Re: Quick Terminology Poll

> What's the broadest term for "the stuff we're all talking about"?

"Stuff", of course ;-) In fact, we did consider calling our CMS a "Stuff
Management System" but reluctantly decided that people might think it
flippant.

I've sometimes used the word "copy" to denote unstructured
text-with-pictures as opposed to "content" which can be structured.

Then again, I suspect I'm using the term "structured" differently from some
people. I don't mean "formatted", "marked up", or "laid out" - I mean
"tagged" or "possessing a set of attributes [data slots] each of which may
have a value".

The area of terminology we've perhaps had the most trouble with is what we
call a "content object". In our view, a content object can be pretty much
anything, including (but not confined to) what's been defined so far in this
thread as an "asset" (document, file) and a "snippet" (chunk of content).

There are so many varying ways in which form, structure and content are
linked and mingled in people's apprehension of ideas, I can't imagine we
will ever get this sorted out.

Actually, the word I find most unhelpful is "content". What on earth does it
mean? The term implies something that only has meaning relative to its
container - which is usually the opposite of the truth. As I've written
before, it reminds me of the term "application", which suggests software
that is not really as important as the hardware you run it on.

Nick de Voil
Director
De Voil Consulting
+44 (0)7811 325879