From: Michael S. Lorrey <retroman@together.net>
>Yes, I prefer the same for my fine tuning, tho I use Netscape Composer for
>quick construction work. The discussion though was for an app that could
>develop automatable documents for use as templates by mundame office pukes.
Word 2000 should be able to do this via XML support. There is still no easy and good way to do it. Probably a combo of XML and Relational databases is the best way to go today, but there are no end user tools that will handle the job easily.
I spend much of my time handcoding these solutions, but it is still to difficult and to expensive.
It is probably not an option for smaller companies though.
I expect that at some time soon there will be high quality XML editors, that can really do the job. They are just not here yet. At leat I havn't found them. I know some good tools probably exists today but they come at a pricetag of several thousand dollars, so I havn't bought one to try out.
Another problem is how to handle mediatypes other than text. If you program all of your info structure in xml or use a relational DB what format should the pictures be? For print you need a lot higher resolution than for the web. So some kind of media DB should also be part of the equation if you want a completely automated info system.
The same applies if you redesign the site and other media changes format.
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# Max M Rasmussen, New Media Director http://www.normik.dk Denmark
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