The M050 release of APP Version 10 is now available for download from the support site .

The release notes say this:

• Implemented support for wordsonly on tunderline, tstrikethrough and toverbar. (SPR 1664816)
• Added a secondary row number counter for use with cell rules and backgrounds using ‘Y’. Use <?lineno ‘Y’,x> modify and <?tbovrowz 2> to reset.
• Fixed an issue when a cell spans multiple rows and breaks mid row over a page, with a clean break between rows in the middle. (SPR 1865311)
• Fixed an issue when an overflow occurs within a table and the item that overflows is spanning. (SPR 1938744)
• Fixed fidelity of show string and fish counters when overflowing certain combinations of nested tables and blocks (SPR 1963504)
• Fixed issue with keep-with-previous where it wouldn’t work within a section that itself was being balanced (SPR 1971370)
• Fixed issue with special-top-drop for a cell that wasn’t being applied when within a block within a table of overflow mode 2 (SPR 1949029)
• Fixed crash seen after copy show string counters to a local temporary set. (SPR 1958149)
• Fixed some XML index creation issues that caused generation of broken XML. (SPR 1874111)
• Fixed generated index hierarchy when using sort_as^display_as entrties on multiple levels. (SPR 1874106)
• Fixed problem that prevented UI actions being overridden in siconusr.3ic. (SPR 1938208)
• Fixed several tag debugger issues. Also improved effectiveness of double-shift to trigger immediate breakpoint. Also improved double-shift when not using tag debugger. (SPRs 1775010, 1814975, 1814993, 1817258, 1772995)
• Implemented widow and orphan rows for tables.
• Fixed crash when using fBlockTab objects. (SPR 1974473)
• Fixed keeping between a row at the end of a table and a parent block and a following table.
• Fixed rotated footnotes surround frame size issue. (SPR 1919326)
• Fixed problem with OpenType font containing an empty index table. (SPR 1972664)
• Fixed problem with space at end of line containing leaders. (SPR 1970802)
• Fixed issue that prevented frame shift (tfshift) from working when using copyfit with ‘update real values’ enabled. (SPR 1936426)
• Added new mode to tlink to allow script files to be linked to tags but still be editable.
• Fixed issue where creating a new style sometimes copied the content stream into it. (SPR 1928649)
• Fixed issues with FOM fContent.insertPage() failing when inserting multiple pages or when there are no other pages in the document. (SPR 1976594)
• Implemented <?tbfmthdir> to flip <?tbfmth> when <?tbdir> is specified. (SPR 1975974)
• Implemented <?tbcindent>, <?tbcindentabs>, <?tbcindenttab>, <?tbcindenttab2>, <?tbcindentstart>, <?tbcabsstart>, <?tbcindentend> and <?tbcabsend> to work with <?tbdir>. (SPR 1976983)
• Fixed issue with column footers where the whole of a double nested block was being stripped off to make room for the footer. (SPR 1664778)
• Fixed breaking across block or slim table columns when those columns progress from right to left. (SPR 1787334)
• Fixed alignment of display maths in arabic paragraph. (SPR 1787253)
• Fixed resizing of block columns when flowing to a new frame or page of a different width and progression direction is set right to left. (SPR 1978112)
• Fixed an issue where a block or slim table could end prematurely if it had a repeating title and overflowed during a child table of overflow mode 2. (SPR 1980599)
• Fixed issue with sprint where combined footnotes did not trim back when their references got displaced. (SPR 1976267)
• Fixed bad line breaking issue with Thai text in brackets. (SPR 1980684)
• Implemented support for flexible width blocks being rotated. (SPR 1981064)

IsoDraw 7.1 M30 is fully supported on Windows 7. There are no issues revising IsoDraw illustrations created in any of the earlier versions using IsoDraw 7.1. You can also save backward if required; however, we always recommend saving in the current version.

If you’ve got active maintenance, you can always find system requirements and support information at PTC.com > Support > Product Support Centers > Arbortext > Related Resources – Help Centers > Arbortext IsoDraw.

Expand Arbortext IsoDraw and you will find current release notes in PDF. Near the top of the IsoDraw 7.1 M30 Release Notes you will find the system requirements. For those on older versions of IsoDraw you can learn about new capabilities here as well.

One last thing for people on active maintenance: we recommend you review your account settings. You can be notified whenever there are product updates.

For the last decade I have made a regular habit to speak at or at least attend the CMS conference. I think I only missed one year. It gives me an interesting perspective because I can see trends over time, changes in presentation themes, popularity of topics, and the changing interests of the attendees.

For the first year, DITA seemed more of an assumption than an experimental technology. More companies are in year 3-5 of their implementation. In years past, the message has always been: Why choose DITA? What’s the value proposition? This year, the message was lessons learned. The biggest lesson learned was that you can’t treat a DITA implementation like a line item. The projects that were successful were those that had properly socialized the impact of the project to all parts of their organization.

For example, Catherine Lyman (NetApp) said she’d done a fantastic job socializing the impact and the value of their DITA implementation all the way up the chain. Her CEO really understood exactly the value behind their effort and exactly what benefits this shift was bringing to NetApp’s business.  However, she hadn’t socialized to lateral departments and every time she brought the project to a new group, she had to start from square one and begin the buy-in discussions over again. It slowed down adoption across the company and, as a result, caused a delay in the ROI she had projected. Her advice? Go to business and engineering groups early and be clear on the corporate drivers. Also, sell to the whole organization the benefits for their departments. Put customer-facing improvements first!

Successful projects place a high emphasis on collaboration and socialization. It was a story we heard over and over at the conference this year. Intel was starting over again — going back to square one — because they weren’t getting the system they needed to really serve their business goals. They hadn’t originally defined their requirements well enough to really evaluate the vendors. They focused on tools first. As a result, they have worked out a set of vendor questions to envy. They included these questions in their slides for the attendees of CMS/DITA NA 2010.

HP talked about the importance of collaboration within your team and with other groups in the enterprise because reuse is a cultural issue. You need to build trust and structure so that you can measure and track effectiveness.

Actuate said that they were also back at the drawing board. They had overused FrameMaker’s tools to the point it wouldn’t compile correctly and they’d get spurious content. They recommend moving to a robust, enterprise-level, dynamic publishing system with a DITA-aware editor built to do it from the ground up.

Rebekka Andersen, a professor from UC Davis, presented her research into why CMS adoptions fail. She followed a company from the early stages through their CMS evaluations and participated in the discussions every step of the way. In this case, the team not only decided against the vendor’s tool but also against CMS in general, but the reason why was not what anyone could have predicted. Her conclusion? The prevailing tool-focused approach to implementation. Don’t let tool define you: it should be the other way around. Her advice? Understand that technology can’t solve the problem or save the day. Your focus should not be on the tools. Tools should be <10% of project implementation; 50% of any implementation is change management and 40% is process management.

There was one presentation on using Sharepoint as a CCMS. If you just see the slides, it comes across as a success story, but the reaction of the audience (and the talk track behind the slides) made it clear that it really wasn’t. Not from any perspective except for the highly-paid consultants doing all the Sharepoint development ($$$$).

Me? I told success stories this year of companies who were 10+ years into their Arbortext/XML authoring implementations. You can find the slides and abstract here: Where Are They Now. After my presentation, Charlotte Robidoux (HP) said that she was glad someone was telling success stories. The conference was full of lessons learned and pain, and it was good to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

To put it in the words of some of the longest-running Arbortext customers that I interviewed for my presentation:

• “This is all doable because we went to XML and Arbortext in 2004″
• “This is ‘bottled gold’ because it gives us a HUGE advantage over our competition”

Overall, it was a great conference. The returns really are there if you frame your project as something that has enterprise-level impact (which it does).

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