In a bittersweet moment, it occurred to me this morning as I woke up for the 3rd or 4th time that the solution to the issue I've been having at work, people lack tech savvy to update a webpage, could be solved with a little PHP and XML. This solution would also stream-line the creation process and better represent the template that we're using.

Now, of course, this will all remain theoretical because the powers-that-be have their own tech guys back in Florida somewhere who actually do all the website stuff, and I'm just a lowly temp who's to do as he's told, but still, I like having solved it.

Basically they have me shooting video for training materials. Now I'm a hacker, not a videographer, but they aren't looking for Golden Globe quality, so i think I can handle it. the killer is, after I finisht he video, they've got me embedding it into a Word Document. This si quite possibly the worst thing you can do with video IMNSHO, but hey, lowly temp, right?



The killer is, they then send my Word doc to Headquarters, where they make it into a website. Now we all say "But YOU'RE a Hacker" with a few other hackers adding the desonate "Ouch! That's so wrong." to catch thos eof you who aren't hackers up the main conflicts in this process are:

• Web video can stream, Word video is embedded.
  
• Web documents are of length document, Word documents are of length 11 inches.
  
• Word documents turned into web documents tend to quintuple code length, delete readability, and generally frustate later attempts to alter documents.

The upside that anyone with a 6th grade education can open a Word document, and change the text. They might need a lowly temp to shoot clean video for the new instructions, but the text is updatible by all.



What occurred to me this morning is that the training documents aren't actually a single thought, they're chains of little thoughts. Each 'step' in a processes is a node, containing an index denoting order, a text field containing verbal instructions, and a video element with my pretty pictures. If I were to treat it not as an HTML document, but an XML document with [step] elements, then I could write a simple PHP script to render the page by looping through a draw step instruction until the next index has a NULL verbal instruction component. Then , I can write another PHP page to open a Step in an editable form, so you can chang ethe value stored for the XML table.



GENIUS!



Now I just need to be able to convince three layers of management to let me write it, and post it, and access restricted company servers to do so. *sigh* Another reason why after I wake up, I like going back to sleep.