Home » Computers & Electronics

What is Single Sourcing (Single-Source Publishing)?

Ranked #9,195 in Computers & Electronics, #194,168 overall

Single sourcing is a strategy to achieve single source publishing

In practice, single-sourcing is either a success or a failure. There seems to be no in between.

In order to make single-sourcing a success, you need everyone synchronized, like a white water rafting team!

At least two different disciplines must come together—writers and engineers— within the unique context of your business to make single-sourcing work

On the writing side (Ament, Hackos, Rockley), nearly all of the existing literature is theoretical in nature. Most books on single-sourcing contain advice about planning, managing, and creating modular projects and documentation.  At this, they are very good. Unfortunately, the single-sourcing literature is aimed at managers or writers, and they're only 1/3 of the equation.

On the other side, the programming literature has the same problem. The XML programming books tell you how to write XML and how to process it: They do not tell you how to make XML work in a single sourcing environment.

Worse still, IT and engineering has a tendency to suggest solutions that fit their existing skillsets and knowledge and thus make their lives easier rather than addressing the business needs.

Ament says it best: "Single sourcing is a methodology, not a technology". XML is a technology, not a methodology. And neither one looks at the business needs as a whole. Bringing all of this together is not obvious or well-defined, but it is the goal of this lens.

The Single-Sourcing Triangle

...is really more of a pyramid

The single-sourcing triangle is the foundation to make single-sourcing projects succeed. All three sides of the must work together to make a solid foundation for your project:

Side #1 - The Theory Side: The Information Management Consulting Companies

Side #2 - The Technology Side: Programming Nuts and Bolts

Side #3 - The Product Side: Vendors and Application-Specific Specialists

Successful single sourcing requires competence and execution on all three sides of the single-sourcing triangle. First, the information itself (the content) must have real structure. Information management consulting companies can help your various writing groups organize their content and think about it in new ways that promote single-sourcing activities. Second, you need software engineers and IT folks to make sure that both the hardware and software infrastructures support single-sourcing activities. In addition, these folks must work closely with the vendors (Side #3) chosen through rigorous requirements matching, to make sure that all the different systems play well together. Over-engineering your triangle (excessive customization) will produce systems that prevent you from extending your single-sourcing system to interact with other business entities, essentially stifling any future process innovation.

Understanding the triangle is essential, but you cannot stop there. The triangle exists in time and space: it lives, breathes, and survives in the context of your business. The triangle is the foundation. When you understand how each side the triangle fits the goals and needs of your business, you've guaranteed your success.

Where does content come from?

what is source?

Content comes from every part of the enterprise. It is not simply the domain of technical publications groups or web publishing teams. There are countless techpubs departments who have implemented (or tried to implement) single-sourcing solutions. They've used products from every vendor (alive and dead). Those who know exactly how their content applies to the entire enterprise, how it weaves its way through, how it is authored and reauthored, formatted and reformatted, chopped up, translated (multiple times), and reassembled: These are the implementations that succeed. Often enough, while other parts of the organization currently don't use the documentation in it's present form there is a desire to do so if the documentation could be easily customized or configured for their purposes.

Where does source come from?
* Techpubs
* Engineering
* Product Development and Product Lifecycle Management
* Localization partners
* Packaging
* Support
* Service centers and maintenance
* Customer Service
* Field reps
* Training
* Marketing
* Sales
* Web team
* Customers
* User communities
etc..

There's no end of places source comes from and no end of places it will go. Single sourcing is a strategy to help you manage that content and deliver it without a lot of manual effort.

Multi-Channel Publishing from a Single Source of Content

Single sourcing means achieving single source publishing

Single sourcing means that you can publish to any format from a single content source. Here's a list of some possible output formats you can deliver through single-sourcing tools (automated or with manual means).
ePub
EPUB (short for electronic publication; alternatively capitalized as ePub, EPub, or epub, with "EPUB" preferred by the vendor) is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM)
Microsoft Compiled HTML Help is a proprietary format for online help files,
Doxygen
Doxygen is a documentation system for C++, C, Java, Objective-C, Python, IDL (Corba and Microsoft flavors), Fortran, VHDL, PHP, C#, and to some extent D.
Java Docs
Javadoc is a documentation generator from Sun Microsystems for generating API documentation in HTML format from Java source code.
PDF
PDF and print publishing
Cory Doctorow in many formats
The entire text of Cory Doctorow's novel, "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom," is available as a free download in a variety of standards-defined formats. No crappy DRM, no teasers, just the whole book. It is also available in print. This is as good a list of possible readers and formats as you can get for a single content source.

Where to Learn about Single-Sourcing

Computer Documentation
There's more to computer documentation that just the traditional technical documentation we've all come to love and hate.
Get an Information Development Assessment
Our free Information Development Assessment is a complete process that will absolutely determine whether or not Arbortext is a strategic fit for your business.
Beyond Theory: Making Single-Sourcing Actually Work
This paper is a case study of a single-sourcing implementation that worked. Attempting to do it with information from only one side of the triangle is a recipe for disaster. Presented at ACM SIGDOC 2003.
Applying IT to Process
Once you've done single-sourcing, you've opened the door to serious process innovation opportunities.
Crane Softwrights, Ltd.
G. Ken Holman is a world-leader in the development and successful deployment of XSLT and XSL-FO.
Center for Information Development Management
Lead by JoAnn Hackos, this group has a lot of resources for documentation projects just starting out. They are focused on the theory/information management side of the triangle, but they can provide a lot of guidance when selecting a product or a vendor. You're on your own for side #2.
The Rockley Group
They focus more on content management these days, but that's an important part of the puzzle.
Arbortext Community Resources page at Single-Sourcing Solutions, Inc.
Online links, books, papers, podcasts, blogs, tutorials, and more.

Books to help you make single sourcing work available at Amazon.com

Loading

Single-Sourcing Blog

Loading Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

New YouTube vids

Loading

The Vendors

A short list of technology

A short list of technology partners and the parts they play in the full single-sourcing picture.
Arbortext from PTC
Arbortext, PTC's dynamic information delivery software, is the only end-to-end solution (creation, illustration, publishing, management, delivery).
SDL + XPP
SDL provides the software and services to help corporations maintain and publish all multilingual content.
Just Systems/XMetaL
XMetaL, software for authoring XML content collaboration. Works with industry standards including DITA and can be used standalone, or integrated with any of several leading content management and publishing systems,
Leximation
The plug-in for FrameMaker to make DITA work well in the Adobe application.
OxygenXML
A great engineer's development tool for XSL authoring.
Quark
More than a better InDesign. Quark also has an XML Editor.
DITA Open Toolkit
For DIY. Requires programming skills to really use effectively, especially in a mission-critical situation.

My Lenses

Loading

Reader Feedback

Does this article meet expectations?

Let me know what you like, what you don't and, most importantly, what's missing!

submit
  • Reply
    Barry Schaeffer Oct 19, 2010 @ 1:16 pm | delete
    I would suggest that there are two primary means of producing multiple outputs from a single source:

    1. Componentization (often known as Component Content Management or CCM) - breaking the content down into chunks small enough to produce the desired outputs through differing collection.
    2. Variant management (Arbortext calls it "Profiling") through markup in the single source and processing it upon output into the desired variants.

    While both work, and each has its strengths and weaknesses, the popular discussion of single source publication is based on the implicit assumption that CCM will be the primary tool. This is unfortunate because tagged variant management is a powerful and flexible tool that works best for many applications.

    For example, Ford Motor Company, since 1997, uses tagged variant management to produce up to 12 years of owners manuals from a single SGML/XML document for each model. This allows the document to make effective use of the high level of common content without the tortuous attempt to fragment it for CCM collection.
    My own experience has been that a combination of both techniques can be highly effective: large component CCM with each component profiled to make it usable in multiple outputs without further fragmentation.
    The first use of this technique was begun at Pratt & Whitney Canada in 1996, with its adoption by Boeing and Sikorsky shortly after. It has proven its value and should become part of the single source world, especially with the growing ability to create and process richly tagged XML source content.
  • Reply
    caltonia Oct 19, 2010 @ 8:02 pm | delete
    Barry, great post. Glad to have this as part of the lens!
Show All

by

caltonia

A software engineer who works with technical writing departments to implement single-sourcing environments for the purposes of maximum reuse... more »

Feeling creative? Create a Lens!

Explore related pages

Related Tags