“Happy Easter, Bob” said Tom. “Why thank you, Tom” said Bob, over the sound of kids yelling and laughing. Bob has always liked his neighbour, Tom from across the street. He kept his lawn mowed, shovelled his driveway, and put his trash bin correctly on the sidewalk, a good neighbour. Bob and Tom are both also in the Tech Pubs business, just with different firms.
“How’s the new post going?” quizzed Tom. Smirking, Bob knew this question was coming. Tom had to work with old S1000D Publishing software that was hard to use, outdated and the vendor never missed an opportunity to send an invoice when new functionality was implemented. He knew Tom was hurting, meanwhile Bob had turned his division around when they rolled out the R4i S1000D Product Suite. Costs were down, productivity was sky high and Bob was a happy man.
Grabbing a wicker basket, Bob turned to Tom and said, “let’s hunt for some featured Easter eggs.”
Dodging a fast moving 10-year-old covered in chocolate, the two men walked down the front stairs. “Tom, producing technical and operational data can be tough, so you really need the right tools.” “Of course” said Tom, as he nodded in agreement.
Plucking a chocolate egg wrapped in bright blue foil from a small bush, Bob said, “You need an IETP Viewer that is always free to distribute.” Dropping the egg in the basket he quipped “and works online and offline”.
Checking the mailbox, Bob continued, “Modern Windows apps Tom, you know, drag and drop, docking windows, super-fast interfaces”. As a handful of small solid eggs rolled into the basket.
Avoiding Mrs. Pitcher and her homemade hot cross buns that will add 10 pounds, the pair snaked through the swing set. A glint of green caught Bob’s eye. “Tom, you need document compare, document preview and CGM to SVG conversion on the fly” as Tom watched Bob’s rattle snake hands collecting eggs from the tree house like a scene from the Matrix.
“Did you know I can copy and paste tables from Office and/or Acrobat to automatically create CALS compliant XML tables in R4i Writer?” Tom was speechless.
Reaching the carport, they found the mother-load. Featured eggs of all colours and sizes were sitting in rows on the shelves.
Bob got to work, filling the small basket to the brim. “One click to clear change mark-up, support for legacy authoring system connected to the new CSDB, industry standard stylesheets, support for SGML and XML, including working with ATA, DITA and MilSpec. Features galore!”.
“Did I mention STE is built-in? as Tom rolled his eyes.
“So how’s the new post going you ask? It’s going EGGcellent Tom, just EGGcellent”.
Michael Halter
VP of R4i Feature EGGcellence
