infocenter design / development

A number of organizations are interested in basing user assistance on the Eclipse infocenter model because it allows for content to be delivered in an open source context as well as authored and stored using open source tools and open standards from the OASIS (****) organization.

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