DOCBOOK-APPS: Best authoring environments for publishing thousands ofWeb pages in XML

[Katherine Hostetter <KHostetter at symantec dot com>]

I'm creating a presentation on XML, XML tools, and issues that we'll likely
be dealing with if we convert thousands of Web pages to XML. (Currently our
tags are based on the SGML DocBook. We use Lotus Notes for the database,
conversion to HTML, and the authoring environment.)

Our company also produces software manuals, training, and other paper
documents. We're going to content management and single sourcing, and have
purchased Interwoven for e-commerce. Our company has many decisions yet to
make in this process, but knowing something about what others have done
should help us all "land on our feet" when changes are made.

A big concern for writers and editors is what the future authoring
environment might be. How do others work with the many elements in DocBook?
Do you "load" only certain sets of elements at a time? Do you have an
interface--like that for HTML--which has tags to select? Do you have a
content structure that authors must use? Is DocBook incorporated into a
form so that authors aren't doing any tagging? Do you use an interface that
you created, or one that
you purchased, such as XMetal?

Thanking you in advance!

Katherine