Each software tool presents a particular conceptual model of the publishing process. This philosophical point of view greatly influences the functionality and usability of the software.
Some systems are page oriented. Others focus on the entire document. Some are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Still others are batch oriented. Learning and using the publishing tools are easier if you are aware of the philosophy---the point of view---that a system supports.
One way to grasp the value of new technologies is to create a metaphor. The iconic user interface of the Macintosh is known as a desktop. The use of printing software and hardware on this metaphorical desktop is known as desktop publishing. It brings to mind miniature Gutenberg presses right at your fingertips. All sorts of desktop metaphors have been created: desktop machining, desktop forgery, desktop prepress, and so on.
The newer technologies of electronic publishing also need new metaphors to cover the issues of document processing, electronic distribution, archival storage, and so on.
The multifaceted world of electronic publishing needs a catchy phrase to describe it. The many points of view that you can use to examine electronic publishing are necessary because there is no single satisfying metaphor.
The term electronic publishing means different things to different people. Many of the standards discussed in this book open up other possibilities such as hypertext, on-line information browsers, and so on; these applications, as well as databases, CD-ROMs, and other electronic repositories, are beyond the scope of this book. The majority of this book is concerned with electronic documents that are to be printed.
In this chapter we will examine many approaches to looking at electronic documents---points of view. The views we will examine are (1) Visual and Logical views, (2) The Design Point of View, (3) Communications Views, (4) The Engineered View, (5) The Database View, and (6) Specialized Views. We will look at how the creation of electronic documents is influenced by each point of view.
The logical aspect of a component refers to its semantically meaningful part, such as the fact that a collection of characters is a word that can be checked for spelling, or that a chapter is divided into sections. The visual aspect of a document component refers to the size, position, and fonts used to form its physical appearance.The visual components of document elements will be discussed further in Section 1 2 The Design Point of View.
In this section, we will examine document components of increasing complexity, starting with the character and progressing through to an entire library. Each document component has a visual aspect and logical aspect. Some lean more toward one than the other.
Putting these document components on a scale, starting with the simplest and moving to the most complex provides us with a useful frame of reference in which to discuss these issues.
You can manipulate each item on this scale using software tools. Of course, some tools cover several items on the scale. The orientation of a particular tool---the point of view it supports---will probably be centered around one particular item. In the following sections we will go through the scale by examining each document component.
Normally you don't have to be concerned about the character code used in your particular system. However, when you want to interchange to other systems, the character code may become a problem. In particular, interchange with systems in countries that use other character codes must take these codes into account. Many Asian languages require other character codes, which are necessary to support hundreds or even thousands of characters (for example, Japanese). Localization is the process of taking software written for one system and porting it to another system that uses another language and possibly another character code.
Also on the logical (as opposed to visual) side of the discussion is the ability to associate attributes or tags with individual characters. Essentially, tags are names you can associate with characters for whatever purpose you like. For example, the FrameMaker publishing system allows the definition of character tags. Each tag defines a particular font family, size, weight, and other properties, which can be applied to any character. These tagged characters may subsequently be manipulated as a group if necessary.
Named attributes or tags such as these provide a convenient mechanism for manipulating the visual appearance of characters throughout a document. You can also use them for other semantic purposes. For example, you could associate the name "placeHolder" with particular characters you wish to use temporarily. You can search for the tag "placeHolder" to locate the particular text. You can even print out a report listing all occurrences of the "placeHolder" tag and where they occur in the document, creating an automated list of remaining work.2
For the visual side of characters many font manipulation tools are available. Tools to manipulate individual characters could be considered part of font definition software. If you want to change the appearance of all occurrences of the character T, for example, you use a font definition tool.
There are many more issues concerning the visual aspects of characters and fonts. Please see Section 1 2 1 Fonts and Typography later in this chapter for a discussion of these issues.
Another manipulation of words is automatic hyphenation. This is a manipulation of the logical or semantically meaningful aspects of words. Often, publishing systems allow the user to modify some variables to control the precise way automatic hyphenation is performed. For example, these could be variables to control the minimum and maximum number of characters before and after the hyphen. In addition, electronic publishing systems that support several languages must also have hyphenation dictionaries appropriate for each language. Hyphenation algorithms differ among systems.4 The same document in two systems may not appear exactly the same, even if the fonts and page margins are identical, because the hyphens will break the words at different places. Hyphenation is part of the process of formatting and can hinder efforts to interchange documents with perfect fidelity.
When writing, we generally treat the content and appearance of paragraphs uniformly. Individual paragraphs have the same margins and typefaces (they should also contain a coherent idea). Many software products treat the paragraph as an entity that can be manipulated as a unit.
When manipulating a paragraph, it is important to distinguish the logical aspects from the visual. The logical use of a paragraph tag might be to identify all chapter headings. The publishing system may support the intent of a document structure and not allow the creation of a chapter heading in the middle of a table. Identification of the logical structure of a document is one of the major features of formal document standards and is discussed in depth in the Document Standards chapter. (Please see Section 3 3 SGML in Chapter 3 Document Standards for a discussion of document structure.)
Another logical use of tag names is the actual name itself. The name "Body text" conveys the meaning that the body copy in a document will be associated with the tag "Body text." It is important to select meaningful tag names. Cryptic, "cutesy" names obscure the intent of the tag or style. Good names are vital. Spend the painful time creating good names that will be meaningful to others in your organization.
The development and use of a consistent set of paragraph tags can be of tremendous value. This task should be done at the start of any significant project. Visual consistency can be achieved by using the same tags in the same places. Just as important, changes can be applied to specific tags or styles in one place and then applied to the entire document. The concept of a style sheet is intended specifically to allow changes in one place to migrate to the rest of the document. Changes made to a style sheet can also be applied to many other documents, helping to automate and keep consistent all documents of a project or organization. Coherent tag names allow the logical aspects of the document to guide the visual appearance.
Let's turn now to the next level in the document element scale, the page.
From a visual point of view, pages provide a place for a number of items. Headers, footers, body text, and page numbers are some of these items. They are placed on pages, in a consistent position throughout the document. The positioning of these items is primarily a matter of design. In addition to design, however, there are computational factors. Some of the page-specific items, such as the page numbers, running headers, and running footers, can be computed or extracted from the text. The content of these items can be changed, based on the specifics of the page.
Although pages have a specific size that is rarely changed, paying attention to the size is sometime crucial. Many systems support specific page sizes implicitly. This implicit assumption can cause a nasty problem if you need to interchange documents with an organization that uses a different standard page size than your own organization. This would probably happen when a U.S. organization exchanges documents with an organization based in Europe. U.S. standard page sizes (8.5 x 11 inches) are different than the ISO A4 (8.25 x 11.75 inches) size used in Europe. The document will probably not print correctly unless you adjust for page size.
The layout and overall design of components such as text, graphics, and illustration are best manipulated in a page layout program. The quintessential example of this type of software is Aldus PageMaker. One of the keys to PageMaker's success is that this software speaks the language of designers. Its presents the user with a simulation of a pasteboard (an underlying grid for creating the proportions and overall structure of the document), a commonly used graphic design tool.
One distinction that must be applied only to pages is handedness---whether the content of a page is to appear on the right-, or left-hand side of the printed document. Margins, columns, headers, footers, and page number positions are sometimes shifted on the page, depending on whether they are to appear on a left or right-hand page. The more powerful electronic publishing systems provide tools to control handedness: for example, the ability to force the start of each document (for example, chapters) on a right hand page.
Text flow is yet another term that really crosses the boundary from a page to a document. Newspaper articles leave pointers to the connecting text, such as "see Bozos column 5, page 22". These pointers tell the reader where the text is continued. The visual shape of these flows is either rectangular or follows the shape of graphic elements. Page layout or page makeup programs such as QuarkXPress and Aldus Pagemaker provide tools that allow text flows to travel automatically around graphic elements.
Frames are another frequently encountered term with a strong relationship to the page. In a sense, a frame is a subdivision of a page. It is an invisible boundary in which content appears, just like a page. Frames, however, are not physical things; they are areas that can be manipulated while using the publishing system. Text can flow automatically from one particular frame to another. Ventura Publisher6 and FrameMaker7 both use this concept.
Last but not least, Interleaf 58 generalizes many of the aspects of a page in a feature known as a microdocument. Microdocuments are "little" documents, inserts embedded in the pages of other documents, that can independently retain stylistic characteristics. All the styles associated with a particular document can be retained intact with microdocuments. However, the microdocument can be no larger than a page; hence, its name.
The logical structure of a document is an important characteristic of the document. We can use that structure as a framework to evaluate document processing tools. Some questions to ask in determining the suitability of a particular publishing system are:
Technical publications, in particular, need robust document-oriented tools. The more automated tools, the better. It is essential that the publishing system provide support for automatic section numbering, running headers and footers, styles or tags, and change control. In addition, support for global changes---changes to many files that are part of a large document---is a major time saver.
Several publishing systems present the user with the idea of a book.10 The concept of a book is used as an organizational tool. Books are made up of collections of files. If a change is made to the book, then the change is actually made to all the files that make up the book. If your publishing projects routinely deal with hundreds of files, this type of support will be an important requirement for any publishing system.
As the sheer size of the document grows, we start to see a significant distinction between WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and batch--oriented systems. Often you don't want to see extensive, repetitive, massive changes. If you are forced into too many hand manipulations, the publishing system may be unwieldy for the particular publishing application. The higher-end publishing systems try to balance WYSIWYG capabilities with the often awkward and complicated commands of a batch--oriented system. Please see Section 2 1 Types of Document Processors in Chapter 2 Form and Function of Document Processors for a more through discussion of WYSIWYG versus batch document processing.
This level, in our document component scale, also represents the highest point at which a collection of documents is part of a coherent whole. Representative examples of documents in this level are the many manuals of an operating system, the volumes of an encyclopedia, and the maintenance manuals for a jet engine.
Interleaf 5 is a good example of a system with capabilities at this level. It uses the concept of a cabinet, which contains collections of other documents.
Only when a publishing system supports the manipulation of multiple volumes as a unit is the multivolume category qualitatively different from the previous category. The large volume of data and high capacities required for such manipulations are supported only by the high--end publishing systems.
Again, Interleaf 5 supports different types of style sheets, one that can be applied to individual documents and a master style sheet that is used to modify other style sheets called the master style sheet. Master style sheets are an important feature when massive and consistent changes are required. The batch--oriented document processing systems such as troff and TeX (see Section 2 1 2 Batch Characteristics in Chapter 2 Form and Function of Document Processors) are also effective at working with massive amounts of material. Automated scripts can be created and documents processed without human intervention. In general, however, skilled technical users must create these scripts; they require a different type of staff than the turnkey (but more expensive) systems.
The most important area in which to address these issues is that of classification. Classification and searching systems are integral parts of library science. A good classification system enables users to locate the information they desire and aids in the management of the documents. After all, if you can't find the information you need, when you need it, you may as well not have it at all. One area where document processing and searching systems intersect is of full--text searching.
Full--text searching is the ability to search for any word in an entire collection of documents. The searching is usually accomplished through the use of a document browser. The emphasis in full--text searching is on speed at the sacrifice of space. It is not unusual for the indexes used to locate the text to take up as much space as the text itself. The combination of a good document browser and full--text searching really makes the entire field of electronic books a useful practical commodity, rather than an interesting toy.
Full--text retrieval engines are widely used in the creation of systems that manage large quantities of text. Retrieval engines are becoming quite prevalent in the CD-ROM industry11 and are a key technology to enable access to a library full of information. The large capacity of CD-ROMs is an ideal complement to the large space requirements of full--text retrieval systems.
Text retrieval is a complex field, which is growing in importance as the world gets interconnected ever more tightly with networks.12 The increased capacity of low--cost storage devices like CD-ROMs is also a major factor in text retrieval, because entire databases can be put online right at your very own PC. For more information on text retrieval, please see Section 6 3 2 Text Retrieval in Chapter 6 Document Management.
That about wraps up our analysis of document components. One additional step to think about is global networked information. The rapidly solidifying collection of information, accessible via networks, may quite realistically form a global library. The technical barriers to such a fantasy are quickly disappearing. Cellular modems with portable laptop workstations are a reality. Only the legal concerns (which are not minor) of intellectual property rights, copyrights, and patent law remain as murky unknowns. For a more through discussion of the possibilities of networks see Section 5 4 Electronic Distribution in Chapter 5 Using Standards.
In some sense, typography is something that is so obvious, so visible, and all-encompassing that most people simply don't notice it. However, it is precisely because typography is so pervasive that it is so important.15 Fonts are not simply the shape of letters for creating words; they are letterforms with carefully designed shapes with subtle differences that relate to each other and that combine to make a pure visual statement.
Some software tools pay more attention than others to the role of fonts and typography. Depending on your specific needs, these tools may or may not be important. However an awareness of the crucial factors can only help when judging the capabilities of a particular tool. In general, page makeup and page layout programs have much more flexible typographic features than their batch--oriented counterparts. The WYSIWYG nature of page makeup systems is more suitable to adhoc design and experimentation.
If you are faced with selecting a font, it is important to consider the number of variations available in a font family. Some font families have more than a dozen variations. This flexibility can only make the designer's job easier. Using several variations within a single font family is almost always aesthetically safer than mixing arbitrary fonts.
Many tools are available for font manipulation. These tools allow precise adjustments of kerning tables (the spacing between letters), the creation of new letterforms, the extraction of outlines, distortions, and so on. One important reason that such a variety of detailed tools exist is that font design has such an important impact on the document as a whole. Letterforms are a key ingredient in a document, and designers use them as the raw material to be 
by these tools.
Of course, it's important not to get carried away with these tools.
Individual characters may also be used as graphic components. The line between font manipulation and graphic illustration can blur quite easily.
The many software tools available for font manipulation allow such a wide variety of choices that the traditional letterform is no longer sacred. Characters used as illustrative elements bring us back to the age of illustrated manuscripts filled with carefully crafted characters. There is of course the added danger of "font junk," the use and abuse of font manipulation tools, by the amateur.
Another somewhat obtuse but powerful character manipulation system is the METAFONT language.16 METAFONT is a precise mathematical description of fonts; in many ways it models the way ink is placed on paper by a pen. METAFONT is the creation of Donald Knuth---the same man that brought you TeX (see Section 2 1 Types of Document Processors ). METAFONT is a language for describing characters in excruciatingly precise terms. After creating or modifying a description, the system chews away on the "code" and spits out a new font. These fonts can than be used by TeX, turning this interesting academic exercise into a practical and useful tool.
Typical document processing systems have style sheets or master pages, which define a particular visual layout. The visual layout of document elements on the style sheets can be applied to the entire document. The number of master pages and the flexibility in working with them are important capabilities of a document processing system. Often, global changes to a document are accomplished using these types of pages or styles. Careful use of master pages and style sheets is a significant help in the management of overall document consistency. (For a more through discussion of document management issues, please see Chapter 6 Document Management.)
In the future it may be possible to have design "helpers" in much the same way that grammar checkers now exist. Such suggestions are not pure fantasy. We are already starting to see the application of image-recognition systems in the pen-based portable computer field. Users can create rough sketches and the system cleans up the drawing.17 Image recognition is being taken a step farther with the concepts of shape grammars.18 In the architecture and computer graphics domains, shape grammars have been used to create simulated buildings in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright19 and paintings by Kandinsky.20 The concept is to create a grammar, a language, from a set of shapes and the allowable operations upon those shapes. Many interesting grammars have been created to describe the styles of architects and artists.
Ultimately, the content expressed in the document is what really matters. If the reader understands the content, your communication was successful.
Often the main trick is getting the reader to pay attention. Look at some of your junk mail; innumerable attention--getting devices will come into view. Colored stamps, fake telegrams, pop-ups, personalized names, metallized envelopes, and more are all attention grabbers.
In the domain of electronic documents, clip art collections of all sorts can help you draw attention to your documents. Clip art collections with all sorts of specialty images (see Section Clip Art in the Appendix Resources) from military symbols to biological parts to cartoons, can help get the message to the reader. Clip art and unimaginative attention--getting devices can cut both ways, however.
Customizing the content of an article for a particular audience is a good way of improving communication. Of course, doing this is extremely difficult for large--volume publications, such as newspapers and magazines. One interesting technique used by the Washington Post (and others) is called zoning. The Post has a column called Dr. Gridlock that describes the trials and tribulations of travel in the Washington, D.C., area. The content of this column is modified for specific areas by the use of readers' addresses via delivery zones.
In April 1991 the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was going to publish a replacement of the basic four food groups wheel, a staple of classrooms since the 1950s. The idea was to increase the importance of grains, fruits, and vegetables and reduce the importance of meat and dairy products, following good nutritional practices. As you might imagine, the beef and dairy lobbyists were not too happy about this turn of events. After a great deal of criticism, publication of the pyramid was halted. According to one nutritionist angered by the USDA reversal, "It was the visual that made the impact. That's what upset people; it clearly showed you should not have as much meats and dairy products as you should grains, fruits, and vegetables---which is the truth."21
One year later (and $855,000 more), the USDA unveiled a refined pyramid and had more data supporting its case. In the end, good science won out and the lobbyists had to live with the design of the food pyramid.22 A final note-: in October 1992 as I was completing this book my kids brought home a lunch menu from their school. On the bottom of the menu was an explanation of good nutrition accompanied by---the food pyramid. I suppose the pyramid has become a new classroom staple.
Indeed, some people argue that word processing technology makes the physical task of writing so much easier that some people toss self-discipline to the electrons and hedonistically indulge themselves by larding their prose with everything but the kitchen sink. Conversely, the "perfectionists" turn into digital Flauberts, writhing in agony over which comma should go where and if that semicolon is really the best way to go.
Some products, used judiciously, aid the process of writing correctly and with good grammar, but nothing can stop the rambling author from rambling and run-ons and going on and on.
Products such as RightWriter (Cue Software), Grammatik (Reference Software), Correct Grammar (Lifetree Software), and Avalanche's Proof Positive (Avalanche Development Co.) rate documents for readability. They also provide suggested changes, to be taken with large doses of salt, of course.
These packages use readability scores to rate the document as appropriate for a particular reading grade level. A few readability indexes are widely recognized. Chief among these are the Flesch-Kincaid Score and the Fog Index.
According to the RightWriter (a grammar checker) manual: 23
The Flesch-Kincaid formula is the United States Government Department of Defense standard (DOD MIL-M-38784B). The government requires its use by contractors producing manuals for the armed services. The Readability Index is equivalent to the Overall Reading Grade Level (OGL) for the document.
Grade Level = (.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) - 15.59.
ASL = average sentence length (# of words /# of sentences).
ASW = average # of syllables/word (# of syllables /# of words).
A good range is 6-10.
Grammar checker systems can generate reports about average sentence and paragraph length, the use of passive voice, the use of jargon, and other writing aspects.
AT&T sells a writing tool called WWB, the Writer's Workbench software, that runs under the UNIX operating system. It's an interesting collection of utilities, that helps analyze writing style and suggests changes to fix grammatical problems. It can look for problems with punctuation, sentence length, readability, split infinitives, and overall organization. It even has a utility to compare your language style with that of another document, facilitating consistency over large numbers of documents.
Most of the widely used word processing packages provide or work with a built-in thesaurus. These are always useful when searching for that hard--to--think--of--word, utterance, expression, maxim, term, slogan, verbiage, declaration, idiom, phrase, remark, statement, comment, and so on.
One innovative writing tool introduced way back in 1987 is the Microsoft Bookshelf. It was one of the first serious mass market CD-ROMs and was aimed at writers. The storage capacity of the CD-ROM enabled the Bookshelf to contain eleven reference books and information data sets. Among these were The American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's II: Electronic Thesaurus, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, The Chicago Manual of Style and the U.S. ZIP Code Directory. The combination of these reference materials in the context of a PC and a word processor is a powerful tool.
Budding poets can also start to compute. The "Rhymer" from WordPerfect Corporation is a rhyming dictionary available for use with WordPerfect on PCs, you see. One can search for words by a number of phonetic characteristics. Act like a bloodhound and search for a sound; it will simply astound, not confound. Just imagine the possibilities of rhyming for searched quotes with words found in the thesaurus! Onward writers---now you have as many tools to abuse as graphic designers do!
Often, the only time all pieces of a project come together is when the final report is due. All the information gathered from a variety of sources must be assembled into a coherent, deliverable product. Most likely, many people contribute to the final report. Their individual idiosyncratic uses of publishing tools must be integrated into a consistent product. Data created by spreadsheets or images from drawing tools are also often included in completed documents. The assembly of all these components brings us to the topic of the compound document.
Electronically created compound documents resemble information quilts patched together from a variety of information sources. Information created for one purpose in one particular system may be used in several systems. The information may also be used for a purpose other than that for which it was intended. Documents created with such information can quickly become impossible to maintain and update.
The original data sources become an integral part of the creation process, and great care must be exercised to maintain those data sources for future versions of the document. Text, graphics, and scanned photos may be assembled for one purpose and later reassembled for another. Document content may be reused. If proper care is taken of all the various data sources, the information can be reused. Reusing the content allows an organization to profit from the publication of the content again and again.
Both IBM and DEC have ongoing software projects that address the challenge of compound documents. IBM's MO:DCA (Mixed Object Document Content Architecture) is a combination compound document and object architecture. DEC's CDA (Compound Document Architecture) is a new system resembling the philosophical approach of ODA. (For more information on the Office Document Architecture standard please see Section 3 4 ODA in Chapter 3 Document Standards.)
DEC's implementation approach is to provide developers with a CDA toolkit. The toolkit will give CDA developers a jump--start in the creation of applications compliant with the CDA.
IBM's MO:DCA will have many content architectures for the various component parts that a document may include. IBM is working on a composite editor that will allow graphics to be placed in text; however, the graphics cannot be modified. The distinction between a composite and compound editor lies in the ability to modify component items.
The initial introduction of the MO:DCA technology will be an electronic mail product: a correspondence processor. Three other pieces of the MO:DCA are the IOCA (Image Object Content Architecture), GOCA (Graphics Object Content Architecture), and PTOCA (Presentation Text Object Content Architecture).25 It is clear that the philosophical approach taken by IBM is similar to the ODA approach. Each provides an architecture for different types of data. This bodes well for the creation of quality document exchange between systems that implement these formats. This makes perfect sense, as IBM has declared its full support of ODA and is an active sponsor of the Open Document Architecture Consortium. 26
Several technologies are available for interprocess and interapplication communication. Publishing systems approach the problem of application communications in several ways. Ultimately, the publishing system depends on the services provided by the operating system. Most operating systems provide some mechanism for interapplication communications, and these mechanisms are exploited by some of the publishing systems. For example, on MS-DOS platforms running WINDOWS, a facility called OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) is used by MS Word for Windows to include "live" EXCELL spreadsheets. The Macintosh's System 7 operating system has a "Publish and Subscribe" facility for interapplication communication. Interleaf and FrameMaker on UNIX platforms use RPC (Remote Procedure Calls) to allow an AutoCad drawing in a document to be linked to the AutoCad application.
Interleaf's active document technology is one of the more ambitious implementations of the active document approach. Document sections can behave in certain ways and take various actions. For example, a document can be directed to send e-mail to various managers for approval before permission is granted for the public to view the document. This feature could prove invaluable to organizations that require complex configuration management of documents, because documents are just one portion of an engineering effort. For example, the production of an airplane must correspond accurately to the various designs and tests of the airplane. The ability to embed "intelligence" into documents is an interesting approach to the configuration management problem. For more discussion on this topic see Section 6 2 Configuration Management in Chapter 6 Document Management.
Reusing a document's components is becoming increasingly possible. Reuse is possible only if you can identify and reassemble pieces of content. Mechanisms to break apart the original document into meaningful component parts can be developed using standards and well-defined recommended practices.
Sometimes the seemingly simple task of finding the relevant material may in fact be the most difficult aspect of reusing content material. Document repositories must be created with appropriate key words or embedded tagging mechanisms to enable meaningful retrieval. Electronic imaging systems, which scan reams of documents and store the images on optical disks as a replacement for microfilm, are a growing industry. Without sufficient tagging, these systems are a small step forward from microfilm technology. An image of a page without the means of asking for information about what is on the page is no better then a picture. About the only savings is physical storage space (which may in fact be significant for an organization).
Database publishing tools allow you to choose particular fields in a database for printing. Particular styles can be applied to these fields and selectively printed. Such tools are invaluable for catalogs with thousands or hundreds of thousands of entries, such as a yellow--pages directory and parts catalogs, which must be updated regularly.
Information from inside the database is extracted and combined with the publishing system to produce good--looking documents, not simply printouts.
The most common form of database publishing involves merge facilities. A merge facility combines regularly structured information, with a template document. For example, a list of names and addresses, one per line with tab separators, might be combined with a form letter that contains special codes that indicate, to the document processor, when to insert data from the data file.
Information in a database will eventually need to be explained, summarized, and otherwise communicated to someone. A tighter link between the database (information source) and the document (information sink) aids the communication process in several ways. The information can reach the document faster and with fewer potential errors. Translations and transcriptions of database information to documents are error--prone tasks. The more direct this process can be, the better.28
If you take the concepts of database publishing one step farther, you arrive at the concept of a document that functions as a front end to a database. The information in a document that came from a database can serve as the interface to a database. Database queries via the document and automatic updates bring the database/document connection full circle. Live link and active documents provide the technological foundations for this tight linkage.
A partnership between McGraw-Hill and the University of Southern California has been described as follows:
Textbook publishers are offering new computer and printing systems that allow professors to custom-design textbooks by handpicking course materials from electronic databases stocked with traditional textbooks, magazine articles and other published information.
These customized books can be printed in limited quantities by the campus bookstore and distributed to students, sometimes within hours---not weeks or months---after ordering.29
One enterprising Washington, D.C., based company is taking another tack to custom printing. You might call it just-in-time printing. It produces an hourly newspaper called "The Latest News" for people who travel the Washington to New York air shuttle.30 Information from wire services is fed into document processing systems and formatted right away. This approach blurs the line between printed media and radio.
The ultimate in customized publishing is represented by some of the research at MIT's Media Lab. One interesting project composes information from wire services and television news. Using a computer screen with a touch screen interface, the reader can interact with this "newspaper." Fingering topics brings articles into view. Sometimes, touching a color picture brings it to life as video. This work and other projects at the Media Lab are pointing the way to personalized interactive information sources way beyond the newspaper...but I'd still like to read it on a bus.31
Specialized document processing tools support many of the semantics needed to edit these particular elements. Embedding such knowledge in the programs allows manipulations that are more natural for the particular type of document element. For example, movement of a box in a flow chart could cause all connected lines to remain attached to the box. A table editor may allow for the insertion of rows of data with a simple command. For a more through explanation of these systems, please see Section 2 1 Types of Document Processors in Chapter 2 Form and Function of Document Processors.
Tables represent a particularly common document element that many systems support. Table editors exist in all kinds of electronic publishing systems, ranging from the low--end word processors such as WordPerfect, through page layout systems such as PageMaker, to the higher--end systems such as Interleaf 5.
Another interesting and growing specialized document processing field is legal document assembly. The high-end document assembly packages such as CAPS by CAPSoft or WorkForm by Analytic Legal Programs allow Joe Lawyer to produce document templates that can be used by others on the staff. The templates are produced by answering a series of questions to direct the software to assemble the document by pulling in the correct text from its textual database. Accuracy is of the utmost importance in legal documents. One misplaced word can be the source of litigation or of numerous other complexities.32
Maintenance manuals used by the military raise another legal issue. These manuals usually contain lots of WARNING boxes indicating some important message. For example, applying more that 10 fps torque will cause death and destruction. It is legally mandated that the WARNING be placed before the text of the section covering that topic.
The placement of mandatory items has some interesting ramifications for on-line reading, exemplified by hypertext browsers.34 An on-line document browsing system must be designed to display the WARNING before allowing the display of the associated text. Random browsing through the document must factor in this requirement. The trick, of course, is to do this without interfering with the flexibility of browsing and searching, which is desirable in the online document viewers.
For one project, design may be paramount, and for another, the logical structure may be critical. In the end any evaluation of a publishing system depends on what you need for a particular project.
In any evaluation of a system, half the battle is to ask good questions. The various points of view discussed in this chapter provide a useful frame of reference that will help you to ask good questions.