A few days ago, Daniel Greenfeld wrote a blog post on the “Tools we used to write Two Scoops of Django“. Mentioning the words “tools” and “Django” in a single phrase is sure to get my attention, and the post did not disappoint. What fascinated me most, however, was not the “tools” part nor the “Django” part. The story is a good example to explain which difficulties show up in the process of creating and managing good content – even when it is “just” the writing of a book and its publication in multiple formats.
If you read the story, you will notice that
- the authors started using familiar tools, like Python’s reStructuredText and Google Documents;
- they then noticed that those tools did not measure up to their requirements, and had to switch again and again – until they ended up with LaTeX, allowing them to clearly structure the content and only then apply the formatting and layout for a paper version;
- e-book formats are a world on their own, and it’s a complex world with many pitfalls;
- technical content is never finished, so it requires forethought and planning to keep up with reality during the lifetime of your document.
All this about a relatively simple thing as a book, and by that I mean no disrespect to the authors. But assembling and maintaining say a website with hundreds of pages will be even harder, since such an endeavour add factors such as user management, target audiences, multiple authors, possibly multiple languages, categorization of pages, an editorial policy, and more – and that’s not mentioning a series of technical aspects. Enterprise content management ups the ante again, sometimes by several factors. So, yes, Content Management can be hard, very hard, to do right.
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And what about the book, you ask? Well, if I’m ever going to do anything serious with Django I’ll need a copy of “Two Scoops of Django“. The sample chapter was a bit over my head, since I’m an absolute Django beginner, but the patterns and tips seemed logical and well explained. The writing is clear and sensible. The only thing I did not like is the fact that code samples are sometimes being split over two pages. That should not happen except when the code is longer than what fits on a single page, and even then I would prefer the code to be rewritten and packaged in smaller blocks. But all in all, this looks like a worthwhile book.
