XML had been originally released to address some of the constraints with HTML in moving and storing data on web pages and also over the web. However as the technology grew to become more widely adopted and used, other ways to use XML emerged, due to the flexibility and versatility.
In particular, XML has flourished in publishing and in technical documents and technical writing, this is because XML tags aren't semantic as opposed to HTML tags are, this means you may produce your own tags for whatever objective you like, this really is ideal in technical writing.
So not only is XML increasingly being extensively implemented within technical writing however it looks set for being the future of technical writing as well as documentation online.
There are a variety of essential reasons over the above which are driving this particular future.
The most significant is the demand to publish once without the need to publish many times for many different devices, platforms, formats and the like. This is certainly one of XML’s key strengths since it is not fixed or tied to any platform, browser, device etc, what this means is XML is certain to be readable on nearly anything.
On top of this, you may connect CSS style sheets in your XML data to style up your documents or content any way you like, this offers a lot more flexibility for web publishers along with coders as well, which means you can actually show your content precisely how you desire it to appear across pretty much any viewing configuration ie Mac or PC, tablet or laptop, or mobile phone, or Android or Apple or IE9 or Firefox, this is certainly hugely powerful, and simply no other solution comes anywhere near delivering these kinds of compatibility and versatility.
Another factor to consider, that is tightly connected to the first, as it originates from the benefit of being able to publish just once, is the cost saving related to having the ability to just publish once. For sizeable publishers with dedicated specialists teams for print and web, the financial savings may very well be considerable.
No longer will they need to double up on employees and resources to have one team to write in print and yet another to create online on websites, the same content material can be used for both, attainable due to flexibility of XML.
Your able to use just about any plain text editor including notepad or even a specific XML editor to generate your XML files, to create XML documents for publishing you can use Adobe FrameMaker and have it set to structured mode.
Adobe describe their FrameMaker software as “ a complete solution for authoring, enriching, managing, and publishing technical documentation. Author with best-in-class XML/DITA and DTD support. Manage content using out-of-the-box integration with leading content management systems and Dropbox. Collaborate with PDF-based reviews, even on mobile devices. Easily publish to multiple channels, formats, and screens natively from within FrameMaker 12 at no extra cost, without any plug-ins.”
As superb as Adobe FrameMaker is, a dedicated XML Editor can offer superb adaptability for working with xml with superior editors offering xml schema editors and even validation for your xml and schema, this enables you to produce xml code more quickly along with minimum blunders.
