Hi Charley! :)
Glad you jumped in because I think your approach is an exception and, as
always, you bring up really good points. ;) From what I understand (please
correct me if I'm wrong), you have an advanced wiki-like system (I don't
know how else to describe it). The advantage is freeform editing. The
editor isn't restrained by predefined structures. The interpretation by
your engine afterwards structures the information and builds the necessary
links, relations, and presentation (HTML, TeX, PDF, etc. exports).
Internally, it is "raw" content intelligently interpreted for output. It
doesn't IMO fit those two approaches because it is independant of the output
(template based) and doesn't require schema (structure-based). I think the
inherent disadavantage is that you can't force structure - specify the
information you want.
So to answer your question: Is this "structure" a template?
They should be different IMO. For me, a template is a file used to render
content. A structure is the pre-defined group of content elements
(schema). For example, if I created a "news" structure, the structure would
likely contain a date, location, author, summary, and article. When the
editor creates a news page, s/he must fill in the blanks defined by the
structure. I could then create a template that presents the content nicely
in HTML since I know the structure. I could also create another template
for PDF but the PDF version will not include a summary. Therein lies the
rub. The templates chooses what's shown and what isn't.
To be quite honest though, there isn't much of a difference between the
template or structure approach. They both force structure. There could be
an "internal" set of templates used for content management and an other
series of templates that presents that content on the published site
(although i don't know how this could be done on many such systems, I'm sure
it can). The question really is whether you want to be editor-centric or
integrator-centric I think. Who gets to define the structure?
With regards to the your approach Charley, you throw a nice curveball. ;)
You don't have structure, and you don't need templates for content, yet you
can manage the content intelligently "internally". I've been trying to
think of a hybrid approach.
a.
Andre Milton
www.mlore.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Charley Bay [mailto:charleyb123@;yahoo.com]
> Question for every vendor on this list: Can you
> create content without a template?
We're not a vendor (academic system in development),
but we don't have any concept of a template. We
describe heterogeneous content, with very little
concept of rendering (text files, proprietary data
language). All rendering comes at the point of
publication.
As a related aside, I've been reading a lot of
articles lately about how "unstructured content"
is a misnomer, that even the most abstract
documents have internal structure (linked thoughts
in some order). I dispute this notion that these
documents are "structured". Not wishing to succomb
to the hubris of self-defined terms, but our
project adopted the notion of "structure" as
described in Computer Science where, "structure
implies form". If I have "structure", then I have
a well-known form where one paragraph comes (the
abstract), followed by one image, followed by
a series of paragraphs. If all "documents" look
like that (we've seen that deployed in a number
of environments), then we have a well-known structure.
We have structured content. If your "document" can
merely be ten images and no text, or whatever else
not "well-known" and impossible to anticipate, then
that's unstructured (the idea of "structure" is
not related to ideas, but to physical media types
comprising the content).
Is this "structure" a template? Or, is it a template
independant of a target technology (HTML, TeX, etc.)?
Or, is it a template tied to a specific target
technology (only for HTML)? Or, is it a template
tied to a specific target technology (HTML) for
a specific domain (BarnesAndNoble.com book
description)?
By default, none of our content has any structure
whatsoever. So yes, I can most assuredly respond
in the affirmative as to the opinion of the latter
regarding the query of the former in regards to
content creation without a template. Indubitably.
(I need to practice my political speaking, as I've
been told on occasion that I lack tact.)
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