Re: the statements below. I think the difficulty everyday non-technical business users have with completely divorcing content from presentation is that it makes it difficult for them to understand how they need to structure their text according.
For example - if I work in Marketing Communications and am tasked to write Press Releases, how can I insure that my press release headline, when truncated down to a link or shortened to appear on a WAP phone interface will still make sense and communicate effectively? Format matters to writers, it informs the writing process and serves as the "rules of the road" they must follow in structuring their text and communication agenda. Even in the newspaper example cited below, journalists have some foresight into how their end editorial product will appear as in "Johnson, I need 1,000 words on the trial down at the courthouse and give me a sidebar on who the players are." Even that minimal amount of "presentation" information is critical in helping them structure their copy accordingly. -----Original Message----- From: Austin, Darrel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 2:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [cms-list] new to list/cm - What is CMS????? Is this an issue of human nature, or simply learned behavior? I agree that content should be content...devoid of any specific presentation initially. I also agree that many content authors have trouble grasping that. So, I guess is more of a theoretical type question: why is that? Is it that content authors aren't properly acquainted with the new concept of content autonomy? Is it a remnant of our past (ie, we are used to paper documents)? Is it only natural behavior to want to build a 'page' vs. content? I've worked at newspapers before and that was the closest I had come to 'raw content' and it didn't seem to be overly difficult for anyone to understand. Writers wrote simple text devoid of presentation. Copysetters did the presentation and layout. In an office environment, it's different, of course, but I'd like to throw out the argument that having authors fully understand the concept of seperating their content completely from any presentational structure is a critical concept to grasp for the content management system/process to work properly. Thoughts? -Darrel -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
