Tools

Our view of the possible is shaped by our tools. - Carl Sagan.

This section analyzes some of the common tools that can be used with the XML content reuse repository. There are many tools available and one size does not fit all. The choice of tools is an important one, because the tools will have the biggest and most immediate effect on the designers. For that reason, it is very important to include designers in the tool selection process.

Anyone who grew up in the typewriter age might well be amazed at the layout, page formatting and document management capabilities of the current crop of software applications. As with all technology systems, there are prerequisites and agonizing revelations - and at least three ways to do something:

1. The RIGHT way - the way originally envisioned by the developer and facilitated by the program. This way works best in the long run.

2. The WRONG way - the way that someone found to make it work, because they didn't know what the right way was. This way complicates editing and later revision of the material.

3. The OTHER way - the way that outwits the program and allows you to do something that should not be done, but needs doing. This way has everything wrong in common with the WRONG way, with the added disadvantage that it may actually make your application or their documents unstable.

Unfortunately for anyone who is facing the prospect of converting documents from various formats to XML, there is a considerable amount more WRONG and OTHER than there is RIGHT out there to be converted. Computers are infinitely stupid and must be told precisely what to do. In order for consistent content to result from an automated conversion to XML, consistent base content must be available.

Consistency in the use of content creation applications is not a hallmark of most groups of instructional designers. Designers on a deadline are pragmatic and care more about making it work now than about finding out how to make it work right later. It is paradoxical that a less intuitive tool, which requires more instruction and has a steeper learning curve, may be used more correctly and consistently than the naturally intuitive tool that everybody figures out for themselves.