Migrating publications to S1000D is essentially a matter of creating data modules for content and publication modules for structure. A decision was taken to reuse the navigation structure in the legacy system to create the publication module structure and to convert each document into a single data module. The only data module schema that was found to be suitable for all of the very varied content was the descriptive schema which allows a reasonably free content layout. Although some of the documents were procedures and might have benefited from the procedural schema, this schema was found to be too strict for the airline’s needs.
Table 2. A word of advice..
| This was perhaps the first point in the project where we came up against a fundamental fact of S1000D, namely that its development has been heavily influenced by the needs of product manufacturers. Because of this, tailoring S1000D to fit wider applications can be a challenge. Aspects that have a clear purpose when talking about a specific product are hard to make sense of when talking in more general terms. For example, the procedural schema insists on a preliminary requirements section. This might make sense when dismantling a specific component from an aircraft, where the component first has to be removed and certain tools will need to be on hand, but when talking about a more general procedure, for example cleaning up a spillage, then that probably depends on the type of spillage and you might want the freedom to explain that. |