The key to having everyone working efficiently together with the Well-Formed Document Workflow is for everyone to know how your content will be delivered on the many platforms that you will use. This doesn't have to mean that all of your employees have to become experts on each platform, but rather that you analyze your content and establish rules of what that content should be called, so you can quickly convert to each platform.
This data analysis process ends with a map of all of the types of data structures you use. Most companies already have the beginnings of this map in your production department. Typesetters often use styles in QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign to make their work faster. They may have a style named "Chapter Title" or "CT" that they will apply to the chapter title, or they may have a character style that makes text bold or italic.
In XML Development, you first need to take that map and create a Document Type Definition (DTD) that allows you to make sure that content is being mapped to the proper structures (or tags). Once you have this map of your content, you can use the DTD to insure everyone is using the correct styles or tags, depending on the stage of production the content is at.
Once you've mapped your content to a DTD file, you then need the tools to convert your data to all the places you plan to use it:
- Microsoft Word for your copyeditors
- XPress Tags or InDesign Tagged Text for your typesetters
- XML formats for on-line content delivery systems
- Open eBook files
- Any content platform of your choice
Scribe can help you define this process, from analyzing your content, to DTD development, to helping create the tools to allow you to move efficiently to any platform you choose.