Profiles

Websites for non-profits, especially in the accessibility and complex rehab technology. Sailing and pets.

I originally worked in cold-type phototypesetting in the late 70s with systems like Compugraphic, Linotype, APS, and had some exposure to hot metal typesetting.

I started working in structured content, the separation of content from presentation, with SGML in the early 80s with some of the first WYSIWG Unix based composition systems, Texet and then Xyvision Production Publisher (XPP) later known as XML Professional Publisher.

I started working with enterprise document management with Parlance Document Manager (PDM) in the early 90s and then XML component content management (Contenta) starting in the mid 90s.

I’ve worked in a variety of high-volume, complex, multi-lingual publishing environments like legal, finance, medical journals, and technical documentation in aerospace, equipment manufacturing, etc.

I started with WordPress in 2004 with version 1.2 (Mingus), primarily for personal websites. I was also working with Drupal and Mambo (Joomla) at the time, but was very frustrated with the limitations of WordPress. I began to use WordPress more when it evolved in 2005 with version 1.5 (Strayhorn).

I’ve been very happy with the way that WordPress has evolved, especially since the Gutenberg Project and reaching some of the goals of the roadmap for block editing and customization. I was a late bloomer for block editing, but now that the full site editor is in play I have been convinced to use it more. I’m looking forward to multi-author collaboration and native multilingual support. Hopefully in the not too distant future, true theme agnosticism and component editing will come into play.

I still primarily use WordPress for personal websites, non-profit organizations and independent manufacturers in the complex rehab technology industry. I have spent a lot of effort to develop WordPress sites that are as theme agnostic as possible and to better behave like full blown content management systems.

I have a background in SGML, XML, XSLT, XHTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Perl, etc. and have experience with desktop publishing systems like QuarkXPress, FrameMaker and InDesign. I was also a C programmer and worked with LaTeX, and yes, I’m ancient and still have a pica pole and miss VI editor!