In the world of industry, the operating manual is an integral part of the product itself. Yet neither the product nor, by association, its documentation, are static. Quite the opposite: the documentation will undergo continual updates and adaptation over the life cycle of a product. Printing manuals on time and within budget obviously requires a technique that can respond flexibly to frequent changes. XML-based templates with print on demand (PoD) are the solution of choice for many print service providers.

XML data sets for high flexibility

The first stage in this kind of PoD workflow is to create a blueprint of the entire documentation of a new product. Input for this first draft comes from the manufacturer, marketing, service and R&D: a cross-competence approach that ensures all the information the user will need is in fact ready and available. Once the manufacturer has checked and approved the blueprint, new subsections and paragraphs of the document are translated to XML; existing ones are retrieved from stored document templates. At the end of this process, every passage in the manual has a unique code, and these codes can be assembled as required to create the complete 'infoset'. One central XML database holds all the data for creating the PDF file.

Economical outsourcing

The approach offers obvious benefits: manuals and technical documents can be authored during the system development cycle and are ready when the system goes into production, which accelerates the time to market. Moreover, it is easy to edit the manuals to accommodate system modifications, and it is also easier to single out the changed passages for translation - since only the changed XML files need to be considered. Edited content is then combined with unchanged sections in a new info set, and merged in a new PDF file. Each version of a manual is assigned its own number and remains in print for as long as there is a demand for the system version it describes. The service provider keeps a PDF file of each version and can deliver the user manual in question on demand. Even the content for online help can be generated from the XML database.

Transparent costing

One reason to outsource the printing of technical documentation and use PoD is the transparency it brings to budget planning. To keep the administration overhead to a minimum, the client and service provider will often sign a service level agreement that defines the range of services to be delivered. When the client defines a new infoset, the costs can be calculated rapidly on the basis of this agreement.

For more information contact Lilian Hansen, Océ SA, 011 661 9555, lilianh@oce.co.za, www.oce.co.za