While using internal resources to develop a homegrown content management tool or convert your backlist to XML sounds like a cost-effective approach, the reality is that most IT projects fail. Focussing internal IT resources on experimenting with new technologies and applications (R&D), vendor selection, and vendor management is the trend most publishers are following. Capitalizing on external resources can increase time to market, offer scalability and expertise, provide consistency and quality, and ultimately improve your ROI.

Join RSI Content Solutions and Data Conversion Laboratory for the latest webinar in the Reality Check Series:

Truth About DIY CMS and Content Conversion
featuring Pat Sabosik, Elm City Consulting
August 29, 2012 | 1:00 to 2:00 pm
Register here

Leading publishing consultant, Pat Sabosik, leads this conversation and will discuss

• Life cycles and leveraging investments
• Evolution of content use and complexity
• ROI and profitability

She'll provide concrete examples from STM and educational publishers that detail how content management and XML are the building blocks for the next generation of content and how vendor selection and alignment is a good use of corporate IT resources vs DIY when it comes to content conversion and content management.

According to a Pew Internet and American Life study, the number of adults who own tablets nearly doubled between mid-December 2011 and early January 2012, jumping from 10% to 19%. Coincidentally, according to the same study, the number of adults owning e-book readers also doubled from 10% to 19% in the same period, and the number of adults owning at least one of those devices leapt from 18% to 29%. There is simply no denying it—we find ourselves in the midst of a fundamental change in the way information is presented and consumed across all sectors of publishing.

From trade to children’s books, from STM to legal, from education to association publishing, the very rules of how we do what we do are being rewritten (and likely being read on a PDF or EPUB). And the rewriting of these rules is happening so quickly—to an industry that’s done things more or less the same way for centuries—that lots of publishers are struggling as their print revenues shrink faster than they can grow digital revenue.

In this free white paper you'll learn how to manage and refine your content—then, sell it quickly, efficiently, and in more forms than you ever imagined possible.

When implementing RSuite CMS, our content architects and engineers help publishers ensure that the transformation from Word to XML is seamless and easy. The following best practices were developed that can be used in any publishing workflow to ensure content is consistently styled.

The following guidelines are based on a Word-to-XML conversion process using DITA For Publishers, which transforms embedded Word XML to true XML by taking advantage of style-to-tag mapping. All publishers can benefit from this approach, even if an early-XML workflow is not yet on the radar (though it SHOULD be!). What you get out of using real templated Word documents is consistency. Whether it's to generate XML or deliver to an offshore production service, consistent styles make downstream processing easier and allow for automation.

Best Practices for MS Word Authoring by Harvey Greenberg and Paul Eisenberg

Context

• MS Word 2003 and above use docx as default format.
• A docx file is actually a zip – you can rename foo.docx to foo.zip, unzip it, and see what’s there.
• Word to XML conversion process using DITA4Publishers transforms the embedded Word XML to “real” XML using style-to-tag mapping.
• Content that does not have a style accounted for in the mapping is ignored.
• Only styles are processed, not format overrides.
• This applies to character styles as well as paragraph styles.

Templates in MS Word

• Whereas “template” often means a starting document, in MS Word a template is a dotx file.
• All documents are attached to a template – the default is normal.dotx.
• Templates may be stored in the user-defined template location (Word | Options | Advanced | File Locations), or in a workgroup location (generally a shared network drive).
• Best practice is to use a template specific for the project.

Viewing, Applying, and Creating Styles

• Best way to view styles throughout the document is using Draft view with style pane; this needs to be set in Word | Options | Advanced.
• CNTL + SHIFT + S will pop up style dialog appropriate to cursor position; both para and character styles will show up.
• To create new styles, process is:
• Create or open document to which your template is attached.
• Make and test changes, being careful to always select option that applies changes to all documents based on the template, as opposed to current document
• Exit Word.
• Reopen Word, create new document based on your template, and see if changes took.

Some Tips and Tricks

• Templates may contain boilerplate text as well as styles; you can provide starting title, standard sections, etc, for authors to change.
• You can assign keyboard shortcuts and also change the quick style bar.
• A style can automatically assign style for the next para (e.g., Title can create Heading 1).
• A shortcut to a macro that does Edit | PasteSpecial | Unformatted Text is your best friend
• Probably best to avoid use of the default “Normal” para style, because it may not be clear whether para should be normal or you just didn’t take any action; perhaps use something like BodyPara in its place.
• Do not use empty paras for spacing; assign spacing via the style.
• Adding formatting to the styles so that the author can tell immediately that a heading is a heading and a list is a list, etc, is good.
• Trying to replicate the look and feel of the product is wasteful and can distract authors from the task at hand, which is good content.

I hope these best practices will be useful in your publishing workflows. To learn how some of our publishing clients are implementing this, download your free white paper: "How Successful Publishers Deliver Content: RSuite CMS and DITA For Publishers."

Every once in a while a company finds itself evolving and in need of a makeover. Really Strategies reached that point. The company's new name is RSI Content Solutions. "When we founded the company back in 2000, we were 100% focused on XML technology consulting to publishers and media companies," stated Barry Bealer, CEO and co-founder of RSI Content Solutions. "Today, 99% of our revenue is from our software products and related services and we needed to reflect that in our company name."

The name has changed but the dedication to provide world-class content solutions to publishers, media companies, and technical publishers remains.

The new web site reflects the name change and also brings together our three content management software products---RSuite CMS, DocZone Book Publisher, DocZone DITA Publisher---under one url: www.rsicms.com.  Additionally, the new web site highlights more of our customer success stories. When our customers make statements like this, we want people to know!

“RSuite CMS combined with the DITA for Publishers framework is helping us achieve the holy grail of single-source publishing: XML content automatically delivered to InDesign and to multiple ebook delivery formats. The transformations from structured content to designed content have been seamless, allowing our staff to focus on content and product development.”
--Holly Gilly, Vice President for Product Development, Human Kinetics

"RSuite CMS is 200 times faster than our old system. The efficiencies we've gained are hard to believe."
--Keith Lawrenz, Senior Business Analyst, SAGE Publications, Inc.

"We selected DocZone because it is the only DITA-specific CMS available as a hosted solution that met all of our requirements."
--Nancy Thompson, CMS Implementation Specialist, Epson America

"We saw the time for PDF proofs drop from a week to just a few minutes with DocZone Book Publisher."
--Stephen Driver, Vice President of Production Services, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Over the next week, this blog will also have a face lift to reflect our new brand. We'll share more customer case studies as welll as highlight a series of webinars that kick off in April. Thanks for your interest thus far and stay tuned!

Publishers understand the value of XML but sometimes the cost of entry into an early XML workflow is difficult, expensive, and time consuming. The open source project DITA for Publishers combined with RSuite CMS changes everything.

DITA is a sophisticated XML-based application architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. While enthusiastically adopted in the TechDoc world, DITA is less understood among traditional publishing organizations.  Until now. DITA specialist Eliot Kimber and technology evangelist Christopher Hill are hosting a webinar in March that details how RSuite CMS and the open source project, “DITA for Publishers" is  the toolset that launches publishers into the XML world and why this is critical. DITA’s unique extensibility architecture makes it a better business value than any comparable XML alternative. Eliot and Chris' enthusiasm combined with a straight-forward approach to CMS and DITA, will have you starting to take DITA seriously.

Webinar details

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

How Successful Publishers Deliver Content: RSuite CMS & DITA for Publishers

Panelists: Eliot Kimber & Christopher Hill

Really Strategies' employees Eliot Kimber and Christopher Hill will speak at this week's Intelligent Content Conference in Palm Springs, California. Intelligent Content is a 3-day learning experience designed to help attendees understand what is required to create intelligent content: content designed to be structurally rich and semantically categorized, automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable to any future functionality.

Eliot Kimber, senior solutions architect at Really Strategies will present, “DITA for Publishers: Intelligent Content Starts Here.” In this session, Eliot will introduce his project DITA for publishers, and detail how DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) can be the toolset that launches publishers into the XML world in a way that is affordable and easy.

Christopher Hill, vice president of product management, will take part in a software demonstration that illustrates how DocZone Book Publisher is used to automate print and ebook production, highlighting DocZone’s multilingual features as well as its ease of use. DocZone Book Publisher is also a gold sponsor of the event in Palm Springs, California.

At next Tuesday's 5th Annual RSuite User Conference in Philadelphia, Diane Burley from MarkLogic Corporation will moderate a panel, "Getting to the Core of a Digital Publishing Strategy."

Publishers have been working hard the past few years plotting their organization’s digital publishing strategy. Yet there are still so many questions and the landscape is indeed vast. In this panel session, digital information specialist Diane Burley will question RSuite customers about their digital publishing strategy. We'll hear how RSuite is helping with dynamic content creation, streamlined delivery to licensing channels, and the emerging world of apps. Diane is a strategic visionary and understands the technology that is needed to leverage great content.

Panelists include Anthony Allen, director of digital media at the American Society of Training & Development. Anthony is a dynamic industry speaker who is known for translating how well-managed and structured content results in increased revenue. Linda Baker, VP, IT & web development at SLACK Inc. will share how transforming its entire wealth of content into XML enables them to repurpose content in an agile way. Dave Moreau and Joan Robinson from Wolters Kluwer Health detail how RSuite enables the Nursing Practice to produce and deliver a 21st century product in a 21st century manner.

Don't miss this important event. With 1 week remaining, limited seats are still available!

October 25, 2011
The Chemical Heritage Foundation
Conference Center
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Digital editions of cookbooks have been on the slow cooker for some time now. But with the release of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and published by Alfred A. Knopf, digital cookbooks are gathering steam. Judith Jones*, retired senior editor and vice president at Knopf and the person responsible for bringing the book into our homes, insisted the digital publication wait until the technology could properly display the beauty of Julia's writing and recipes.

Well, that time is today. Knopf released the digital edition of this classic tome on October 5. Because no electronic files of the book were available, production staff had the book re-keyed and images scanned.

With the impending release of Amazon's Fire in November and the impressive metrics stewing for digital cookbooks, the time is ripe for cookbook publishers to go digital.

Check out our latest whitepaper "Best Practices for a Long-Term Digital Publishing Strategy" so you too can get cooking.

______________________

*Judith Jones also saved The Diary of Anne Frank from the reject pile. And for that too, I thank you Ms. Jones.

When people have questions, they turn to the Internet and search for answers. For technical publications, having content accessible is imperative. Put online help documentation on the Internet and your users can access your content.

CHMs, Robohelp, MadCap Flare, Adobe Air, Eclipse Help, and some WebWorks formats use architectures, plugins, and web services that restrict search access to the valuable content they contain. However, an HTML help system doesn’t rely on these technologies.

This is why TechProse, a consultant company specializing in technical writing, selected HTML5 and DITA, managed by DocZone.  DocZone is a SaaS XML CMS that can deliver help content to the Internet. HTML5 is designed with accessibility in mind, and DITA enables us to reap the benefits of single-sourcing and automated publishing.

By switching from FrameMaker and MadCap Flare to DITA and HTML5 help, TechProse was able to help its global international shipping customer:
•    reduce publishing costs by 15%
•    increase the quality of the user experience
•    make help topics accessible from any web-ready device

Learn more on September 28th at 1PM EST by joining us at our webinar entitled, "Don’t Hide Your Content in a Traditional Help System: A Case Study from TechProse Featuring DocZone."

Don't miss the opportunity to see what's in store for the RSuite CMS next generation user experience at the 5th annual RSuite User Conference. Conference attendees can also take part in an "ask-an-engineer" session to understand the implications of architectural changes in upcoming releases.

RSuite User Conference | October 25th