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As you recall your conversation with AnyCorp’s president, you come up with the following list of goals:
• To examine document component reuse, see “Using Standard Data in Documents,” p. 283• For information on linking to related objects, see Chapter 25, “Handling Specialized Content and Delivery,” p. 421
As you look at your goals, you start brainstorming. You know that your customers and distributors are computer types; in fact, they probably have the latest, biggest, and fastest machines available that include multimedia set ups with CD-ROM drives and ISDN Internet connections. After pondering this, you add the following information to your list of goals:
This is a pretty good approach for dealing with the trials and tribulations facing AnyCorp. Although some of the information relating to the World Wide Web is discussed in Part V, “SGML and the World Wide Web,” you certainly have enough information to proceed to the next step in the process.
In working through this process, you identify your issues and a solution that addresses them. In the scenario above, you dealt with the problems faced by a rapidly growing company. Its success caused problems of its own, relating to supporting current and potential customers, along with the distributors that helped the company become successful.
Although it may sound simplistic, this is a key step in the process of successfully creating your SGML environment. If you skip it or rush through the process, you risk creating an environment that does not meet your needs. Table 5.1 lists some of the key issues in goal definition for an SGML project.
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| Environment | What environment are you working in? What do you want to accomplish? What kind of resources do you have to address the tasks at hand? |
| Constraints and Challenges | Do you have any special constraints, standards, or challenges to deal with? Do they raise additional issues that must be addressed? What are the most important? The least important? |
| Facilitators | Are there some special issues that might make it easier to address the constraints or challenges that you’re facing? |
| Current Issues | What are the most pressing issues surrounding the task at hand? Which issues must be addressed, which should be addressed, and which might be addressed? How much time do you have to address each of them? |
| Future Issues and Trends | What issues are likely to be important in 3 years? In 5 years? In 7 years? How much (and how often) do you expect your environment to change between now and then? |
Document analysis is simply the art of mapping out the logical components of your document. It is an “art” because there is no right way or wrong way to lay out the map. (In fact, there may be no “perfect” map.) As with goals definition, it is best performed in an informal group setting.
As with many of the brainstorming sessions that I’ve participated in, successful document analysis sessions are full of give-and-take. In the process of defining the structure of your documents, the group may wander down a particular path only to run into a dead end and have to start over.
By taking this wandering path, the group is performing other tasks, such as:
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