ROME: 28th September 2006 -- The framework for all
communications in the Salesian Congregation, known as the Salesian
Social Communication System or SSCS, was printed in full colour and
distributed to all provinces last year. It was very well
received.
Certainly all provincial delegates for social communication should have
one, and in an ideal situation every community would have one.
More
recently, delegates for social communication in each province received
a brief document on formation to social communication. In most
instances this was given to them in a simple printed format but is also
available to them (and to formation commission members) via sdb.org.
What is less known is that an earlier Handbook
for Social
Communication was completely re-written in the light of SSCS and
the Formation to SC documents. But whereas the earlier
handbook was addressed only to delegates for SC, the revised version is
now addressed to
all Salesians. The question is how, in a world of mounting
printing and distribution costs, to get this document into
the hands of all Salesians.
Which is why I am asking you if you would like to
try out the
handbook in another form. Click here!
Or if that link is not working, here it is in raw form:
www.bosconet.aust.com/com/manen/index.html.
If this seems an effective way to have access to a useful document, you
are then invited to offer your comment by way of the usual 'click here'
down below in Boscowiki. If it works well for you, we will put
this and other documents up in this form on sdb.org. If there are
problems, I'd like to know.
It is helpful, I think, to explain how we have
arrived at this
point. In fact it models a process that offers a solution to a
range of instances. Bear with the relatively simple technical
explanation.
The original file was prepared as any file would be,
except that no
formatting was done at
all - just content. It would not matter which
word processing program is used. The ultimate key, though, is not
to
save it
as .doc (Word files always combine format information with content,
which is not ultimately a good process), but as .txt meaning
plain text.
The second stage was to import that file into an XML text editor.
Such
editors are
available for free. I used one called XML Mind XML Editor.
Inside that editor I identifed the key format issues like what is a
heading, a subheading and ordinary paragraph text, numbered lists and
so on. I simply saved that file to its native format inside XML
Mind
XML Editor. In fact this is a Docbook
file with an .xml
extension, not something you need to bother too much about at this
stage. Finally I took that file and converted it from docbook
with
another free
program called XML Mind XSL Utility.
And here is the wonder of this process. For
very little work - I
have simply taken an ordinary text file and formatted it inside another
program - I have the facility to convert it instantly into (1) a 'word'
style document, in rtf, (2) or a pdf file which can go anywhere, (3) or
a
web-based document in html. In this latter case it is not a Word
document masquerading as an html file (as happens when you convert a
.doc file into .html where it essentially remains a print document,
not a web document) but a document appropriately formatted
for the web. This is what we call 'horses for courses', or using
the correct instrument for the correct purpose.
Check it out on the link above. I think you
will see the benefits
of this approach. If you
want to ask further information on the process, please do. JBF.
GLOSSARY
Docbook: Since xml invites structured
content rather than formatting (formatting is handled by a separate
file), several approaches are out there in the market for word
processing along structured lines. Docbook is one of
them. It helps you structure your content for things like
articles, books, letters, by offering you a range of tags but not in
any order. Certain tags follow other tags naturally, hence the
idea of 'structure'. It vastly improves the authoring process.
___________________
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