wondering about whitmore's frustration

I just came across this sage advice from Hedley Finger. The reference to "pain" during a single-sourcing implementation brought Whitmore's essay into a little better focus. Finger's claim that a good single-sourcing implementation necessitates a "strict hierarchical structure for your documentation" makes Whitmore's visually-spatial CMS authoring environment sound down right tasty. Similarly, Finger's comments about a "strict folder tree structure and naming conventions for files and formats to facilitate batch processing via scripts" makes me want to run out and sign up for the next "Writing Like an Automaton" workshop offered by SkillPath.

But then there's this interesting tidbit from Finger: "This allows us to ramp up a new project quickly and gives the writers and artists a uniform environment in which to work." Ugh. There it is again -- pragmatism in the workplace. Just when you're feeling all scholarly and theoryish, you get slapped with the cold Mackrel that is the life of the practicing technical writer. It's been a while since I've been slapped as such, but I have scars dude. Yeah, I have the scars.