A major productivity issue for publishers "going XML" is getting from a copy-edited manuscript to some form of XML as quickly and easily as possible. We see manuscripts with all sorts of markup in them for custom InDesign importing; and lots of other ugly markup which are part of some "XML first strategy". The manuscript should never be the place for this.
However the manuscript should correctly express the structure of a document with section breaks, blocks and inline styling. These are all important aspects of editorial review. So we need clean manuscripts, that deliver everything editors need, and get to XML. Enter IGP Structure Styles.
Structure Styling is a definite option for clean manuscript to XML conversion.It is simple, elegant, can be customized,and no human has to every see ugly machine mark-up.
It works so well, with standard trade books, and using IGP:FLIP you can import the manuscript and go straight to the PDF and eBook outputs with a near press ready book.