Whilst Presentation is Important, Timing is... Everything!

While I'm currently attempting to come up with a simple, appealing and effective way of presenting an XProc pipeline's steps, and the connections between them, I find myself reminded of the old adage that 20% of the effort gets you 80% of the result. The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principle, is touted by many people as a way of achieving the most in the smallest amount of time/effort but in reality it's about 'getting away' with not finishing things off properly. Anyone who's worked on presentation of information and/or GUI design will attest to the fact that 20% of the effort leaves you with err..., well, 80% of the job still left to do.

Now, of course, as I'm up to my neck in XProc, XSLT, SVG and SMIL you can bet your bottom dollar that I'm in my happy place. However, despite being surrounded by my favourite technologies, the work does raise many issues around laying-out connected objects and routing those connections with the minimum of ambiguity...

Ahhh, now where did I put my Edward Tufte collection.

Once the presentation has been sorted I'll be turning my attention to the even more exciting challenge of animation and timing.