When Conversion Makes Sense Following the Trends: Is your content ready?
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This document discusses a collaboration between AGCO Corporation and DCL to convert AGCO's technical documentation to the DITA standard. It provides background on both companies and their needs. DCL analyzed samples of AGCO's documentation to determine the best approach for conversion. Their analysis identified elements like <ptxt> that could be mapped from the source format to equivalent DITA elements like <ph> while preserving formatting and rendering. The document aims to demonstrate DCL's expertise in documentation, conversion, and DITA that can help AGCO successfully convert their technical information for global use.
When Conversion Makes Sense Following the Trends: Is your content ready?
- 1. © 2013 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. DCL and AGCO
- 2. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 2 Charles Dowdell – Manager, Global Technical Service Information, AGCO Linda Cassola – Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, DCL
- 3. 3 Experience the DCL Difference DCL blends years of conversion experience with cutting-edge technology and the infrastructure to make the process easy and efficient. Valuable Content Transformed • Document Digitization • XML and HTML Conversion • eBook Production • Hosted Solutions • Big Data Automation • Conversion Management • Editorial Services • Harmonizer™
- 4. Serving a Broad Client Base…. 4
- 5. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 5 AGCO Legacy AGCO Corporation is a world leader in designing, manufacturing, marketing, and distributing of agricultural equipment. AGCO equipment is sold in more than 140 countries by over 3,200 dealers. AGCO has a legacy of brands and technologies.
- 6. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 6 AGCO Authoring in 7 languages Publishing in 32 languages Financial Segregated by Regions Lots of Legacy Products High Growth – Acquisitions – 24 year old company
- 7. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 7 AGCO Convert or Rewrite? – Task Based – Minimalized Automated (programmatically) or Manual? Internal or External Costs and Benefits “Your mileage will vary!”
- 8. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 8 Make assessments and estimates – 0 = Absolutely no author change required – 100 = Total rewrite 100 0 Cost Test and Test again --Heuristics
- 9. Time Global Authoring System (Workshop and Operator manuals) Plan, Improve, Consolidate Beauvais Suolahti Marktoberdorf Jackson/Beloit Hesston Canoas Mogi Others Custom Topic Based DTD DITA Randers Global Reuse Today
- 10. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 10 Importance of DCL Analysis Expertise in documentation Expertise in automated conversion Expertise in DITA Careful preliminary work with samples
- 11. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. Importance of DCL Analysis 11 Analysis method: Review information model Source PDF and XML for manuals Envision mapping XML tags to DITA tags
- 12. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. 12 Sample Case <ptxt> Apparent attribute for paragraphs. Found in original documentation Used to minimize space between lines Sometimes used within paragraphs, sometimes used to contain paragraphs
- 13. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. Sample Case 13 <note id="T018479- NOE527"><para> <ptxt>MIN-Markierung darf nicht unterschritten werden.</ptxt> <ptxt>Nicht ... die Gefahr eines Getriebeschadens.</ptxt> </para></note>
- 14. © 2011 AGCO Corporation All rights reserved. Sample Case 14 Element supposed to control presentation of a paragraph DCL investigated samples to resolve issue Specifications Hand-tagged samples 1. Pa ragraph <para> wrapper is converted to <p> Source <ptxt> will be captured as <ph outputclass=“ptxt”> The paragraph formatting of <p> corresponds to <para>. If we convert all <ptxt> to <ph>, we preserve rendering of space between paragraphs.
- 15. Linda Cassola SVP of Sales and Marketing, DCL LCassola@dclab.com 15 Charles Dowdell Manager, Global Technical Service Information, AGCO Charls.Dowdell@agcocorp.com Q&A
Editor's Notes
- #4: Management of large-scale conversions with multiple vendors High-speed automated data and forms extraction Validated Quality Methodology Multi-facility tracking and reporting processes and systems Independent QA, process review, & sustainment services Content Reuse Tools Simultaneous conversion to multiple DTDs & Schemas Proprietary & non-proprietary electronic source data formats to XML Extensive experience with all key DTDs and schemas, both content and structure-based:
- #6: AGCO is made up of many legacy corps. Technology from all divisions exists to day in all products. - Legacy content - Legacy formats - Legacy practices in content creation Reuse potential is high. We sell very old manuals… early 1900s. 1980s product is still common. - Dealers & Customers - Paper is very common
- #9: Why do an analysis phase? Graph: Amount of rewriting vs. cost Much in between Amount of rewriting has a price association Automated solution will get them most of the way Revision cost is minimal Algorithmic ways to move text Automation preserves cross referencing - depending on the amount of rewriting you do, the more you have to modify or revise = more of a cost - As long as we can find an automated solution, the rewriting/revision cost would be smaller - Copy-and-paste is inefficient, prone to human error; DITA automation drives down those costs, algorithmic ways of moving text around lowers costs - You need something that parses in DITA - Many times there is a point somewhere in between the two - We define the happy medium - Goal is to get the data to parse well in DITA - If it doesn&apos;t parse at all, cleanup will take a lot more time - Trying to patch things together - Automated conversion preserves cross-referencing that&apos;s already in the XML - Rewriting involves redoing the cross-referencing
- #10: - &quot;Hairpick&quot; slide - Preserving libraries so in the XML, reusable text is carried over - Plan, improve, consolidate: compliment AGCO - AGCO had already done a lot of the preliminary work - Harmonizer? To refine the process
- #11: This was a team effort. It wasn&apos;t a AGCO effort or DCL effort. We brought the automation, they brought the information model. Howard filled in what may not have been covered. Contradiction between tutorial and model. So they (AGCO) had to resolve that.
- #12: - Analysis - 1st step: Review information model, see what mappings AGCO’s already envisioned - 2nd step: Analyze PDF together with existing XML - 3rd step: Envision how the existing XML maps to DITA, clarify discrepancies between the information model and tutorial document - Example of mapping issue: AGCO had a structure to associate image(s) with a group of steps - DITA = you associate image(s) with one step - AGCO had already come up with a resolution, used existing DITA attribute to mark beginning and end of group of steps to which image(s) belonged - Evaluate as DITA - Consulting team - Manages current system, looking at DITA, trying to adapt DITA - - Tagging fit in pretty well - 4th step: write up conversion specification, prepare small sample - 5th step: convert complete manual
- #13: - Going back and forth with AGCO at the beginning - Discrepancy between samples and training document - Dealing with mapping assumptions - Howard provided very small hand-tagged sample - Software coding begins after tagging is approved - Original sample 5 pages - Broad enough to get the basics for tags - AGCO not totally DITA - AGCO modified it - Use of tag was not consistent
- #14: &lt;para&gt; tag used to group the two pieces of text that appear to be two separate paragraphs Each contained within &lt;ptxt&gt; tags
- #15: -&lt;p&gt; and &lt;ph&gt; are DITA paragraph tags - Only way to approve mapping approach was to provide sample and have it render