[OSGeo-Edu] Some thoughts on the production of educational materialabout FOSS Geospatial Tools

[Simon Cropper]

On Tuesday 10 August 2010 7:05:16 am Cameron Shorter wrote:
> A template should be provided to authors, so that all content is 
> provided in the same format and style. The University of Southern 
> Queensland in Australia have gone a long way down this path with their 
> ICE product: http://ice.usq.edu.au/

Looking into the ICE product it becomes apparent that the template is really a 
list of accepted styles. In other words if you have a paragraph use 'P' have a 
top level title use 'H1', secondary level title use 'H2' etc. I can see how 
this would be easy to extract blocks of content using this format. Essentially 
simple HTML in a OO wrapper.

> I wish Docbook was more widely accepted, as it is the best format I've 
> found for structured text. The best free editor I've found for Docbook 
> is XXE: http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/
> The deficiency of Docbook is that images need to be stored outside of 
> your docbook file.

Storing images separately has its advantages and disadvantages.

The disadvantages is that file bundles (like HTML) are harder to distribute. A 
single file with everything is useful for this (consider HTML vs CHM; the 
latter is very easy to distribute).

The advantage is that if you translate a document, the images can be readily 
updated to show the GUI in the new language. When images are buried inside a 
file then they need to be extracted then updated then reinserted, resulting in 
changes to formatting. Coupled with text expansion with translated pages or 
inserted text you essentially end up rewriting a tutorial.

******** SCC thought **********

If you look into derivative creation it is necessary to isolate content 
blocks, images and possible data, then review, update and reinsert each 
component into a new file.

All the solutions touted aim to provide tags or buckets for particular data 
types. This makes for easy translation between tagged based languages (XML, 
HTML, OO, PDF) but does nothing to make it easy to create derivatives.

Note here that I am not treating format shifts as derivatives. Derivatives are 
new documents with changes in content. So far no solution makes for easy 
creation of derivatives. Reviewers/editors are stuck with reviewing and 
changing easy paragraph, recreating images and replacing the already inserted 
ones, etc - every time a new product version is released.

This is where ongoing maintenance of document collections are problematic. It 
soon become apparent that significant effort is required to review and change 
every document every time something happens. Whether data is in a standard 
template or text tagged with particular styles does not aid in this process. 
Why then constrain authors with these.

I created a document recently with OO writer. Used a wide range of standard 
styles as well as a range of unique ones I created relevant to the subject 
matter I was writing about. When finished I exported to Word DOC format and PDF 
- simply by using the standard 'Save as' button. OO in its current format can 
export to a wide variety of other formats. The ICE templates really only 
simplifies files.

******** 2nd thought by SCC **********

why do we need templates. most of the editors looked at, especially open 
source, can save in a variety of formats. If the objective is to make it 
easier for someone to create a derivative then who care what format something 
is in (as long it is not in binary). People who make derivatives need to 
disassemble everything and recreate it anyway.


(C) Simon Cropper 2010. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia

-- 
Cheers Simon

	Simon Cropper
	Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
	PO Box 160 Sunshine 3020
	P: 03 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437
	W: http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au