Single-source publishing, also known as single-sourcing publishing, is a
content management
Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...
method which allows the same source
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
to be used across different forms of
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
and more than one time.
[Single-Source Publishing with Flare]
Copyright © 2010 WritersUA. Published November 16, 2010; accessed June 11, 2013. The labor-intensive and expensive work of
editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, orga ...
need only be carried out once, on only one document;
[Barry Schaeffer]
Single-Source Publishing: Creating Customized Output
CMS Wire, 3 April 2012. Accessed 10 June 2013. that source document (the
single source of truth
In information science and information technology, single source of truth (SSOT) architecture, or single point of truth (SPOT) architecture, for information systems is the practice of structuring information models and associated data schemas su ...
) can then be stored in one place and reused. This reduces the potential for error, as corrections are only made one time in the source document.
The benefits of single-source publishing primarily relate to the editor rather than the
user
Ancient Egyptian roles
* User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty
* Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User"
Other uses
* User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...
. The user benefits from the consistency that single-sourcing brings to terminology and information. This assumes the content manager has applied an organized
conceptualization
In information science a conceptualization is an abstract simplified view of some selected part of the world, containing the objects, concepts, and other entities that are presumed of interest for some particular purpose and the relationships betw ...
to the underlying content (A poor conceptualization can make single-source publishing less useful).
[ Single-source publishing is sometimes used synonymously with multi-channel publishing though whether or not the two terms are synonymous is a matter of discussion.][Single-Source & Multi-Channel Publishing]
. © 2013 Mekon, accessed 23 June 2013.
Definition
While there is a general definition of single-source publishing, there is no single official delineation between single-source publishing and multi-channel publishing, nor are there any official governing bodies to provide such a delineation. Single-source publishing is most often understood as the creation of one source document in an authoring tool and converting that document into different file format
A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free.
Some file formats ...
s or human language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s (or both) multiple times with minimal effort. Multi-channel publishing can either be seen as synonymous with single-source publishing, or similar in that there is one source document but the process itself results in more than a mere reproduction of that source.[
]
History
The origins of single-source publishing lie, indirectly, with the release of Windows 3.0
Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predeces ...
in 1990.[Bob Boiko]
Content Management Bible
pg. 162. Hoboken
Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,69 ...
: John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...
, 2005. With the eclipsing of MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
by graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
s, help files went from being unreadable text along the bottom of the screen to hypertext systems such as WinHelp
Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser ''winhelp.exe'' or ''winhlp32.exe''. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from ...
. On-screen help interfaces allowed software companies to cease the printing of large, expensive help manuals with their products, reducing costs for both producer and consumer. This system raised opportunities as well, and many developers fundamentally changed the way they thought about publishing. Writers of software documentation
Software documentation is written text or illustration that accompanies computer software or is embedded in the source code. The documentation either explains how the software operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in ...
did not simply move from being writers of traditional bound books to writers of electronic publishing
Electronic publishing (also referred to as publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, Online magazine, digital magazines, and the development of digital library, digital libraries and catalo ...
, but rather they became authors of central documents which could be reused multiple times across multiple formats.[
The first single-source publishing project was started in 1993 by Cornelia Hofmann at ]Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational company that specializes in digital automation and energy management. It addresses homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries, by combining energy technologies, real-time automation ...
in Seligenstadt
Seligenstadt is a town in the Offenbach (district), Offenbach district in the ''Regierungsbezirk'' of Darmstadt (region), Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Seligenstadt is one of Germany's oldest towns and was already of great importance in Carolingian ...
, using software based on Interleaf
Interleaf, Inc., was a company that created computer software products for the technical publishing creation and distribution process. Founded in 1981, its initial product was the first commercial document processor that integrated text and graph ...
to automatically create paper documentation in multiple languages based on a single original source file.
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
, developed during the mid- to late-1990s, was also significant to the development of single-source publishing as a method. XML, a markup language, allows developers to separate their documentation into two layers: a shell-like layer based on presentation and a core-like layer based on the actual written content. This method allows developers to write the content only one time while switching it in and out of multiple different formats and delivery methods.
In the mid-1990s, several firms began creating and using single-source content for technical documentation (Boeing Helicopter, Sikorsky Aviation and Pratt & Whitney Canada) and user manuals (Ford owners manuals) based on tagged SGML and XML content generated using the Arbortext Epic editor with add-on functions developed by a contractor. The concept behind this usage was that complex, hierarchical content that did not lend itself to discrete componentization could be used across a variety of requirements by tagging the differences within a single document using the capabilities built into SGML and XML.
Ford, for example, was able to tag its single owner's manual files so that 12 model years could be generated via a resolution script running on the single completed file. Pratt & Whitney, likewise, was able to tag up to 20 subsets of its jet engine manuals in single-source files, calling out the desired version at publication time. World Book Encyclopedia
The ''World Book Encyclopedia'' is an American encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects. ''World Book'' wa ...
also used the concept to tag its articles for American and British versions of English.
Starting from the early 2000s, single-source publishing was used with an increasing frequency in the field of technical translation Technical translation is a type of specialized translation involving the translation of documents produced by technical writers (owner's manuals, user guides, etc.), or more specifically, texts which relate to technological subject areas or texts w ...
. It is still regarded as the most efficient method of publishing the same material in different languages. Once a printed manual was translated, for example, the online help for the software program which the manual accompanies could be automatically generated using the method. Metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
could be created for an entire manual and individual pages or files could then be translated from that metadata with only one step, removing the need to recreate information or even database structures.
Although single-source publishing is now decades old, its importance has increased urgently as of the 2010s. As consumption of information products rises and the number of target audiences expands, so does the work of developers and content creators. Within the industry of software and its documentation, there is a perception that the choice is to embrace single-source publishing or render one's operations obsolete.[
]
Criticism
Editors using single-source publishing have been criticized for below-standard work quality, leading some critics to describe single-source publishing as the “conveyor belt assembly” of content creation.
While heavily used in technical translation, there are risks of error in regard to indexing. While two words might be synonym
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
s in English, they may not be synonyms in another language. In a document produced via single-sourcing, the index will be translated automatically and the two words will be rendered as synonyms. This is because they are synonyms in the source language, while in the target language they are not.
See also
* Content management
Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...
* Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types. It i ...
* EPUB
EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...
* Markup language
Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...
*DocBook
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of documentation.
As a semantic languag ...
List of single-source publishing tools
* Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. It was originally developed by Frame Technology Corporation, which was bought by Adobe.
Overview
FrameMaker ...
* Adobe RoboHelp
Adobe RoboHelp is a help authoring tool (HAT) developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows. RoboHelp was created by Gen Kiyooka, and Blue Sky Software released version 1.0 in January 1992.
Blue Sky Software was founded in 1990 and changed ...
* Apache Cocoon
Apache Cocoon, usually abbreviated as Cocoon, is a web application framework built around the concepts of Pipeline, separation of concerns, and component-based web development. The framework focuses on XML and XSLT publishing and is built usin ...
* Apache Forrest
* Altova
Altova is a commercial software development company with headquarters in Beverly, MA, United States and Vienna, Austria that produces integrated XML, JSON, database, UML, and data management software development tools.
Company
Altova was founded ...
* Booktype
Booktype is a free and open source software for authoring, collaborating, editing, and publishing books to PDF, ePub, .mobi, and HTML formats. It was launched by Sourcefabric in February 2012 when Booktype evolved from the Booki software, whi ...
ClickHelp
* DocBook XSL The DocBook XSL stylesheets are a set of XSLT stylesheets for the XML-based DocBook language.
Purpose
DocBook is a semantic markup language. That is, it specifies the meaning of the elements in a document, not how they are intended to be presen ...
* DITA Open Toolkit
Heretto
* Help & Manual
Help & Manual is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by EC Software, a company based in Austria.
Like many help authoring tools, Help & Manual allows the writer to create a single source text which it then converts to a number of ta ...
* HelpNDoc
HelpNDoc ( ) is a Windows-based help authoring tool published by French companIBE Software
Features
HelpNDoc allows the writer to create a single source text which it then converts to a number of target formats such as:
* CHM ( HTML Help)
* ...
* MadCap Flare
MadCap Software is an American computer software firm headquartered in San Diego, California that creates help authoring tools and solutions for technical writers and documentations teams. Several principal managers, software engineers, and suppo ...
* Oxygen XML editor
The Oxygen XML Editor (styled ''<oXygen/>'') is a multi-platform XML editor, XSLT/XQuery debugger and profiler with Unicode support. It is a Java application so it can run in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It also has a version that can run ...
Paligo
* Scenari
* Sphinx
A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon.
In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...
* XPLM Publisher
References
Further reading
*
*
*
* {{cite book , last = Maler , first = Eve , author2=Jeanne El Andaloussi , title = Developing SGML DTDs: From Text to Model to Markup , publisher = Prentice Hall PTR , date = 1995-12-15 , pages = 560 , isbn = 0-13-309881-8 (the "bible" for Data Modeling)
External links
Planning a Single Source Publishing Application for Business Documents
(A paper presented by Peter Meyer at OpenPublish, Sydney, on 29 July 2005)
Single-source publishing in multiple formats for different output devices
* ttp://www.stcsig.org/ss Society for Technical Communication Single-sourcing Special Interest Group
What Is Single Source Publishing?
at WiseGeek
(Articles about Information Development and Single Source Publishing)
Technical communication
Computer file systems
Data management