> Now consider that there are more than 50 different careers in > writing....yes, more than 50. And within each career there are innumerable > idiosyncratic styles and requirements. Some writers choose to format and > organize their text early and often, while others choose to focus on content > first and presentation later. Still others are willing to leave the > presentation decisions to someone else. So on and so forth. > > As a businessperson, particularly if your business is heavily dependent on > its creative content as a strong sustainable differentiator, should you > enforce business processes and mandate tools that could stifle a writer's > creative process? unnatural processes that may impair your writer's ability > to write? > > Not if you value your business.
> Integrating seamlessly with the creative process is one of the most > important factors for the advancement of CMS's <snip/ Well, I agree to what your saying to a certain extent. It's important that authors get feedback on how their material will be presented. It's pretty boring to only stare at a xml document while writing. However, that is easily achieved by letting them preview their material using one or several stylesheets. The keyword in creative writing, is "writing". It's not typography, bookbinding nor presentation :) I don't know many publishing houses that have authors come in and say "I want my headings in Verdana and red color or piss off!". Usually there's some form of template for input of the content and after that professionals take care of creating the style, illustrations and typography for the book. Sure the author might have something to say about it but it's not his main responsibility, in fact I bet most authors are pretty ignorant of even basic typography. Their responsibility must always be the actual quality and content of their writing. So I agree we need good tools that authors find easy to use with easy previews etc for instant gratification. I do however disagree that authors shouldn't be centered around the actual content. I agree that it might take some coaxing to explain and convince everyone to start authoring based on what stuff means instead of how it looks but it certainly isn't impossible, and as I said before it's must definitively worth it :) It's a new idea, whose time has come. Holding on to authoring content based on how it's presented is futile when you consider the many uses you might have for it (what if it's to be parsed by a computer rather than read?) and the host of different ways it needs to be presented. best regards --- Mattias Konradsson -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
