Infobridge Solutions - areas of technical expertise

Project planning:

• document/content analysis/mapping; targeting current formats to XML elements (using DITA, DocBook, or other standard); to start, within current documents (to avoid publishing gap)
• client-specific requirements; customization of DITA or DocBook
• content migration requirements; what documents need to be converted first? how to handle boilerplate?
• content re-architecture issues; storing content in reusable chunks instead of monolithic books/chapters
• CMS implementation
• task-oriented, topic-based help system design

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Evaluating tools

• help clients evaluate authoring, publishing, CMS, and translation management tools)
• clarify client priorities for different tool features, to ensure that tool choices will meet long-term strategic publishing goals.

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Prototyping your conversion strategy

Prototyping should take place soon after content analysis and development of a conversion mapping strategy. It allows for validation of the chosen conversion mapping - what elements of current documentation are to be converted to what XML elements in the target architecture - on a small but representative portion of the total content to be converted. It also reveals pre-processing and post-processing that may need to be done on the content by authors.

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customizing DTDs/schemas and stylesheets

• XSLT, XSL-FO for online and print output
• experience with standard stylesheet sets - DITA Open Toolkit, DocBook stylesheets (@sourceforge.net)

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Automating document builds

• Develop batch processes for building user assistance
• Work with other engineering organizations, in particular QA and system test groups, to integrate user assistance/document builds into standard product builds

Integrating UA builds with product builds promotes early testing of user assistance, better review, and generally higher visibility of UA as an integral part of the product

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Training

Various types of training:

• basic XML for tech writers
• information modeling - task-based user assistance, topic-oriented document design
• DITA - introduction, basic topic types, support for reuse, single-sourcing, content re-purposing, best practices for localization,
• DocBook -
  • DocBook document model; using and extending it
  • understanding DB elements and packaging
  • using and customizing standard DocBook stylesheets
• using and modifying XSLT / XSL-FO stylesheets

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User asistance design and re-architecture

Work with clients to develop an optimal design for chunking and putting together their content. In most cases, it is better to separate the initial conversion process - moving content into XML but retaining the overall book/chapter storage model - from the work of re-architecting and redesigning a body of user assistance. Once content has been converted to topics or individual sections, then the entire body of content can and should be re--architected to use a task-based model.

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Eclipse infocenter design / development

A number of organizations are interested in basing user assistance on the Eclipse infocenter model because it allows for content to be delivered in an open source context as well as authored and stored using open source tools and open standards from the OASIS (****) organization.

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