S1000D - "sense out of confusion"

Survey so far

2011-04-04T14:30:00.000Z

Some of you may remember that last October I introduced a new survey to the Blog in an attempt to get a handle on the usage of the various issues of S1000D.

Well we are approximately 6 months on and the results are very interesting given the relatively low registration rate.

The Results

What S1000D Issue are you using?

The results so far are very interesting and are summarised in the following table.

S1000D Issue	Percentage
Issue 1 Change 6	27
Issue 1 Change 7	7
Issue 1 Change 8	13
Issue 1 Change 9	40
Issue 2 Change 0	13

You will obviously note that there is no reported usage for anything after Issue 2 Change 0 and I know that not to be the case. I guess that this reflects the low number of responses so far.

I am going to leave the survey on the Blog and I will continue to monitor the situation (see comments below)

Are you using a CSDB

The second question relates to the usage of a CSDB and the result is:

70% Yes

30% No

This result shows that the managers responsible for the projects realise that to control the creation and editing of large number of Data Modules (or even a relatively small number as well) really does require some help more than a spreadsheet.

The Survey area of the Blog Page

One problem that may be causing the low response to the Blog Survey is the length of time that the actual survey takes to open. It is located at the bottom of the Blog Page and many may not spot it opening up.

I have to admit that whilst the survey plug-in is not very good, it was the best that was available that had no cost attached to it.

Just in case some of you have not yet seen the Survey pages I have included them here.

Page 1 of the Survey
What version of S1000D are you using?

Page 2 of the Survey
Are you using a CSDB?

However, before you get to this stage the plug-in has to start-up and that is not all that obvious. Below is part of the start up sequence.

There are other parts to this sequence but it can take quite a few seconds to get started and this is obviously dependant to some extent on the speed of your internet connection and how fast your machine is.

So that we can get a better idea of usage, if you have not already done so, please visit the survey and make your mark.

S1000D Conference in the UK

2011-03-15T15:13:00.000Z

I have received notice of a UK S1000D conference on 24th May 2011. It is some years since we had a conference here specifically covering S1000D. Because it is a one day event it will make it more available to users, managers and planners who are, or who are going to be, involved in S1000D projects.

This conference is known as Congility S1000D and is going to be part of the three-day Congility 2011 event.

The event is being organised by Congility which was previously known as X-Pubs and the page specific to this conference can be found at http://www.congility.com/index.php/2011/S1000D/.

In the past this organisation has put on some really good events and it looks as if this one is going to be no exception.

Not only will the conference cover the S1000D Specification but also contain sessions on other ASD Specifications which are becoming increasingly important. I understand that the conference is going to be held in the Gatwick area so there will be plenty of parking and it is relatively easy to to get to (plenty
of signs!).

I will try and keep you up to date about the latest situation regarding speakers etc as I get them.

Business Rules White Paper

2011-03-07T17:36:00.000Z

A little while ago Corena made available a White Paper which provides guidelines for working with the S1000D Business Rules. The paper also provides some useful guidance on the difference between the Business Rules and the BREX S1000D Data Module.

Also covered are some good guidelines for developing the business rules which are, in this time of confusion in some areas, very welcome.

Although it is a good start there are some areas where I think that some extra consideration should be given and also a small error.

A Small Error

Early on in the White Paper, and again later on, the statement is made that the BREX is an XML file. This is not quite true.

The BREX Data Module was introduced into the SGML and XML structures at Issue 2 Change 3. At that time most people were still working in SGML. So from that point until Change 4 this Data Module was available in SGML and XML. Of course with Issue 4 the scene changed and now only XML is supported (probably a good thing given the problems of keeping both streams in line).

In contacts that I have it is fairly clear that although there is a gradual move away from SGML to XML. When the XML schema was first made available the average XML Editor package was pretty poor and apart from a couple were certainly not Industrial Strength. I watched many projects go awry when developers thought that they could develop some processing applications without a full knowledge of ISO 8879 (the Bike Pack still contains the result of software used for formatting the underlying XML file which does not produce an output which is what the author intended - See WYSINWYE Part 1).

Granted the XML version of the BREX has a much greater potential for integration into the editing environment for real time rules checking and we look forward to seeing more of those applications.

Business Rules Creation

Basic Starting Point

If there is a flaw in the White Paper it is that it does not highlight enough the need for the Business Rules to be written by someone who fully understands

the technical publications process, and
the S1000D Specification.

Too many Business Rules documents contain basic errors which show that the authors are lacking knowledge in the two areas above.

One document that I came across in the 90's had so many errors that it was very difficult to work with. Another contained practices which flew completely against the S1000D basic concept of not having duplicate material by having the same information (a very common component in a large system) scattered around the Project Breakdown each with its own Data Module code (including the subordinate data modules for parts lists, maintenance etc.) based on where it was in the system.

The contracting company had pointed this out to the Design Authority but to no avail and as a result included a table in each Data Module to indicate where else the component was used and the data module code of the Module.

The Business Rules Team

I like the fact that the concept of a team in introduced. Again it is important that the members of that team are practitioners and not managers. In the history of publications too many documents are/have been put together by managers who have been promoted to their post from outside the department (at the risk of being a bit contentious [not for the first time] the S1000D Specification in some areas displays the problem of the Specification Authors not coming from a publications background).

I know that in the list of mistakes highlighted towards the end the White Paper does put this as number three. Perhaps it should have been more specifically pointed out earlier on.
At the risk of attracting more flak again, I am not sure about the team containing a Graphics Expert and a member of the Web Delivery Team.

The Graphics conforming to S1000D specifies the various parameters for the graphics so that they can conform and give a consistent feel across several projects. We certainly see a wide range of graphics which do not conform. On this front I have recently heard about a plug-in for Iso-Draw which is, if you like, a S1000D business rules checker for CGM graphics (and anything else produced in Iso-Draw for that matter) and I look forward to seeing it in action in the near future.

As far as web delivery is concerned, having S1000D data modules should be a good solid start for a Web output system. The DMs are consistent (they will fail if they do not comply with the specification) if the editor package has a conforming parser integrated with it.

Different Types of Data Module

At the risk of being repetitive, new and experienced users of S1000D should bear in mind that although the number of data module types is increasing almost by the month, it is perfectly ok to use only those types which fit your requirement.

Again, at the risk of drawing flak, if you want to use a Descriptive Data Module to provide the Parts List because it is the best method for your project then do so. Let's be honest, the IPD is not the most intuitive Data Module type to author. Most projects that I have come across recently have specifically stated that the IPDs should be output from a Database.

It is a really excellent start

When all said and done Corena are to be congratulated for putting out such an excellent document which provides a good outline of what needs to be done and covered in producing Business Rules.

I think that this White Paper should be required reading for those who are involved in Business Rules production for new and existing projects.

WYSINWYE Part 2

2010-10-14T15:18:00.000Z

In the first part of this topic we saw how the underlying tagging up can affect what we see on the screen. In this, the second, part we can see the result of incomplete definition of graphic element reproduction attributes.

Defining Graphic Reproduction Measurements

In this part we have an incomplete data problem with the Issue 4 Bike Pack. We noticed it because the graphics appeared squashed in the editing environment as well as in our Handbook Production application.

I have included a screen shot of one of them here:

The problem here is that the mark up has included an actual dimension in one of the attributes for the graphic but not the other. The actual markup is as follows (I have removed a whole lot of the markup just leaving the
relevant part):

<figure id="fig-0001">
<title>Parts of the wheel</title>
<graphic infoEntityIdent="ICN-S1000DBIKE-AAA-DA00000-0-U8025-00504-A-04-1" reproductionWidth="510"/> </figure>

Here you can see the reproductionWidth attribute (shown in bold
above) has no matching reproductionHeight or reproductionScale attributes.

I guess the bottom line is that if your graphic is not shown
squashed your editor/viewing package is not working properly. And if it is
squashed, it is not your fault.

Have you spotted any anomalies?

What I have shared in these two parts of WYSINWYE is what I have
spotted just getting output from the supplied data.

Are there any other problems/strange behaviour that you have
encountered in your work with S1000D?

WYSINWYE - - Part 1

2010-10-12T16:57:00.000Z

Yes! You have seen it correctly. Not what one is normally used to seeing in the context of what you see is it? The abbreviation translates into "What You See Is Not What You Expect".

I guess that this Blog entry could be considered to be a wee bit "Nerdy" but I have done it because it may answer some questions that others may have been experiencing when using the BikePack package.

I have been testing an S1000D product and because we wish to make the results available to demonstrate some of the functionality that it has, and because a lot of the data that we have for this purpose belongs to our clients, I have been using, what else(?), the various S1000D Bike Pack sets of data available for download from the S1000D.org site.

In particular two problems came to light, sort of in your face type problems and I would like to share them with you because they both are as a result of the xml markup.

I have split this WYSINWYE subject into two parts, this one to do with ISO 8879 and the other (in Part 2) to do with graphics.

An ISO 8879 problem

Having built the Issue 3 Bike Pack (SGML version actually) into a publication I noticed some funny formatting associated with random lists (it may also affect ordered lists of course). I have included a screen shot of the output below.

From this you can probably see that the 'bullet' mark for each list item is way above the text. In fact the text is located on the next paragraph line.

Naturally, since we are in a testing frame of mind, the first thought is that there is something wrong with the application's formatting rules. A closer examination showed that this was not the case.

The next step is to look at the SGML and as you can see from the screen shot below this at first glance looks very good. Nicely formatted to make it more readable to the human eye (I have switched on the
display of tabs/spaces/cr's etc.).

And this is actually where the problem originates. The structure for the item contains mixed content as this fragment of the DTD (in Near&Far) shows.

So things are not quite what they seem when it comes to interpretation of the SGML itself. The basic problem here is that ISO 8879 says that if there is a record end between an element markup and another
element markup then the data will be displayed on the next line. (This is a simplified version of what is contained in ISO 8879 B.3.3.1).

By removing the 'record end' after the <item> tag the formatting is restored to what is expected in this case.

I guess that this problem will also affect XML as well as since XML is an ISO 8879 application but I have not gone looking for it.

A New Blog Survey

2010-10-04T07:57:00.002Z

Why?

For some time now we have had a small survey on this Blog which asks the fundamental question "are you using S1000D". More and more projects are demanding the use of S1000D. There are also a number of projects which, although not mandating S1000D, are actually using it because it makes good financial sense.
I thought that it was about time that we had a poll which enabled us to get an idea of the spread of usage.
You will see that I am using a third-party survey and this has some limitations as to width. As a result the survey can be found at the bottom of this Blog. The survey takes a moment or two to start up - please be patient.

What are we asking?

The questions are straightforward.

Which version or versions of S1000D are you using - multiple choice
Are you using a CSDB - single choice

Which version

An obvious Question given that S1000D has been in use for so long now. Also
You will be able to see the result of the answers pretty well straightaway.

Are you using a CSDB

Another obvious Question but one that needs to be asked. There does seem to be an assumption in some quarters that everyone is using a CSDB but I know from experience that this is not the case.

Why has the type of survey been changed?

Well, the problem with the survey that we have had on this Blog up to now is that the questions about S1000D only required one answer. Clearly with this new S1000D survey there was a need to provide for multiple selections.
I hope that this new S1000D Usage survey works as well as the other one. I will be monitoring it.
If you have any difficulties using it please let me know.

The end of another eventful year

2009-12-21T09:51:00.005Z

As the end of 2009 approaches I guess that we can reflect back at the S1000D Scene and reckon that a fair amount has happened.

Issue 4 has had a fix, other parts of the specification are being looked at for improvement, new areas of control and functionality(?) are being pursued.

ATA and S1000D

The ATA organisation (who appear to have taken over the organisation of S1000D related events) have announced their next forum which is to take place in May 2010 in Seattle (see the ATA Site via this link). The programme not surprisingly has yet to be finalised. In theircall for papers they pose the following questions:

Do you have solutions for particular technical or business problems you may have encountered?
Are you on the leading edge of implementing new standards?
Are you finding new and creative ways to broaden your implementation?
Are the ATA or S1000D standards a key component of your business strategy?

Clearly for some of us the fourth question has to be a resounding "Yes" so I guess that potentially there could be a number of papers here from organisations that are really using the specification for day to day work some of which is not defence industry biased. The big problem here is that those companies will be fully commercial organisations where there is no budget for taking part in the broader discussions. Perhaps it is time for another S1000D event in Europe.

S1000D Functionality

I have heard that due to the current complexity of Issue 4 there have been calls for a S1000D Lite.

I think that those making the call actually has lost sight of the fact that it is already there in the guise of Business Rules. In those rules for a project the actual structures to be used are defined.

There is a simple rule here: "If you don't want to use one of the 'new' S1000D bits then don't specify them in the Business rules". In fact why not specifically exclude them. If your delivery method does not need a flashy S1000D applicability processing, or your IETM only has to be a fairly basic S1000D application, or your output is paper based (yes there is an increasing user base who want paper - and they are not Luddites) then only use the parts of S1000D specification that will give you what you need.

So to the Break

So as we move towards the break and a new year may I wish you all the best of seasons greetings. I hope that those of you who do have a break at this time of year find it is refreshing and recuperating time.

I also hope that you will all find 2010 a more prosperous time as the world begins to settle down benefit from a more stable financial environment.

Users Forum

2009-10-14T08:31:00.002Z

I have had a slightly belated look at the S1000D User forum which is taking
place this week - indeed as I post this it is already Day 3 with plenty still to
come. I know that we have several people attending this event and I
have no doubt that they will be very pleased to see you (Mekon Stand).

What has interested me quite a lot is that S1000D does seem to be catching up with work carried out in the UK under the banner of the MoD Def Stan 00-60 specification. In that document the link was very firmly made between the ILS LSA (Mil Std 1388), S1000D Technical Documentation, and parts handling and organisation via S2000M.

Another interest which is highlighted by some of the sessions at the S1000D User Forum is the direction and some of the thinking behind some of the 'new features' of S1000D Issue 4 more of which another time.

Integration of Documentation

As part of the work with the UK MoD it became obvious fairly early on that the Def Stan 00-60 view of the processes involved in documentation was not as straightforward as originally intended. The content of the LSA database was nowhere near comprehensive enough for publications, it was in the wrong format and there was no space to store the data modules when they had been created. Several companies within the UK modified their LSA offerings to accommodate this information. I guess that yet again (flag waving here) the UK led the way and hopefully lessons learned here helped make the work coming up much easier and less painful.

Use the Forum Time Wisely

I guess what I will miss by not being at the User Forum is that networking with suppliers of technology and users.

There will be developments which I know I would have found exciting (but not be carried away by - perhaps I am a cynic at heart), users who have solved problems in novel ways who are prepared to talk about them and just those who are attending so that they can try to get to grips with this S1000D Specification.

When I go to exhibitions or conferences and look at what is on offer I have the following golden rules in place:

do not always believe what you hear
look carefully at what you are being shown
ask your obvious questions that closely affect your work
if something does not say that it does something then it almost certainly does not (first law of software supply - from bitter experience)

Enjoy!

US S1000D Event in October 2009

2009-06-22T09:16:00.004Z

An email Received here on Friday notified me of an S1000D event in the US. Called the 2009 S1000D User's Forum it is due to take place between 12th and 15th of October in Hilton Head, South Carolina, USA. It is being organised by the Aerospace Industries Association, one of the bodies responsible for the maintenance of the S1000D Specification.

Spread over the four days there are, as usual, several sessions and tracks.

Tracks

Day one is mainly set for tutorials and it will be interesting to see what topics they are to cover.

On day two one of the Tracks is focused on "Creating the Vision for Integrated Logist" (For those of you not familiar with this last word I looked it up to discover that it means "To perform logistics functions or processes. The act of planning, organizing and managing activities that provide goods or services" There is even a verb "to logist" - for those who wish to look further I have provided a link to the online source of my information at the bottom of this item.)

At long last it would seem that years after Def Stan 00-60 in the UK documented the links between the ILS world in the guise of Mil Std 1388, the S1000D specification and S2000M specification there is a public focus on the interoperability of these and other specifications. Sessions are given over to the linking of these and other specifications (S3000L, S4000M & S5000F. The session which covers the links between the various S Specifications ends in one called "How does the technical publication production benefit from the ASD suite of ILS Standards?" If there is not already one perhaps this session should form the basis of a specification in its own right which documents properly the links between them.

As one might expect there are reports (on the morning of day three) into updates on the progress(?) of S1000D.

Link

The above are some of the programme sessions that have caught my eye on a quick read through but if you wish to look at this more closely then the link to the 'front page' is "http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Invitation.aspx"

Attendance

I have heard reports from contacts that attendance of both the ATA and the previous S1000D conference was down from normal. I guess that if this is the case it reflects the hard economic times that we are going through.

Attendance at the full conference is shown as $450 (for a limited time) but of course one has to get there - a quick search reveals that from the UK a return flight would cost around $750.

Here in the UK the people who would most benefit from exposure to a conference of this type are employed by relatively small companies (e.g. < 100 staff). There is just not the spare money in circulation here to pay for this visit or even to warrant the loss of production which would happen from a person attending this event. UK technical publications contractors tend to be very lean organisations where every penny counts and where generally money is spent for the support of a contract.

My experience has been that any attempt by a contractor to introduce 'efficiencies' has been met with a corresponding demand from their clients to reduce the rates that they pay for the work to be done. I agree that this is short sighted. I would be interested to hear if this observation is still relevant (it was fairly recently supported in a conversation that I had).

I guess that this conundrum is something that we have to mull over and try to come up with some suitable answer.

UK Event

I have heard rumours on the grapevine that the UK even (recently postponed) has been rescheduled. More details when I get definite information.

Preston Event Cancelled

2009-05-21T15:31:00.002Z

It has come to my notice that the S1000D event scheduled to take place in Preston later this month has been cancelled.

This is a pity because in these straightened times it is very difficult for most of us involved in the S1000D community to travel outside the country in which we live.

I understand from a contact that the AIA event which took place in the States this year had an attendance which was quite a bit down on last year. Indeed I understand the the numbers were roughly half what they had been (I hope my information is more or less correct). Clearly the economic situation has affected pretty well all of us. (There are some notable exceptions in the UK of course - if you have been following the UK press revelations).

If there are any other conferences or get events that I hear about that are in any way related to the S1000D community, I will, of course, be putting details on this Blog. If you know of any which are taking place please let me know.

In the meantime we have noticed an increasing interest in S1000D here in the UK so perhaps the next level of users are rolling out - something positive in contrast with some of the doom and gloom of today.

An S1000D UK Event in May this year

2009-04-06T16:08:00.002Z

This Blog has been relatively quiet just lately. Not that there has been a dearth of things to comment on but mainly due to the generally busy-ness of your scribe. There are only so many hours in the day and I have to sharpen the chisel from time to time to start on a new block of stone.

I could not let this upcoming event go by without comment. Although I have nothing to do with its organisation I do recognise the value of these events.

In this time of financial uncertainty it is good to know that there is to be this event in the UK which is going to include the subject of S1000D as part of it's programme.

TechInfo 2009 is scheduled to take place on Monday 18th May and Tuesday 19th May at the Marriott Hotel in Preston. For a change the cost of the full package, both days and overnight accommodation, looks to be within the scope of probably most companies. The per day cost is extremely reasonable too. OK, so those not in the UK will need to get the the venue but it is not all that far from Manchester Airport (under 50 miles) to which most major airports have linking flights.

Although there is only one track through the conference it looks as if delegates will certainly find subjects to match their requirements. Of course one of the major factors making these events so useful is the 'Networking' which goes on outside the various sessions. There is always plenty of genuinely good unbiased advice available.

For those who want more details they can obtain more details by looking at www.techinfo.org.uk. I did notice that this link has been put onto the Blog page by Google ads.

Hopefully I will see you there.

S1000D Issue 4

2008-09-25T13:31:00.005Z

The long awaited ASD Issue 4 has now been released.

This issue marks a departure for ASD from their recent practise. They are only providing Schemas and no SGML or XML DTDs. I can't say I am too surprised by this, the maintenance of four sets of structures (SGML DTD, XML DTD, Flat Schema and Schema Master) must have been a nightmare.

I have had a very quick run through - not at all exhaustive - and a number of things are obviously changed. I have listed them briefly below:

Element Names

Gone are all the cryptic largely 8 character element names and in are a loads of others. Most seem to be reasonably obvious.

Those that are references of one sort or another all have the characters 'ref' at the end of the name. This does mean that REFDM has become dmref - but I guess that we can all live with that!

subpara1 to n and para0

These have gone. We now have a recursive element called levelledpara. I never have been one of those people who are stuck in a certain way and don't want to change. However, when I first encountered the S1000D specification, almost pre Issue 1 Change 6, I was used the idea of recursive 'level paragraph' type elements and did enquire why there were limitations on how many levels we could have.

The argument then was that it forced the writers of the information to think seriously about the structure of the data module and how it was going to appear to the end user. At the time I thought that it was a good argument and to be honest I still do.

I have seen some pretty horrific data modules in my time and do not have much confidence that someone will take advantage of this new structure and have 10 or more levels. I guess that those who are writing this type of structure in their documents have never been at the receiving end of 'handbooks' of this type.

The whole concept of a Data Module is that it should be small and not of novel length. What I think that this change will encourage is the writing of ridiculously large Data Modules without any thought to breaking the information down further. I suppose we have to ask the question: Why was this change necessary? Is it, as I have heard, because the Air Craft Manufacturers want to pour a complete CMM into a Data Module? If this is the case then they are flying (sorry about that!) in the face of S1000D and ignoring the fact that a CMM contains data of a fairly wide variety of types of information - each with its own ICN.

I guess that this is something that is going to have to be tackled by the Business Rules.

step1 to step n

I see that the same has happened here as for the subpara elements from Issue 3 and before.

keepwithnext

I have stumbled on this attribute. Goodness me what on earth is this doing here? This is formatting, and, as is often declared as part of SGML and XML, quote "the data generator is divorced from formatting allowing him or her to dedicate themselves to writing accurate, concise, unambiguous text (which conforms to Simplified English if required)" endquote. I can see many an otherwise productive hour being wasted here by some authors trying to make the data look 'nice' on the screen. I guess some do not realise that as soon as it appears on someone else's screen or page the formatting probably goes out of the window.

Surely in an IETP this is totally irrelevant. And in a hard copy book this would be part of the styles which are attributed to the element. I first spotted this in the proceduralStep element.

Again, the Business Rules will be king here.

level attribute

I notice that in the attributes associated with the management of change that the level attribute has been removed. I know that this is going to create some difficulties within some companies who need it to indicate to the end user what has changed between issues of the publication (IETP or Hardcopy) where the Data Module has been subjected to several different issues between publications. This is particularly relevant and important where a Data Module originator is supplying essentially the same Data Module to several different clients. The original mechanism is so simple that if it is used properly issue tracking is guaranteed in a properly constructed delivery application.

Other things

I have no doubt that there will be a number of other significant changes come to light in the course of time as I, and others, start using Issue 4.

Something from Issue 3

While using Issue 3 the other day to write some testing procedures I discovered that their was a subtle change in the way that S1000D handled Sheets in the display of Figures. It seems that the XML prevents you from having something as simple as Sheet 1 of 2. The schema forces you to have two digits in both the sheet and sheetno attributes. I mentioned this a couple of days ago when I visited one of our clients and they were not too happy with the way it looks. Oh well we are stuck with Sheet 01 of 02 I suppose!

Budapest

I have recently received three emails letting me know that you can save money by booking now for the Budapest shared conference (ATA and S1000D). The link that was provided is http://www.ataebiz.org/forum

I will not be attending but I know that at least one person from my company will be there.

S1000D Bike Pack PDF on the ASD Web Site

2008-06-17T15:23:00.002Z

Some of you may have noticed that a short while ago a PDF file of the Bike Pack was made available on the S1000D.org web site. In fairness I needed to bring this to your attention since it represents perhaps the 'official' way of producing a 'book' from the Bike Pack Data Modules.

In looking through this PDF file you will find that it generally conforms to the 'one data module is one chapter' principle (as shown in the specification itself) although they do are not called chapters in this case.

Personally I find that this method of generating a 'book' from the Bike Pack does not do the material justice in that it does not contain the various linked material in a single series of identifiable pages. Of course the PDF has probably been produced using a Publication Module as the basis which gives you a much close approximation of the IETP principle.

What do you think?

I ask this question because if we are aiming at paper output I feel that it should be much closer to the concept of the traditional handbook. In an IETP you can obviously jump from one location to another and the 'story' will still hang together.

Where you have a procedure in a book it is generally preferable for the end user not to have to jump around even if it does mean duplicated material. In S1000D the duplicated material is likely to come from a single data module so from a publication maintenance point of view it is not really an issue.

So what do you think?

The Mekon Book

Something that I probably omitted to highlight properly within the introduction section in the PDF file which came out of the Mekon BookBuild application is the question of the copyright of the material.

On the front page there is a sample copyright statement (it says so) but immediately following that is a statement that the content of the book is "taken from the S1000D Bike Pack version 2.3 as supplied by ASD and the content copyright resides with them."

This whole question of copyright where the material has been made publicly available for demonstration purposes probably needs clarification.

X-Pubs and S1000D

2008-06-17T15:14:00.002Z

Some of you may remember that the X-Pubs event last year in Reading had quite a number of items of interest to the S1000D fraternity. I have just had a flyer from them which indicates that there is going to be possibly even more S1000D content.

This years event is going to take place later this month at the London Heathrow Marriott Hotel and it has a number of presentations in the S1000D arena. A number of the presenters are well known to us not only in the S1000D area but also in the allied area of Training.

Presenters include:

Dennis Raitz,Associate Technical Fellow at Boeing, share 16 years of lessons learned in IETP development and implementation
Chris Wood, BAE delivers a User reality-check to make sure the advancement of modular standards doesn’t advance without attention to the needs of real field maintenance staff development and implementation
Wayne Gafford, covering big changes in the future of ADL SCORM management development and implementation
Richard Nicolson, PTC Product Manager for S1000D delivery applications, educate on how the reuse opportunity can be maximised with modular content, development and implementation
Maria Luisa MacDonald, STE Tutor and the STE National Coordinator, AgustaWestland demonstrates how STE can help the customer experience.

From what I have heard there are also going to be a fair number of delegates from the Aerospace industry and this means plenty of opportunity to 'network' and share experiences. These experiences are very valuable and often serve as a much more serious reason for attending.

The dates next week - 22nd to 24th June.

I am going to be there on the first day, Monday - perhaps I will see you there

Follow this link to take you to the X-Pubs web site.

Retirement Looms - but not being put out to grass

2008-03-07T14:41:00.006Z

Some of you may know that I am getting towards that time of life when the State says that I should retire. Tomorrow I will be reaching that age when the UK Government starts to pay me back all that money (I wish) that I have contributed to the 'Greater Good' during my working life.

What does this mean for me?

Well after a break of about a month during which I have some fairly essential jobs to do here at Davison Manor, Easter, and a trip to the wildest areas of Britain (Scotland actually) I shall no longer be working full time for Mekon. I am not deserting them completely since we have agreed that I will continue in a part time role within the Aerospace and Defence Department (can't get rid of me that easily!).

What this does mean is that I will also be able to spend more time developing interests which have had to take back stage until now. Some of these include getting my radio gear back on the air and spending more time with this S1000D Blog (which has been a bit neglected of late due to pressures of work).

What I definitely don't want to do yet is to give up my interest in S1000D and my aim to help those working in this area to develop their skills. It is important that S1000D is understood, because when it is most companies will have increasing confidence in their ability to deliver high quality material to their clients. Those who contact me on a regular, or even irregular basis, can be assured that I will still respond to their requests and calls for help.

In addition to my email address at Mekon, I can also be contacted using this link

S1000D Sample BikePack Publication Available

2008-02-27T16:36:00.002Z

Late last year I indicated that the Company that I work for has an application for taking S1000D Data modules and producing a hard copy publication, or a PDF version of one. At that time I thought that I could quickly have something available for public view, using the S1000D Bike Pack example files as the source.

Little did I know that the Company's web site was in the throws of being redesigned which meant that I could not get any resources to provide me with the means to make it available. I have now overcome that by various means.

What is it that is being made available?

What we have done is to take the Bike Pack provided as examples at Issue 2 Change 3 (don't groan too loudly, it is the only S1000D material that we can publicly use) and put it through the Mekon Eclipse BookBuild application to produce a PDF file of the publication. There are obviously several different ways of putting the Bike Pack together to get a "proper" story and which route is taken depends on the individual doing the building and also the end requirement.

Suffice it to say that I have only produced one book (in both SGML and XML) just to give an idea of what can be achieved.

The application has the ability to convert all the cross referencing, both standard xref and refdm, into hypertext links. They are fully resolved. The refdm entry is converted into text which indicates the Section/Volume (if these are being used), Chapter and Para/Step if appropriate. The mechanism which allows the refdm to point to a target in the destination DM is also enabled.

I hope that these files will help to give and example of "look and feel" which can be achieved. Please let me know what you think.

By resolving all of the cross referencing elements some have likened the result of the BookBuild Process to a simple IETP. Currently we are not resolving links to hotspots on CGM graphics but of course we are looking to correct this deficiency.

How do I get it the example files?

To get these files you will need to visit the Mekon site, specifically the part which is associated with the Aerospace and Defence section. You can then look at details about Software that we produce.

Failing that you can directly to the Eclipse BookBuild Web page by following this link.

At the moment these files are only for the S1000D Issue 2.3 Bike Pack. I am already working on samples for the S1000D Issue 3 set.

Mekon's MD Tries to Drum up Business

2007-10-01T09:27:00.000Z

Some of you may know that Mekon's MD Julian Murfitt is a bit of a flying aficionado. Not only does he run a company that produces software used by many to create documentation to both S1000D and ATA iSpec 2200 specification but he also flies aerobatics. Of course his aerobatics are not quite the same as the UK's Red Arrows team (although he has flown a Hawk aircraft) but in its own way it is just as demanding.

As you can see from this photo the engine is in the wrong place and it has a nasty whirly bit at the front which he claims is enough to pull him through the air and enable him to pull up to 10g turns - quite a bit tighter than the Hawk can do.

Recently he took part in the 5th Advanced European Aerobatics Championships in Joensuu, Finland. Having been entered into a number of the classes the first hurdle was to get there from the UK. Naturally he flew the whole way. Considering the competition he gave a very creditable performance achieving 10th Place in the Free Program and ninth in the First Unknown Compulsory Program.

More recently he has achieved the dizzy heights (or should it be ups and downs?) of British Advanced Aerobatic Champion 2007 and congratulations are obviously due on this result.

You may be able to see from the view in the cockpit to the right that Julian does not use his own software for producing his flight plans in accordance with either of the specifications.

For those who would like to know a bit more about Julian's Hobby and are planning to visit the upcoming event in Oslo there will be an opportunity to do so there. I am sure that he will be very happy to chat with you about it.

Catching Up on S1000D Business

2007-09-03T09:48:00.000Z

Having been declared 'Hors de combat' by the Medical Profession for the last few weeks it is time for me to catch up on what has been happening on the S1000D front.

Having had a look around in the last couple of days there seems to be several things happening worthy of note:

This list is obviously not exhaustive and as this is a catch up post I will limit the content and perhaps look at each in more detail shortly in other posts.

Adobe Road Show with FrameMaker 8

I know that there are a number of people involved in producing documentation to S1000D who use Adobe FrameMaker, and have done so very happily for years using products which are extremely stable. For those of you who are in the UK you may be interested to know that Adobe have arranged a series ofRoad Shows (follow this link) to introduce Adobe FrameMaker 8.

In addition to seeing the changes made to this product demonstrations are also going to be given covering two further products: Adobe Acrobat 8 3D, Adobe Captivate.

One of the major features of the new FrameMaker is its ability to handle 3D images and I have to say I was very impressed with the demonstration that I saw back in June (immediately prior to my discovering that my indigestion was actually something more serious). One feature of Adobe Acrobat 8 3D that impressed me was its ability to take CATIA files, manipulate them to the view that you want and then output them as CGM - awesome! I am sure that those of you coming recently to the S1000D authoring world would find investigating this ability to be financially rewarding particularly in contracts where the prime is issuing CATIA files as part of the source information.

There are three venues for this Road Show

London - September 5th
Coventry - September 6th
Manchester - September 7th

Each session is half a day and Registration is free (follow this link for the registration form where you can indicate your preference for day and time). I now that there are spaces so why not go for it.

For those interested, there is also a Frame 8 upgrade training course avaialble. This course will be available for a limited time during the period of switching between 7.2 and 8.

ASD S1000D Issue 3 is Published

Hot on the heels of Issue 2.3 v 10 we have seen the publication of S1000D Issue 3. As usual the specification together with DTDs, examples etc are available from the S1000D web site which some will note has had a face lift.

Obviously some of the changes which may be noticed here sit on top of the Issue 2.3 Specification. Of interest to some, perhaps, are the changes to visual formatting. Earlier issues of 2.n have had several of the structures example chapters included as TBA. Well in 2.3 they have been and it begs the question of why some of the changes were made. No doubt it might become clear eventually but certainly one I was looking at (Procedural) has an alternative layout where the various steps are not indented. On the face of it this is a retrograde step since it is now not so easy to see the hierarchy of the data.

More about Issue 3 etc. in another Blog posting.

S1000D Oslo event

I notice that the programme for the European Technical Data Event which takes place in Oslo from 1st to 4th October this year and at which there is a fair amount of S1000D content is firming up nicely. For those of you who either have not heard of this event or would like to catch up you can get access to the information via the CTS Events organisation. You will need to register and sign on but this is free.

Following the links to the CTS Events enables you to get access to the programme and  you can also register on-line.

The programme includes Training sessions on S1000D as well as SCORM and PLCS. The presentation programme appears to cover most of the areas of using the Specification. In addition there are presentations on the integration with other Specifications/Standards which some of you may well have to get to grips with.

Of course, in addition to the presentations, one of the main features of the CTS events is the socialising/interaction/catching up between delegates. There is going to be a good representation of trade stands.

I will not be there this year but I am going to try and get one or two people to feed me with their impressions during the event. f you are interested in a guest blogger spot, please let me know.

X-Pubs 2007 - Update on Aerospace and Defence interest sessions

2007-05-21T16:50:00.000Z

This is a short Blog item to remind you that it is only a couple of weeks to the X-Pubs 2007 XML Conference where there are several items of interest to those involved in Technical Publications work, particularly in S1000D.

The latest version of the two-day programme is contained in a PDF file which can be downloaded byfollowing this link. The conference is divided into three tracks

Business
Technical
Sponsor

In the technical track there are 5 presentations targeted at the Aerospace and Defence interest groups with 4 of these specifically related to S1000D. In addition to this Track there are other presentations of interest to the S1000D related industry including a case study by Corena and by XyEnterprise (mentioned in my last Blog).

I know that the guys organising the Conference are still working hard at filling a couple of holes and with the growing interest in S1000D I have no doubt that they have this subject in mind.

Perhaps I will be able to meet some of you during the Conference - please make yourselves known to me.

X-Pubs news - More S1000D Related Presentations

2007-04-27T16:24:00.000Z

Following on from my last Blog item about the up-coming XML Conference X-Pubs in Reading (June 4th to 5th 2007) a couple of further developments which affect the S1000D community. Two new presenters have been announced

Harvey Greenberg of XyEnterprise
Wayne Gafford from ADL SCORM

With the DITA discussion groups still covering 'Should we - Should we not' do something detailed about mapping it to S1000D, the X-pubs conference promises to be a good place to get up to date quickly about the current thinking.

To help a little in your decisions about whether to attend this conference, I have put a bit more detail here about the two presentations highlighted in this Blog. Of course you can find out all the information about Presenters and how to Register from the Website.

Harvey Greenberg - XyEnterprise

Harvey is going to review two different case studies that have similar approaches to problem solving even though they come from greatly different industry settings. The contention is that by using a sound analytical foundation, XML and content management can work together to make very hard problems easy.

Evolving standards such as S1000D and DITA and technologies such as InfoPath are further reducing cost and time to implementation and making XML approachable for people throughout the enterprise.

Wayne Gafford from ADL SCORM

ADL, as we know, have signed a memorandum of agreement with ASD so that they can cooperate in the driving closer links and interoperability between the two specifications.

Being of a practical nature, what will be of particular interest is thatthis presentation is going to demonstrate how learning content structured in the S1000D international technical data spec is a benefit to the DoD training community. The presentation will also demonstrate how technical data structured in S1000D can be imported directly into courseware and made SCORM-conformant.

S1000D @ Oslo

2007-04-27T15:05:00.000Z

We hear that the European Tech Data event being held in Oslo from 1^st to 4^thOctober this year and is open for bookings -ended by both S1000D TPSMG and EPWG meetings. There will also be a PLCS meeting and discussions are underway about holding a SCORM day after the Conference – watch this space for details.

The theme of the conference is the Need to create interoperability / integration in the Specification world. At this conference, S1000D, ADL SCORM, and PLCS are under the microscope, with lead speakers from all three specifications and representation from Government and Industry.

So often those involved in a particular Specifications tend to be 'blinkered' about developments in other areas so it is refreshing to see this degree of co-operation.

This is a critical time for all of the Specifications as governments review the cost of change and the benefits of integrated processes. What is achieved in Oslo could well shape the future.

Updated Programme and other Details

If you visit the CTS Website you will also be able to see up to date details regarding the programme. I know that there are some slots without names on but the bulk of those presenting are well known and I am sure that we will all be very interested in their thoughts and experience.

Networking - Valuable use of Time

Technical Publications tends to be a very isolated world and one of the main reasons for attending conferences such as this is the ability to network and swap experiences. I have noticed in my trips to the States over the last 15 years or so is that they are very much more switched on to the concept of networking.

In the UK we tend to be a bit isolationist. There is the general feeling that Technical Publications is part of a demonstrably 'Cinderella' area of industry where there is a huge reluctance to spend money (even when there is a huge advantage in doing so). No wonder there are problems rolling out knowledge. Evidence of repeated mistakes is not difficult to find.

This reluctance to allow Publications People to attend conferences is not recent as I know from my time on the organising committee for the Tech Doc series of seminars in the UK 'last century'. Even then money was always very tight.

Lets hope that, with more S1000D projects coming on board, the networking aspect of conferences is better recognised.

S1000D Issue 2 Change 3 now available

2007-04-25T08:30:00.000Z

After a slight hiccough S1000D Issue 2 Change 3 is now available at the downloads page on the S1000D.org website. For a short while version 9 of the Specification was available but now v10 is there. This is contained in a zip file "s1000d_Iss_2-3_r1.zip". I suppose that some time we will find out why the stutter - but does it really matter?

The S1000D Specification is even bigger than before running to a total of 2588 pages and contains several new structures. For those who want a quick view of what has changed there is a separate file available helpfully called DMC-AE-A-00-00-0000-00A-003A-A_004-00.pdf on the web site.

New Structures

There are four new structures available:

Technical Repository
Container
Product cross-reference table
Technical conditions cross-reference table

I have no doubt that we will hear more about these in the future. There have been rumours of some of these over the past 12 months or so with a variety of comments, some derogatory and others almost ecstatic.

As to other changes, well they are quite numerous with some of them being more of a clarification rather than a new 'feature'.

Sample Data

Included in this release is part of an updated Bike Pack. I have not had chance to have a look at these yet. According to the Web Site only four data types have been provided:

Descriptive
Procedural
Publication Module
BREX

I know from my position of someone who supports S1000D and who also has to demonstrate S1000D compliant applications to prospective clients the usual groan runs along the lines of "can you show us something useful - not the Bike Pack". Of course the problem here is that most of the material that we have belongs to our clients and for confidentiality reasons we cannot use customer provided DMs can we?

I am sure that we all look forward to getting the next bunch of DMs so that we can build up some sort of test suite.

Have you had a chance to look at the new version? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

S1000D and this years X-Pubs Event - More Detail

2007-03-26T14:56:00.000Z

Following on from my last post about the X-Pubs event I notice from recently updated X-Pubs Website that they have firmed up on the S1000D and related Content. Their programme is now published atthis place.

S1000D Specific Content

Specifically of interest to S1000D users is the announcement that Svante Ericsson is to give a paper on "The S1000D X-Road" (follow
this link for the Paper Outline). He is going to give an overview of what S1000D has been doing to the present date together with the reasons for going down the XML route.

For some the paper provides a practical viewpoint with particular focus on four questions:

Has data quality increased?
Will the data modules be more available?
Will presentation of information be better?
Has the maintainability of the Specification increased?

For those of us involved in the industries which use S1000D these questions are very important, particularly the first three.

Svante is, of course, a member of the Electronic Publications Working Group, the body of people who are charged with all the technical maintenance and development work associated with the ASD S1000D Specification. It will be good to hear straight from the source rather than by whispers third or fourth hand.

S1000D and this years X-Pubs Event

2007-03-23T16:40:00.000Z

Last year I pointed readers to the X-Pubs event in the UK. By all accounts this was very well attended by delegates from over 50 different companies. The delegates reported back very favourably with the breadth and quality of the presentations.

This year sees the return of this event which is being held on 4th & 5th June near Reading in the UK and with a title of "How did they do it?", together with the speakers already booked, this promises to be an event not to be missed if you can be in the area at the right time. Although the main thrust is obviously XML based with S1000D Issue 2.2 being fully XML compliant these areas

Topics and Tracks

Topics to be covered in this event include Content Management Systems, Publishing Standards and Change Management - all of importance to the S1000D Community.

There are two tracks through the event, one deals primarliy with business and technical issues with the other focusing on the commercial aspects which is probably of more interest to vendors of software and services.

Some of you may be aware of an ongoing discussion regarding DITA and S1000D. Well no conference to do with the dissemination of information would be complete without these two interesting specifications being covered somewhere. X-Pubs is no exception.

More often than some would like to agree there is an increasing requirement for Paper output from S1000D and I am sure that with the XML processes will provide some with a route to hard-copy deliverables. In addition standard XML processes can be used to provide straightforward IETP deliverables (provided the rules are followed in the generation of the SGML/XML Data Modules).

Further Information

Further information can be obtained by visiting the X-Pubs Website. An early visit to the site is recommended because the number which can attend are limited and, apparently, the take-up so far has been brisk.

S1000D and Oslo in October

2007-03-19T11:58:00.000Z

The hinted at S1000D event is going to take place in Oslo, Norway, between
1st and 4th October 2007.

With the signing of the memoranda of agreements between various bodies the Title of the conference is:

PLCS - S1000D - ADL SCORM
Three Specifications One Future?

The draft programme and conference booking facilities can be accessed via the CTS Events website where you will need to log in (or register if you have not done so before) to get access to these items.

The event recognises that there is quite a difference between having an agreement and getting different areas to work together. Interoperability is very important because unless this is achieved and well documented each person or organisation is going to have to start from scratch with all the angst that that entails.

How many of you, I wonder, can say "Been there, Done that, Got the Tee-shirt". I know I have and would have readily listened to the experiences of one of the "Pioneers".

Programme

As is usual with these events there are Training Sessions for PLCS, S1000D and SCORM available on the first day. There are two SCORM sessions but the later one is a repeat.

In looking over the programme the papers are fairly evenly divided amongst the three Specifications/Standards with an emphasis on 'How to Do It' in a number of them. These type of papers, if honesty prevails, are very important, after all we all have to learn and unless you have done it it is often difficult to determine exactly where to begin.

PLCS is the all encompassing Logistics Specification (I once heard it described as the Jumbo Def Stan 00-60) and for those of you who want to know a bit more about it the PLCS Inc FAQ pages are worth looking at. In the future it is going to be very important to have the process for extraction of S1000D information from a Logistics application, particularly on large projects, well documented and established. In view of its importance it is good to note that there is a paper on the integration of S1000D and PLCS.

Of course the link between the training aspects of S1000D and SCORM is relatively well known at a high level and I understand that there is ongoing work here to ensure that the two specifications allow information to pass between them. Just in case there are some who would like to find out more about SCORM visit the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) website

Ongoing S1000D Work

The programme also has slots for "Practical Issues in Spec
Integration" on the Practical Issues Day (Final Day - Day 3 of the conference proper). I hope that the speakers will be able to bring their experiences to the conference and share it with us.

Part of the ongoing S1000D work are the areas of Implementation and Business Rules. These are important areas of work because if S1000D has a major weakness it is the lack of information about How to do it and What needs to be defined at the beginning so that all the various projects at least stand a chance of sharing data.

And of course we await the next issue/Change to S1000D to see what has changed. Of course what follows on from that is how do we implement it? That's for another day!

S1000D - "sense out of confusion"

Survey so far

The Results

What S1000D Issue are you using?

Are you using a CSDB

The Survey area of the Blog Page

S1000D Conference in the UK

Business Rules White Paper

A Small Error

Business Rules Creation

Basic Starting Point

The Business Rules Team

Different Types of Data Module

It is a really excellent start

WYSINWYE Part 2

Defining Graphic Reproduction Measurements

Have you spotted any anomalies?

WYSINWYE - - Part 1

An ISO 8879 problem

A New Blog Survey

Why?

What are we asking?

Which version

Are you using a CSDB

Why has the type of survey been changed?

The end of another eventful year

ATA and S1000D

S1000D Functionality

So to the Break

Users Forum

Integration of Documentation

Use the Forum Time Wisely

US S1000D Event in October 2009

Tracks

Link

Attendance

UK Event

Preston Event Cancelled

An S1000D UK Event in May this year

S1000D Issue 4

Element Names

subpara1 to n and para0

step1 to step n

keepwithnext

level attribute

Other things

Something from Issue 3

Budapest

S1000D Bike Pack PDF on the ASD Web Site

What do you think?

The Mekon Book

X-Pubs and S1000D

Retirement Looms - but not being put out to grass

What does this mean for me?

S1000D Sample BikePack Publication Available

What is it that is being made available?

How do I get it the example files?

Mekon's MD Tries to Drum up Business

Catching Up on S1000D Business

Adobe Road Show with FrameMaker 8

ASD S1000D Issue 3 is Published

S1000D Oslo event

X-Pubs 2007 - Update on Aerospace and Defence interest sessions

X-Pubs news - More S1000D Related Presentations

Harvey Greenberg - XyEnterprise

Wayne Gafford from ADL SCORM

S1000D @ Oslo

Updated Programme and other Details

Networking - Valuable use of Time

S1000D Issue 2 Change 3 now available

New Structures

Sample Data

S1000D and this years X-Pubs Event - More Detail

S1000D Specific Content

Other content of interest to S1000D users

S1000D and this years X-Pubs Event

Topics and Tracks

Further Information

S1000D and Oslo in October

Programme