On the trail of the CMS phenomenon

"Welcome to Technorama – The Swiss Science Center

Allow yourself to be carried away into an astonishing world. Discover hundreds of experimental stations: to be touched, understood and played. What has been created for you here is a festival of the senses."

This is how Technorama introduces itself – and the Director, Mr. Thorsten Künnemann, introduced the participants in the euroscript forum to the beauties of his establishment with a little experiment and prepared the listeners perfectly for the day's events, some of which were quite a challenge.

Once again, euroscript extended an invitation to a forum centred around current questions of documentation. This time, over thirty interested parties met in the presentation rooms of Technorama (www.technorama.ch) in Winterthur. The range of subjects extended from the question of the correct semantics for the XML used, to the applied, practical implementation of a documentation task in a content management system, beginning with the modularisation and structuring for consistent documentation processes, moving on to modularisation standards and applications, before finishing with a direct comparison of two content management systems.

In his accustomed good manner, Victor Linnemann guided participants from the recommended tool in the structuring matrix to implementation at the macro and micro levels, through to the processes supported, without omitting the costs of semantic structures:

• An alteration (deviation from the standard) to the micro/macro structure can entail costs:
  • in the structured entry of the content
  • in the configuration of the content management system
  • in the configuration of external systems connected via XML interfaces (TTS, all output channels, editor)
  • through undetected risks (IT security, inconsistent requirements, errors in configuration)
• Retrospective alterations create migration costs Using examples including translation-relevant questions, he continued with an example of implementation before ending surprisingly with a Roman auxiliary fort.

It quickly became apparent that he was turning to the table here as a special challenge in structuring: the clarification of the semantic structure of a table as the delimitation of format-driven content entry occupied the participants for a while before a common conclusion was drawn:
some tables are just tables – most other tables belong in a database.

Florian Pollack, an experienced member of the content-management team, provided a very practical insight into the requirements and their solutions in the day-to-day business of an editor.

He started with the requirements of standardisation in technical documentation and explained ways of modularisation very plausibly on the basis of the structure of legal texts. Texts from the Swiss Code of Obligations were analysed at the macro and micro levels; granularity, as a constantly recurrent, challenging optimisation task between administrative workload and benefit, was discussed equally flexibly with the aid of examples: a theatre play that we already knew from Victor Linnemann served as a simple and impressive example in this respect.

Not to forget the warnings which he insisted on assessing as between "almost good" and "fitting", thereby touching a raw nerve in the day-to-day business of some participants.

Here too, a conclusion was reached:

• Standardisation wherever possible and advisable
• Module size beneficial to the ability to reuse and to retrieve
• Fragmentation beneficial to the ability to reuse and to retrieve
• Aim: easy compilation of modules

Semantic elements/DTD, where possible and advisable ... but sometimes a table is not just a table!

Intensive use was made of the lunch break for discussion, networking and not least of all for a visit to the exhibition, a welcome supplement to the morning.

In the afternoon, two providers of content management systems had their turns: Dr. Fischer of FCT (www.fct.de) and Mr. Drache of Schema (www.schema.de), who willingly faced up to a very practical task prepared by euroscript – structuring lawnmower documentation, whereby solution proposals for online assistance were also put forward without reluctance.

Under the guidance and chairmanship of Victor Linnemann, this again became a rich and, at the same time, entertaining teaching session.

The discussion was lively; final suggestions from the participants for subsequent events concerned comparisons of translation tools and were also very concrete: "Tips and tricks – users reporting on their everyday dealings with CMS (or everything that can be done right or wrong)"; but please, without providers, rather as an open exchange between and for the participants in the form of a round table. Especially as we all know that the task defines the solution to be applied to a fundamental extent and that there is no solution for all tasks – but rather always just a solution optimised in all aspects, including the ­monetary aspect.

We found this very stimulating, helpful and will certainly proceed to implementation at one of the next euroscript forums.

There was also sufficient time for a visit to the interesting and exciting exhibitions – too little, however, for some of the participants; but Technorama is undoubtedly looking forward to return visits, and would welcome friends and family as well.

About euroscript

euroscript International is a leader in providing customers with global solutions in content lifecycle management. The euroscript divisions deliver comprehensive solutions that help customers design, build and run content management operations of all sizes. Thanks to its employees’ expertise in the fields of consulting, system integration, language services as well as content and document management, euroscript is able to help businesses worldwide to manage content more efficiently.

With a market presence in over 14 countries, spanning 4 continents, euroscript serves customers in a variety of business sectors including the public sector, aerospace, defence and transport, manufacturing, financial services and energy and environment.

Author: Dr. Stefan Winter.

Image above shows "Trick fountains at the entrance to Technorama, the Swiss Science Centre"

Article has been first published in INPUT, edition April 2009