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At 9:11 on 18 Aug 98, Dave Toplikar wrote in part:
> Consequently, we need our news staff to help us by coding their
> stories properly.
Therein lies the problem. No one -- you or they -- should be "coding"
anything. You folks tend to have decent equipment -- at least
you seemed to when Ralph Gage showed me around after I spoke at the
KPA convention there a year ago. I suspect all you need to do
is invest in some macro coding on your print front end and some
matching CGI coding on your web back end.
The macros could be like the SII SDK mentioned previously, which
probably does little more than a series of search and replaces, then
outputs to wire carbon. (You could also do this in SII with a
MAPGEN, but that's a bit esoteric.) Or they could be nothing more
that Microsoft Word macros, the way I set up a couple of smaller
papers down the road from you. All you need is something that will
create unique, above-the-space 7-bit ASCII sequences (20H-77H) for
any command not currently representable by such characters:
instead of a paragraph ending, instead of bold, etc. The CGI
script then translates these plain-English new-markup-language
commands into appropriate HTML.
If you already use Word and Quark in print, you're way ahead
of the game. If so, consider using styles in Word that are
WYSI(A)WYG with regard to Quark, then write word macros to key off of
these in translating them to equivalent HTML, perhaps first using
Word 97's built-in translator then adding some massaging on top of
that before sending the matterial to a CGI.
You could also use a homebrewed StoryServer type solution involving a
web form into which you cut and paste, but that tends to be more
useful if editorial is using multiple different systems.
The key is to cast this in an editorial sense. Give them a
command and ask them to write web-style headlines, a
command that inserts whatever hyperlinks they feel
appropriate, etc. Stress the editorial challenge, not the
help-with-the-technical-drudgery angle. It makes the news staffers
feel on more certain ground and less put upon to do mechanical work,
it invests them in the product and it makes quality control a lot
easier. I use a plain-English custom markup language I wrote, for
example, whenever I upedate a class website that I alone maintain. If
I want to change faces, sizes, etc., all I have to do is go to a CGI
style sheet and enter the new parameters. I never have to recode
anything or even remember exactly what HTML I wanted to use. I worry
about content, not coding. That's what you want them to do, too.
Setting this up is very rudimentary programming -- so rudimentary
that I even hesitate to use the term. If you can create a macro and
have a little patience for stylistic oddities like ending commands
with semicolons, you can do it inbetween legislative columns.
ERIC K. MEYER - meyer@newslink.org
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