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Content Component Management for OOXML

By Khaled Aly posted 11-30-2015 15:31

  

Content components are topics or modules that can be (re)-arranged in maps to generate omni-channel deliverable content to consumers. The concept is strongly associated with XML based authoring and content management. It promotes well-typed, single-sourced, conditionally processed, rendering of content; where source is separate from format and style. Both source and target are governed by an XML schema. And for non-XML formats such as the very popular PDF, there is an intermediate typed XML styling language to mediate (XSL:FO). XML was driven out of SGML, which earlier gave birth to the popular Web's HTML, as well as to the concept of a meta language, i.e. a framework for developing specialty-typed markup languages.

Since 2007, Microsoft has adopted XML as an intermediary text-based format for the con tent of all applications of its Office applications suite, and same has been standardized by ISO/IEC as OOXML (Office Open XML). That took place, meanwhile the OASIS DITA (Darin Information Typing Architecture) open standard has been evolving as the prime XML dialect for technical, and possibly business, documentation. The trend has resulted in content being treated as re-usable components of variable granularity, rather than documents or objects. And the subject matter refers to managing "source" XML-based components in a fine-granular manner, along with style sheets, resource objects, and processed deliverable content, as a whole. Thus calling for Content Component Management (CCM).

Currently, most commercial CCMSs support custom XML, DITA, and probably the older DocBook and the high profile S1000D. There is a clear business need for associating with, and managing, OOXML layout-oriented components (or elements in XML terminology), in a way that enables smooth sourcing and omni-channel re-purposing of typical business users' generated MS Office content to disseminate information comfortably, where it would be transparently transformed into modular typed XML topics that are then responsively and adaptively delivered to relevant publishing channels.

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