[DDI-users] Re: Lets make DDI more user-friendly

[Michelle Edwards]

Good day all!

I have to admit that when we started out creating our DDI codebooks - I was
about as lost as anyone could be...  I tried the XML editors and found them
very tedious and so on..  What we did was start out by developing a template
of our codebook - so deciding what tags we thought would be most useful for
our users.  Since then we have expanded on the number of tags.  Our shop is
a SAS shop - so my goal was to use what knowledge and skills were at my
disposal and stick with SAS.  I've had some success with this and continue
to develop these tools.

I think there are so many different ways of developing DDI codebooks that
each of us has to examine the skills, time and our software preferences and
based on these decide which avenue is best.  Making DDI friendlier will
ultimately depend on these choices.  Training and on-line tutorials are
great - but will they not restrict new users to learn one method or
software?  Maybe this is good - I'm not sure???  Tutorials on the background
of DDI - maybe the structure of XML - how do you get from XML to a viewable
document would be the way to go - including the different methods people use
(Nesstar, XSL, SAS, etc...) would be helpful.  Personally I work best from
examples - so plenty of examples would be very helpful.

My two cents worth....

Michelle

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A. Michelle Edwards, Ph.D.
Academic Services, CCS
Vehicle Services Bldg, University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario
 N1G 2W1

PH: (519) 824-4120 Ext. 54539
FAX: (519) 767-1620
Email: edwardsm@uoguelph.ca
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