[Sigia-l] Open-source IA tool in the making

[Stewart Dean]

>From: jacco at nieuwland.net

<snip other good stuff>

>I'm wondering whether one could use Visio as the front-end for your
>tool (I know, lots of people use Omnigraffle or other software). I know 
>that
>Visio can generate XML, and it woudl definitely be possible to create XML 
>on
>the fly aswell, though macros.

Onmigraffle is only a small step from outputting XML and it's not impossible 
to take a outline file, passe it and turn it into whatever form of XML is at 
the heart of this application. So if the program is modular then there is no 
reason parts can't be swapped out, so, for example, you could output a 
sitemap from visio and feed it straight in and, tied into templates possibly 
produced in dreamweaver, use that to build a site.

My take is that one of the modules for this system should be an architecture 
and flow creation tool that eliminates the need to ever use visio again.  
Instead of drawing a box, typing a name on it then calling it a page why not 
just drag on a page and have all the attribute like template, meta data, 
title, etc all ready and waiting to fill in?  You could do that in visio if 
you where dedicated but I'd shudder to think how usable it would be. With 
omnigraffle, well if you group objects it can use each as a value - I've 
used it to assign template, page number and page name that is grouped when 
output as a outline document, but beyond that it's only really good for 
simple tree diagrams if you want to use it's smarts.

This site structure / flow creation tool would only be one module as I see 
it.

Hope that makes sense.

Stewart Dean











>
>Lots of ideas. Wouldn't this subject classify for a 'Birds of a Feather' 
>session
>at the Summit? Or will we not have enough people there to provide input for 
>this
>tool?
>
>Cheers,
>
>Jacco
>
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