Content

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Content
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Outline

• What is content?
• Content has format
• Content has structure
• Functionality is content, too!

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What Is Content?
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Overview

• Computers were built to process data.
• Data consists of small snippets of information
  that have all the human meaning squeezed out of
  them.
• Today, people call on computers to process
  content.
• Content is also information, but it retains its
  human meaning and context.
• One of the basic challenges of content management
• Computers are designed to deal with data that's
  stripped of any context and independent meaning.
• Users want computers to deal with content,
  however, which is rich in context and meaning.
• How can you use the data technologies to manage
  and deliver very nondatalike content?
• If you err toward making your information too
  much like data, it looks mechanical and
  uninteresting to consumers.
• If you make your information too rich, varied,
  and context-laden, then you can't get a computer
  to automate its management.

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Overview (Cont.)

• The compromise is to wrap your information in a
  data container (known as metadata).
• Thats why we call Content
• The computer manages the data and the
  interesting, meaningful information goes along
  for the ride.

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Content Is Not Data

• Computers were first conceived as a way to
  perform computations that were too time-consuming
  or complex for humans.
• The model was (and to a large extent still is) as
  follows If you can reduce a problem to a series
  of simple mechanical operations on numbers and
  logical entities, it is amenable to solution by a
  computer
• Computer professionals were either programmers or
  data input clerks
• Some problems are better solved this way than
  others problems where a finite set of very
  specific rules operating on numbers and logical
  entities can yield a useful result
• Manufacturing and finance VS. science

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Content Is Not Data (Cont.)

• The idea of computers as data-processing machines
  runs deep and continues to this day as the main
  thing that computers do.
• Today, people want computers to sift through
  mountains of large, complete chunks (not
  snippets) of information and deliver the ones
  that they want most at that moment.

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Content Is Not Data (Cont.)

• The following breakthroughs set the stage for a
  major change in our expectations of what
  computers can, and are, to do
• Digital media creation (images, sounds and video)
  became possible.
• Digital media output (color displays, sound
  cards, and video accelerators) became available.
• Consumer-oriented mass removable storage
  (CD-ROMs, in other words) became available and
  cheap.
• You can now consider your computer an actual
  replacement for familiar information channels
  such as books, TV, and radio.
• What these traditional channels deliver is
  content and not data.

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Content Is Not Data (Cont.)

• Data and content
• From the user's perspective, information is all
  content
• From the computers and programmer's perspective,
  it's all data.
• The trick to content management is to use the
  data technologies to store and display content.
• Consider a music Web site
• You browse a page that features a music CD that
  you like you add it to your shopping cart and
  then pay for it.
• What you experience is a series of composed Web
  pages with information on music as well as some
  buttons and other controls that you use to buy
  it.
• All in all, the experience feels like a
  content-rich interaction.
• What happens behind the scenes is a set of
  data-oriented computer programs exchanging data
  with a database.

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Content Is Not Data (Cont.)

• Some of the data behind the scenes is very
  contentlike.
• A database stores the feature article with the
  artist's picture.
• The artist's name, the text of the article, the
  picture of the artist.
• Some of the data is very datalike.
• Numbers and other snippets that create an
  economic transaction
• Credit card number, order number, order quantity,
  order price
• Some of the data is in-between data and content.
• The song catalog contains song names, running
  time, price, and availability, which are all
  snippets of information that can look a whole lot
  like data as the site's database stores them, but
  they appear more like content as the site
  displays them

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A Song Catalog

• In the database, it's all just data. On the page,
  the transaction data still looks a little like
  data while the feature-article data looks
  nothing like data, and the catalog data can
  retain or lose as much of its data appearance as
  you want. On a well-designed page, however,
  visitors perceive it all as content.
• As a site stores content, it can look a lot like
  any other data. In displaying that content
  however, it can't look like data if you want to
  hold your audience.

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Content Is Information Put to Use

• Information means all the common forms of
  recorded communication, including the following
• Text, such as articles, books, and news.
• Sound, such as music, conversations, and reading.
  
• Images, such as photographs and illustrations.
• Motion, such as video and animations.
• Computer files, such as spreadsheets, slide
  shows.
• Before you ever see a piece of information,
  someone else has done a lot of work.
• That someone else has formed a mental image of a
  concept to communicate, and used creativity and
  intellect to craft words, sounds or images to
  suit the concept.
• The person has then recorded the information in
  some presentable way.
• The author of the information pours a lot of
  personality and context into the information
  before anyone else ever sees it.
• If you break up information, then you run the
  risk, too, of losing track of, or disregarding,
  the assumptions the author made about the
  audience and the purpose of the information.

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Content Is Information Put to Use (Cont.)

• "What is content? Raw information becomes content
  when it is given a usable form intended for one
  or more purposes. Increasingly, the value of
  content is based upon the combination of its
  primary usable form, along with its application,
  accessibility, usage, usefulness, brand
  recognition, and uniqueness.
• Information that passes casually around in the
  world isn't content. It becomes content after
  someone grabs it and tries to make some use of
  it. You grab and make use of information by
  adding a layer of data around it.

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Content Is Information Put to Use (Cont.)

• By wrapping information in data, a small action
  by a person can trigger a lot of work by the
  computer.
• Suppose that you need to consider a piece of
  information as 1) new 2) ready to publish or 3)
  ready for deletion.
• By itself, no computer can decide which of these
  statuses to apply to a piece of information.
• By wrapping your information with a piece of
  metadata known as status, however, and by having
  a person set the status metadata, you can use a
  computer to perform a lot of work based on the
  status.
• "new" ?sends a standard e-mail message to a
  designated reviewer.
• "ready-to-publish" ?outputs it to a designated
  Web page.
• "ready-for-deletion" ? removes it from the Web
  page and deletes it from the system.
• The computer doesn't need to know anything about
  the information itself it just needs to know
  what status a human is applying to the information

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Content Is Information Put to Use (Cont.)

• The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines content in
  part as follows
• "1 a something contained usually used in plural
  the jar's contents the drawer's contents
• Content is something that something else
  contains.
• By switching from information to content, you're
  switching from a consideration of a thing to its
  container.
• You're shifting the focus from the information
  itself to the metadata that surrounds it.
• The container for information is a set of
  categories and metadata that contain the
  information.
• This additional data corrals and confines that
  information and packages it for use, reuse,
  repurposing, and redistribution.

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Content Is Information Plus Data

• Metadata makes the context and meaning of
  information explicit enough that a computer can
  handle it.
• Adding (meta-)data to information helps split the
  difference between keeping the information whole
  and enabling data techniques to effectively
  manage it.
• More important, metadata can make explicit the
  kind of mind that you expect to interpret the
  information.
• Status, audience type

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Content Is Information Plus Data (Cont.)

• Content, therefore, is information that you tag
  with data so that a computer can organize and
  systematize its collection, management, and
  publishing. Such a system, a content management
  system, is successful if it can apply the data
  methodologies without squashing the interest and
  meaning of the information along the way.
• Until computers (or some newer technology) can
  handle content directly, you must figure out how
  to use the data technologies to collect and
  deliver content.

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From Data to Content and Back

• What is data and what is content depends mainly
  on how you create, manage, and bring each type of
  information onto a page
• Transaction information datalike
• You don't generally use a CMS
• Managed as part of a traditional data-processing
  system.
• The templating system of a CMS often does manage
  the displaying of such information on the
  publication page.

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From Data to Content and Back (Cont.)

• Article information contentlike
• Text-heavy and has some sort of editorial process
  behind it.
• You create and manage article information, and
  other very contentlike information, most often
  using a CMS.
• CMS is also generally responsible for displaying
  this sort of information.
• Catalog information can go datalike or
  contentlike
• Information that might appear in a directory or
  product listing
• You sometimes create and manage it by using a
  CMS, and sometimes a separate data-processing
  application handles it.
• Obviously, if an organization already has a
  full-featured catalog system, tying your CMS to
  it is the easiest way to go.
• On the other hand, if you need rich media and
  lots of text, along with the part numbers and
  prices in your catalog, then including the
  catalog as part of the overall CMS may make the
  most sense.

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From Data to Content and Back (Cont.)

• The purpose of CM isn't to turn all data into
  content.
• The purpose of content management is to oversee
  the creation and management of rich, editorially
  intensive information and to manage the
  integration of this information with existing
  data systems.
• The CMS must, in all cases, carry the
  responsibility for the creation of the final
  publication.
• If this publication includes both data and
  content, then the CMS is there to ensure that the
  right data and content appear in the right places
  and that the publication appears unified and
  coherent to the end consumer.

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Content Has Format
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Overview

• To communicate information, you must encode it.
  That encoding is known as format.
• In the computer world, format covers two broad,
  but related, concepts
• Binary format (also known as file format)
• Rendering format (sometimes referred to as
  display format)
• For a CMS to function correctly, it must offer
  the capabilities
• To receive and create a variety of binary formats
  and
• To separate rendering format from the content it
  surrounds

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Binary Format Storing Information

• For a computer to use information, it must
  convert it to binary code.
• Images JPEG, GIF
• Print publication EPS and TIFF
• Text ASCII, Unicode
• Computer files are the traditional way to store
  binary information, so binary format is also
  known as file format.
• Each binary format has its own way of
  representing the information that it encodes.
• Format conversion, such as EPS ? JPEG
• Format conversion is not always easy

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Rendering Format Presenting Information

• For visually rendering content
• Typographic bold, italic, and underline
• Layout tables, right alignment, and margins
• Rendering format is important because you must
  manage it across all of the content that you
  intend to handle.
• Make format consistent across content categories,
  as well as across all content, in a single
  publication.
• Titles of News releases, cross-reference links
• Separate format from content
• Reuse the content in a variety of outputs

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Rendering Format Presenting Information (Cont.)

• Format is a kind of metadata
• It's information above and around the language on
  the page that tells your brain what to do with
  the language on the page.
• It tells the reader things such as "This part is
  important," "Read this section first," or "This
  text is a link."
• It guides your eye and your emotions around the
  language, leading you, if done well, to a much
  faster and fuller understanding of the
  information on that page.
• Formatting represents implicit or explicit
  understandings of visual meaning
• In addition to the text format, the other media
  types (images, sound, and motion formats) all
  have unwritten equivalents of the notion of format

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Dealing with Formatting

• Format is the part of content that's often the
  hardest to deal with
• Authors don't apply formatting consistently.
• If formatting is inconsistent, automating the
  process of separating format from content is
  almost impossible
• To ensure consistent formatting needs a style
  guide
• Word processing programs help enforce consistency
  by providing a way to name and apply a style to a
  block of text.
• A strong tendency to apply formatting directly
  rather than go through the extra trouble of using
  word processing styles
• Without a strict style guide, keeping consistent
  in the way that you apply formatting is really
  difficult.
• Most word processors enable you to easily
  circumvent style constraints.
• Few storage formats separate formatting from
  content

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Categorizing Formatting

• Format for (emotional) effect
• Emphasis or importance size, position, color
• Parsability white space, typographic elements
  (bullet list)
• Interest format variation
• Cultural norms ex. formal VS. casual
• Formatting by methods (visual effect)
• Typographic effects Font face/size, text color,
  underlining, bold, italics
• Layout effects Margins, columns, tables,
  wrapping, indentation
• The hardest type of formatting to translate from
  one type of publication to another (especially
  from print to the Web).
• Background effects Cell colors and images,
  background colors and images, watermarks, and
  reverse effects

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Categorizing Formatting (Cont.)

• Formatting by (application) scope
• Character formatting
• Paragraph formatting
• Page formatting
• Subpublication formatting
• Publication formatting
• Suprapublication formatting

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Content Has Structure
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Overview

• Structure is the way that you put information
  together.
• It encompasses the parts and pieces of a base of
  content and their relationships to each other.
• Structure goes far beyond format in importance.
• If you know and control the structure of a body
  of content, you can create whatever format suits
  your needs for a particular presentation.
• Format varies with the way that you present a
  body of content, but its structure remains the
  same.
• Structure is the key to managing content

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Structure Is Important

• If format is about presentation, then structure
  is about management.
• Structure is the set of named relationships
  within, between, and beyond individual pieces of
  content.
• If a content base is well structured, then it has
  the following features
• Its content divides into a set of well-defined
  categories (component classes).
• Within each category, the content segments into
  manageable chunks (component instances).
• Each chunk divides further into a well-defined
  set of parts (elements).
• Each chunk, or component instance, relates to
  other chunks, from the same or other categories,
  by way of outlines, indexes, cross-references,
  and sequences.
• Example documents of an aircraft avionics
  company
• Benefits store, retrieve, reuse

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Structure Is Important (Cont.)

• Creating an overarching set of structures is the
  way to understand and control content.
• If you have well-defined categories, you can
  standardize the way that you create and evaluate
  them as well as use them.
• If you divide content into chunks, you can track
  them individually.
• If each chunk of a particular category has the
  same set of named elements, then you can count on
  a particular piece of information remaining
  available when you need to automatically lay out
  a page.
• If each chunk is stored within the same
  structures as all the others, you can create a
  fast and efficient storage and retrieval system
  that can automatically deliver targeted content
  into a variety of publications.

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Structure Is Important (Cont.)

• Depending on the particular user, the kind of
  necessary structure varies
• A content creator may want to see how her content
  relates to the others
• See her content chunk in the center of a set of
  relationships
• An administrator wants to see all content by type
  or by source.
• See a content outline categorized by content type
  and by author
• An end user cares most that she can find just the
  right chunk of content to her need.
• See outlines that divide the content based on the
  issues that she wants to resolve
• All of them want structure, but each wants a
  different kind of structure.
• A good CMS enables you to design and apply a
  variety of overlapping structures on the same
  body of content.

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How to Categorize Structure

• Structure by purpose
• Structuring for a single publication outside a
  CMS
• Structuring for a content base in a CMS
• Structure by type
• Divisional structure
• Named segments (or types) of content, such as
  product reviews, tech support articles, and press
  releases.
• Named elements within the segments, such as
  title, abstract, body paragraph, and emphasized
  text, footnote, and sidebar.
• Inclusional structure specifies which components
  include others.
• Example If you create an image reference in an
  HTML page, you're putting a little piece of
  inclusional structure in the HTML that says, "Go
  find this picture and include it here."

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How to Categorize Structure (Cont.)

• Structure by type (Cont.)
• Access structure presents the divisions that you
  and your audiences need to access your content.
• Hierarchies (outlines, taxonomies, and tables of
  contents), which show parent-child relationships
  between different segments of content.
• Indexes, which provide a map between text phrases
  and the content segments that relate to them.
• Cross references (links) from one content segment
  to another, either within the same work or to
  other works.
• Sequences (browse sequences) that specify which
  segment of content comes before or after the
  current one.
• Management structure This type of structure
  specifies the attributes of a content component
  that enable you to track and manage it.
• Author, creation date, version number, and review
  status

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How to Categorize Structure (Cont.)

• Structure by scope
• Structure below the radar
• Every content system that you encounter includes
  a level below which dealing with that structure
  is both infeasible and unnecessary.
• Example Library structure among books
  internal structure of a book
• Inner structure
• The structure that you find represented within a
  content component
• The library example TOC and index within each
  book
• The key point with inner structure isn't whether
  you need to notice it, but rather that it's a
  part of the component and always travels with it.
  
• Outer structure
• This structure is what relates one component to
  another.
• The library example the card catalog is the
  outer structure that organizes the cards, and the
  books they represent, into a useful system.
• You may store the outer structure inside or
  outside (or both) the component.

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Structure Can be Difficult to Create

• Challenges you are likely to face when defining
  and applying structure include
• Understanding content in its entirety
• Controlling all content
• Overcoming resistance to change
• Providing a flexible solution
• Enforcing your standards
• Understanding the mechanics of structure
• Finding the right balance

See pp. 24-26 of CMB