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MS Word 2003 and DITA/DocBook
I use Word 2003 to write manuals and I am researching whether XML can help
me single-source some content between my manuals. By the way, Word 2007 is not an option right now because it has not been approved by the IT department of my company. In "Office 2003 XML for Power User," Matthew MacDonald suggests "adopting an industry-standard XML markup that is already defined for your data" instead of "crafting your own XML markup." He mentions DocBook specifically which seems up my alley since I write manuals. DITA, however, is the trendy markup. Any opinions as to which is better? Is it technically possible to use DITA/DocBook in Word? For example, DocBook uses DTD, but Word seems to want XSD. Is there any benefit from DITA/DocBook when used in Word? On the plus side, DITA/DocBook provide markup tags and some standard style sheets. A minus might be that these markups want you to apply these tags to every element of these manuals such as headings, notes, warnings, and paragraphs; if you use WordprocessML, Word applies the markup automatically for you. Thanks!Jose My apologies to the readers of "word.docmanagement" if this post isn't quite a match to your group. I wanted to post to a group that is specific to Word, but couldn't think of a better fit. |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.office.xml,microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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MS Word 2003 and DITA/DocBook
Jose Valdes wrote:
I use Word 2003 to write manuals and I am researching whether XML can help me single-source some content between my manuals. Yes, definitely. By the way, Word 2007 is not an option right now because it has not been approved by the IT department of my company. In "Office 2003 XML for Power User," Matthew MacDonald suggests "adopting an industry-standard XML markup that is already defined for your data" instead of "crafting your own XML markup." He mentions DocBook specifically which seems up my alley since I write manuals. DITA, however, is the trendy markup. DocBook is the de facto standard document type for computing documentation; DITA is more of an architecture, and is an OASIS standard. Any opinions as to which is better? Both do pretty much the same job: the choice is usually based on other considerations like local organisational/IT support, industry sector acceptance, cost of software/training, etc. Is it technically possible to use DITA/DocBook in Word? Yes. For example, DocBook uses DTD, but Word seems to want XSD. Word's XML interface really wasn't designed for text documents, but for data, which is why they don't support DTDs (plus the original idea for Schemas came partly from within Microsoft, so they don't feel any need to support DTDs which are more commonly used in text document publishing). Is there any benefit from DITA/DocBook when used in Word? The "when used in Word" is redundant. There are lots of benefits to using XML, whether DITA, DocBook, TEI, or whatever document type. On the plus side, DITA/DocBook provide markup tags and some standard style sheets. A minus might be that these markups want you to apply these tags to every element of these manuals such as headings, notes, warnings, and paragraphs; Yes, that's what a document type is for. It specifies markup for certain things that are important in a document: you are indeed expected to use them. You have to call a heading a heading, a note a note, a warning a warning, and so on. Calling a heading "14pt vertical space, no indent, 28pt on 32pt Arial Bold, 10pt vertical space" is pointless and unproductive if you are trying to make a reusable and meaningful document. if you use WordprocessML, Word applies the markup automatically for you. You mean _guess_ what you are typing? How does it know I'm typing a note and not a warning? :-) This is NOT automatic markup: that's a different thing entirely. But the kind of markup it applies doesn't label the elements for what they are, only for what they look like...as above. Even if you use smart stylesheets and named styles, you'll still be using Word's internal document model which is flat. It has no hierarchy, so it has no concept of containment (section containing subsection containing subsubsection containing warning containing heading-followed-by-paragraph). You can kludge your way around it, but it'll still be a flat document, and will need very substantial massaging to be reusable or addressable. The associated problem is that Word's XML editor isn't a particularly good one by comparison with the rest. There are others which can be customised for the document type to do what you describe as "automatic markup", and they may offer many other benefits for the technical writer (as well as drawbacks like cost or the need for approval). Personally, I use Emacs, but I'm well known for that kind of thing :-) ///Peter -- XML FAQ: http://xml.silmaril.ie/ |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.office.xml,microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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MS Word 2003 and DITA/DocBook
Peter,
Thanks so much for replying. I hope my fledgling XML questions have not tested your patients. ;-) Forgive my lack of clarity when I wrote, "when used in MS Word." I meant to say that my completed manuals have to take the form of MS Word 2003 files. I can use a document type such as DocBook or DITA, but the finished document must be MS Word. My company is not interested in XML and I would have a hard time making the case for investing in any additional tools such as specialized editors. I hope I am not being dense, but I'm having trouble understanding how I could use DITA, DocBook, or another document type to produce Word files. Scenario One: I could import a schema from DITA/DocBook into the Word Schema Library, and use Word to apply XML elements to my existing manuals. Within Word, I can perform XML transformations based on these schemas, which would allow me to take advantage of single sourcing features. If I understand it correctly, this scenario is possible for DITA, but not DocBook because the latter uses DTD instead of XSD. Is that right? Scenario Two: edit XML files using an XML editor, perform all transformations outside of Word, and import final version of manuals into Word. In this scenario, I would not really be using Word. Scenario Three: use IncludeText fields in Word files to take advantage of the XML transformation available in these fields. This scenario is very similar to the first one, and would probably exclude DocBook for the same reasons, I think. ;-) Are any of these scenarios feasible or worthwhile? Am I overlooking a more sensible scenario? For now, I think I am going to focus on scenario one and read up on DITA. Thanks! Jose "Peter Flynn" wrote in message ... Jose Valdes wrote: I use Word 2003 to write manuals and I am researching whether XML can help me single-source some content between my manuals. Yes, definitely. By the way, Word 2007 is not an option right now because it has not been approved by the IT department of my company. In "Office 2003 XML for Power User," Matthew MacDonald suggests "adopting an industry-standard XML markup that is already defined for your data" instead of "crafting your own XML markup." He mentions DocBook specifically which seems up my alley since I write manuals. DITA, however, is the trendy markup. DocBook is the de facto standard document type for computing documentation; DITA is more of an architecture, and is an OASIS standard. Any opinions as to which is better? Both do pretty much the same job: the choice is usually based on other considerations like local organisational/IT support, industry sector acceptance, cost of software/training, etc. Is it technically possible to use DITA/DocBook in Word? Yes. For example, DocBook uses DTD, but Word seems to want XSD. Word's XML interface really wasn't designed for text documents, but for data, which is why they don't support DTDs (plus the original idea for Schemas came partly from within Microsoft, so they don't feel any need to support DTDs which are more commonly used in text document publishing). Is there any benefit from DITA/DocBook when used in Word? The "when used in Word" is redundant. There are lots of benefits to using XML, whether DITA, DocBook, TEI, or whatever document type. On the plus side, DITA/DocBook provide markup tags and some standard style sheets. A minus might be that these markups want you to apply these tags to every element of these manuals such as headings, notes, warnings, and paragraphs; Yes, that's what a document type is for. It specifies markup for certain things that are important in a document: you are indeed expected to use them. You have to call a heading a heading, a note a note, a warning a warning, and so on. Calling a heading "14pt vertical space, no indent, 28pt on 32pt Arial Bold, 10pt vertical space" is pointless and unproductive if you are trying to make a reusable and meaningful document. if you use WordprocessML, Word applies the markup automatically for you. You mean _guess_ what you are typing? How does it know I'm typing a note and not a warning? :-) This is NOT automatic markup: that's a different thing entirely. But the kind of markup it applies doesn't label the elements for what they are, only for what they look like...as above. Even if you use smart stylesheets and named styles, you'll still be using Word's internal document model which is flat. It has no hierarchy, so it has no concept of containment (section containing subsection containing subsubsection containing warning containing heading-followed-by-paragraph). You can kludge your way around it, but it'll still be a flat document, and will need very substantial massaging to be reusable or addressable. The associated problem is that Word's XML editor isn't a particularly good one by comparison with the rest. There are others which can be customised for the document type to do what you describe as "automatic markup", and they may offer many other benefits for the technical writer (as well as drawbacks like cost or the need for approval). Personally, I use Emacs, but I'm well known for that kind of thing :-) ///Peter -- XML FAQ: http://xml.silmaril.ie/ |
#4
Posted to microsoft.public.office.xml,microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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MS Word 2003 and DITA/DocBook
Jose Valdes wrote:
Peter, Thanks so much for replying. I hope my fledgling XML questions have not tested your patients. ;-) Forgive my lack of clarity when I wrote, "when used in MS Word." I meant to say that my completed manuals have to take the form of MS Word 2003 files. I can use a document type such as DocBook or DITA, but the finished document must be MS Word. My company is not interested in XML and I would have a hard time making the case for investing in any additional tools such as specialized editors. OK. You mean you'd have a hard time expecting *them* to invest in an XML editor (cheaper than Word :-). I assume you yourself would be using one: I have a hard time imagining people editing XML text in Notepad... I hope I am not being dense, but I'm having trouble understanding how I could use DITA, DocBook, or another document type to produce Word files. This is a common path, and the simplest way is to cheat. Write your doc in DocBook or DITA or whatever. Write an XSLT transformation to very carefully constructed XHTML with whatever styling is needed embedded in a style element in CSS in the header. Rename the output file to end in ..doc and Word will open it as if it were a native .doc file, and your company will be none the wiser. I have several clients doing this all the time. The individuals (being professional documentation engineers) refuse to use Word because it lacks the depth required, so this device enables them to continue Doing It Right, but lets their users continue to believe in Word. Where the client needs PDF, they generate it from the XML. Ditto with HTML. The "official" path is to write a (10000x more complex) XSLT transformation to turn your DocBook/DITA into OOXML. This is perfectly possible, just highly error-prone because of the complexity involved (OOXML is an XML representation of how a Word file *looks*, rather than what it *means*). Scenario One: I could import a schema from DITA/DocBook into the Word Schema Library, and use Word to apply XML elements to my existing manuals. Within Word, I can perform XML transformations based on these schemas, which would allow me to take advantage of single sourcing features. If I understand it correctly, this scenario is possible for DITA, but not DocBook because the latter uses DTD instead of XSD. Is that right? No. DocBook is defined and maintained in ISO RELAX NG, so it is available in W3C Schema format as well as in DTD format. You could continue editing DocBook documents using a DTD, and provided the document is valid, remove the DOCTYPE Declaration and use the document with the correspondng Schema. Scenario Two: edit XML files using an XML editor, perform all transformations outside of Word, and import final version of manuals into Word. In this scenario, I would not really be using Word. Right. That's what I'm suggesting above, except that if you open the HTML file in Word, and Save As....doc or OOXML, it seems automagically to become a Word document. But test it in their version first. Scenario Three: use IncludeText fields in Word files to take advantage of the XML transformation available in these fields. This scenario is very similar to the first one, and would probably exclude DocBook for the same reasons, I think. ;-) Are any of these scenarios feasible or worthwhile? Am I overlooking a more sensible scenario? For now, I think I am going to focus on scenario one and read up on DITA. Try the HTML route and see. ///Peter |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.office.xml,microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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MS Word 2003 and DITA/DocBook
Thanks Peter! I'll try the HTML route!
"Peter Flynn" wrote in message ... Jose Valdes wrote: Peter, Thanks so much for replying. I hope my fledgling XML questions have not tested your patients. ;-) Forgive my lack of clarity when I wrote, "when used in MS Word." I meant to say that my completed manuals have to take the form of MS Word 2003 files. I can use a document type such as DocBook or DITA, but the finished document must be MS Word. My company is not interested in XML and I would have a hard time making the case for investing in any additional tools such as specialized editors. OK. You mean you'd have a hard time expecting *them* to invest in an XML editor (cheaper than Word :-). I assume you yourself would be using one: I have a hard time imagining people editing XML text in Notepad... I hope I am not being dense, but I'm having trouble understanding how I could use DITA, DocBook, or another document type to produce Word files. This is a common path, and the simplest way is to cheat. Write your doc in DocBook or DITA or whatever. Write an XSLT transformation to very carefully constructed XHTML with whatever styling is needed embedded in a style element in CSS in the header. Rename the output file to end in .doc and Word will open it as if it were a native .doc file, and your company will be none the wiser. I have several clients doing this all the time. The individuals (being professional documentation engineers) refuse to use Word because it lacks the depth required, so this device enables them to continue Doing It Right, but lets their users continue to believe in Word. Where the client needs PDF, they generate it from the XML. Ditto with HTML. The "official" path is to write a (10000x more complex) XSLT transformation to turn your DocBook/DITA into OOXML. This is perfectly possible, just highly error-prone because of the complexity involved (OOXML is an XML representation of how a Word file *looks*, rather than what it *means*). Scenario One: I could import a schema from DITA/DocBook into the Word Schema Library, and use Word to apply XML elements to my existing manuals. Within Word, I can perform XML transformations based on these schemas, which would allow me to take advantage of single sourcing features. If I understand it correctly, this scenario is possible for DITA, but not DocBook because the latter uses DTD instead of XSD. Is that right? No. DocBook is defined and maintained in ISO RELAX NG, so it is available in W3C Schema format as well as in DTD format. You could continue editing DocBook documents using a DTD, and provided the document is valid, remove the DOCTYPE Declaration and use the document with the correspondng Schema. Scenario Two: edit XML files using an XML editor, perform all transformations outside of Word, and import final version of manuals into Word. In this scenario, I would not really be using Word. Right. That's what I'm suggesting above, except that if you open the HTML file in Word, and Save As....doc or OOXML, it seems automagically to become a Word document. But test it in their version first. Scenario Three: use IncludeText fields in Word files to take advantage of the XML transformation available in these fields. This scenario is very similar to the first one, and would probably exclude DocBook for the same reasons, I think. ;-) Are any of these scenarios feasible or worthwhile? Am I overlooking a more sensible scenario? For now, I think I am going to focus on scenario one and read up on DITA. Try the HTML route and see. ///Peter |
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