Technical Writing and XML: Why Does the Future of Documentation Belong to Extended Markup Language?

XML, that is, Extended Markup Language, is the future of technical writing and technical communication.

There are TWO very important reasons why this is so.

REASON 1: XML is at the heart of the “one sourcing” movement. The idea is to write something once and then “tag” it in such a way that it is possible to publish it in many formats and on many devices and platforms without making any further changes. XML makes it possible.

One bottleneck at the time of writing this article is this: It is still very difficult to format text with XML tags exactly how you want it. XML is not a designer’s dream, by no means. Still, attaching a “style sheet” to XML text and turning it into a nice, well-designed document is a future dream. But better minds are working on it day and night and I am sure that at some point in the future we will overcome this pothole as well.

REASON 2: XML is a manager’s dream, as writing once and publishing many times greatly reduces unit production costs. Imagine hiring one team to publish a magazine, another to publish a website, and a third team to compile a help file using the SAME content! Compare that to a single team publishing the same content in three different ways, all thanks to XML! The choice is obvious.

The easiest way to generate an XML document is to use Adobe FrameMaker in its “structured” mode. You can learn how to do that in a minute and perfect it in a matter of weeks. But that’s the subject of another article …

May you use a single font and export your joy and enthusiasm for life to all the platforms that are available to you!