Case Study 2 - Multi-National Photocopy Equipment Manufacturer

Companies compete fiercely to try to gain an advantage in the market, by enhancing the functions of their products and driving forward technical change. The company in this case study is no exception, delivering its photocopiers to the corporate market in a very short time.

An important recent issue in this market has been to incorporate the photocopiers into the corporate Internet or LAN network, in order to manage the devices via a PC.

The company in this case study accelerated the online compatibility of its devices to keep up with these trends. It was working step-by-step to replace its existing printed manuals with HTML-format CD-ROM manuals, and with HTML-format manuals linked to PC device management systems that are connected to the internal company LAN.

In the future, it is likely that the only printed manuals packed with the product will be small, simple guides.

This case study shows how we changed the existing manual production flow to one with Internet compatibility. 

 Challenges

• Must keep the existing multilingual database operation while performing shared and centralized management of the existing content (printed manuals) and future content (online)
• Must manage content in the XML format to ensure data universality
• Many differences in model numbers and product destinations, so these configurations must be shared as much as possible
• Buttons and menus are always decided at the very end, so related information must be managed separately from the main content

 Solutions

• TOIN managed in a database the generic text content units for managing existing multilingual content and online multilingual content, to create a management method that was separate from the document structure
• We developed a web-based conversion server to convert the existing content (SGML) translation memory (translation language-pairs consisting of the translation source sentence and the translation target sentence)
• We developed a system that used a database to manage information such as product destinations and model numbers, and structural configurations such as text (printed manuals) and Internet (online)
• We extracted in advance UI elements such as buttons and menus based on the Microsoft Style Guide and determined the operation rules. We decided the operation method with which to perform data creation, extracted the UI elements from the database (MS Excel format and XML format) and implemented a workflow that was separate from the content translation

 Technology and Tools

• Enterprise Publisher: CMS (content management)
• XSLT conversion: Import and export of UI translations from a database
• Antenna House XSL Formatter: PDF generation for online content proofing
• Tomcat Struts JSP Application Framework: Conversion application server
• Delphi: User interface for creating translation memory from database content
• OmniMark: Process for creating online help in a unique format from XML content
• MS Visual C++: Creation of XML-compatible plug-ins such as cross-referencing and auto indexing for increasing the efficiency of DTP work tools for manuals (printed)
• JavaScript: Unique format for a dynamic table of contents and index for the online help