Title: XML for Documentation Processes

Speakers: Shirley KEATING and Tony STEVENS, Turnkey Systems.

About the speakers:

Shirley KEATING MA (UNSW), BA (Syd), Post Dip Systems Analysis (NSWIT): Managing Director. Shirley joined Turn-Key Systems in 1977 after 11 years with John Fairfax and Sons Ltd. Her last position at Fairfax was Systems Development Manager responsible for the development of new typesetting and commercial systems. She has been Managing Director of Turn-Key Systems since 1988.

Tony STEVENS BSc (CompSc) (Hons) (SydU): Senior Systems Engineer. Tony joined Turn-Key in 1998. Tony has worked on symbolic mathematics tools, Unix administration utilities and software development/configuration management tools. Other experience has focussed on development of enterprise-scale relational database systems for Unix and client/server on Windows NT.

Tony's first projects for Turn-Key included a major legacy-data-to-SGML conversion project, as well as DTD development. Tony is one of Turn-Key System's XML experts. He specialises in XML markup design and legacy data conversion.

Abstract: XML: the only markup game in town?

1. Background

Turn-Key Systems has been working in the field of text processing and delivery for thirty years. Our core business has been to develop and sell our industrial strength publishing package, Topix.

Our customers in the publishing business have always had the need to produce many different outputs from a single checked and approved data set. So right from the start we developed and supplied our own generalised tagging scheme (GenCode) to mark up the data.

This was the only tagging scheme we offered until the mid nineties when we made the decision to phase out GenCode markup and use SGML and then, as soon as we found out about it, XML.

The purpose of our presentation is to demonstrate to you why we made the change to XML and to talk about some of the issues that we have had to confront internally at Turn-Key and externally with our customers.

2. Why XML? some case studies

. Turn-Key Systems, software developers: changing the perception of Turn-Key from suppliers of a paper-based typesetting system running on Unix to suppliers of a multi-platform publishing system capable of delivering output for Web, CD, paper and any new delivery medium the future may hold.

. Bell Atlantic Boston, telephone company: the number of changes which Bell had to make to the federal tariffs caused them to move the data to an SGML (could be XML) data base. To satisfy government regulations, they need to produce the tariffs in the existing complex looseleaf paper format as well as producing them electronically.

. Australian Tax Practice, general legal publisher contracted to the ATO to supply their looseleaf legislation and commentary services as electronic files marked up in SGML (now XML).

. TimeBase, an electronic publisher using Folio (now NextPage/Site Director): specialising in timebasing legislation. Why have they chosen to convert from Folio flat file format for CD and Web delivery to XML?

. Qantas, airline: converting corporate manuals now in Word and WordPerfect to a single format which will be used for paper and for web delivery.

. Australian War Memorial, cataloguing of exhibits using an industry standard DTD (the EAD).

3. XML: is it practical for ordinary users?

We will be demonstrating a content authoring application which takes (most of) the pain out of XML markup.

4. XML: what about my legacy data?

We will then demonstrate a legacy data conversion method which we have built around this application. This method can be customised by us, by third party XML developers or by the customer.

5. Summary: does XML have staying power?

When we started in 1971, people used to say "you'll never get sacked for choosing IBM". At Turn-Key, we are confident that in 2000, XML is the new certainty.