Occurrences

Paper

../papers/02-06-04/02-06-04.html

Date of Presentation

Tuesday, 21 May

Time of Presentation

14.45

Presentation Level

In-The-Middle

Abstract

Buying, assembling and deploying an XML content publishing system is expensive and difficult. This presentation demonstrates how Microsoft Word and YAWC, a Word to XML converter with some extra features, together provide the basis of a cheap and cheerful alternative. The actual realised benefits of full-scale Content Management Systems often do not justify the cost in either time or money that goes into implementing them. Rather than choose this route, a more limited goal of implementing a simple content publishing system, without all the management overhead, may be more suitable for many organisations, and more appropriate given the relative immaturity of the current CMS marketplace. A simple content publishing system can be implemented with Microsoft Word, XML, and a Word to XML converter. Many of the cheaper Word to XML converters treat Word documents as once-off sources of XML content, rather than as ongoing master source documents. Word, both the document format and the editor, are considered part of a conversion problem to solve, rather than part of a content maintenance solution. YAWC Pro () takes a different approach, treating Word as part of the content editing and maintenance solution for XML information. In addition to conversion, YAWC offers both a built-in authoring assistance interface for the Word editor, and an XML publishing solution based on XSLT. Together, these three components, all integrated within Word, offer a powerful but cheap and easy-to-use XML content maintenance and publishing solution.