Today, I learned about:

Continuing my post from last month, today I want to explain how the modularity concept can be applied to documents. Imagine the following situation: You are the owner of a non-European company, which develops and produces machines, in various models, all belonging to the same product series. They are used in the manufacturing of popular consumer products around the world.

But if you want to sell and install those machines to countries within the European Union (EU), then there is a restriction within EU that demands that the user documentation needs to be written in the local language of the country where the machines are used. See details in reference # 1 below. How do you solve that problem?

Your company already uses the modularity concept when developing both the hardware and software for the machines, which make is it easy to make new variants, both regarding capacity and features. So the natural thought is to apply modularity also to the documentation of the machines. Luckily, there is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It is named Extensible Markup Language (XML), and has been developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as an extension to the well-known HTML, used in web sites. The first version of XML was introduced in 1998 and is now available in its 5th edition. See also reference #2 below.

Using XML, your company can create the documentation based upon the earlier versions of products, add new content, that can also be used in future products, and delete contents that not apply to this particular product. The system you would use is called CCMS, which stands for component content management system. See also reference # 3 below.

So now, you have produced the complete documentation in your own language, but in order to sell the product to a country within EU, you need to comply with the EU translation requirements. Of course you can do it in-house, but I would recommend that you let that task be executed by a translation agency which is experienced in this kind of projects.

There is also a competing language to XML called JSON, derived from JavaScript. Based on my experience, I would recommend that you adopt XML for your product documentation. More about JSON in reference #4 below.

Today’s header photo shows an interesting view of balloons participating in the 13th edition of the São Paulo state campionship in ballooning, held in São Carlos. It started last Thursday, 144’2024 (2024-05-26) and ends today.

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: EU translation requirements

2: XML

*: What did you learn in school today?

4: JSON

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3: CCMS

4: JSON

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