[Docutils-develop] Re: ASCII to Word?

[David G. <go...@us...>]

Aahz wrote:
> Note that Word is actually not the end product; they then convert to
> Frame for typesetting.  (They just do their copy-editing in Word.
> <sigh>)

Don't let it get you down.  From my experience, editors & publishers
like to keep manual control of documents, even when there are better
ways out there.  They like to fiddle.  Could be because of their
typically non-geek backgrounds and distrust of automation.

> I've made it clear to them that this is going to be a
> toolchain-based formatting system, and they haven't said anything
> about me being able to deal with Word documents.

That's good, but you may want to nail down what they *will* be sending
back to you, and what they expect you to do with it.  Could save some
grief later on.

>>> In the absence of better advice, I'm going to convert to
>>> OpenOffice's XML format, then use OpenOffice to convert to Word.

[David]
>> I found docs on the StarOffice XML spec (which is the draft for
>> OpenOffice) at http://xml.openoffice.org/.  It looks much more
>> promising than RTF.  If it's a reasonable markup -- and it appears
>> to be so -- then I don't forsee any major problems with an
>> "OpenOffice Writer" for Docutils.  Any takers?

[Aahz]
> It'll probably end up being me, either by writing a direct converter
> or by writing XSLT for the DocBook format.

I'd be wary of a "Docutils -> DocBook -> OpenOffice" chain, since it's
indirect.  An OpenOffice writer for Docutils, written in Python,
should be straightforward.  If you want to use XSLT, I think a direct
"Docutils XML -> OpenOffice" conversion would be better, because
"Docutils -> DocBook" (which is almost finished, in the sandbox) is
already quite inexact. Going indirectly would just compound the error.
 You'd need a "Docutils XML" writer, but that would be trivial; I'll
make one soon.

I must warn you that until there are definite plans to include PyXML
in Python's stdlib, we can't use XSLT in core Docutils.  This is
because Docutils aims to become part of the stdlib, and therefore
can't require 3rd-party packages.  The sandbox is always open though!
;-)

> There will definitely need to be directives in addition to
> interpreted text, for "see" and "see also" entries; it may be easier
> for now to use only directives.

I'm not following.  Could you give concrete examples (perhaps before &
after)?

>> Either way, no support for any of this is implemented yet.  Can you
>> spell out your requirements?
> 
> Yes and no.  I think I'm going to need to spend some time figuring
> out the current state of reST before I do much formal specification.

Informal would be fine.  As you write the text, see what kind of
functionality you want and share them here.  Don't worry about the
mechanics (directive or interpreted text or substitution or ...) too
much, just show a minimal "before & after" example and we'll figure it
out together.

> But if reST has some corresponding functionality for every element
> in DocBook,

It doesn't.  As Lennon Day-Reynolds wrote (Doc-SIG, June 16), "DocBook
is the 400-lb. gorilla of markup formats".  And it doesn't work the
other way either; although the Docutils DTD is relatively short and
simple, we have a few structures that DocBook doesn't.  So it goes.

> I know it can be made to work for my purposes.  (Yeah, I know that's not
> going to happen. ;-)

Docutils can be made to work regardless.

> BTW, how should one display the result of "import this"?  It's not
> an enumerated list nor a bulleted list, but it's definitely a list
> of some sort.

It could be thought of as a poem, in which case the "verse construct"
is appropriate.  You participated in the Doc-SIG thread (May 10).  See
http://docutils.sf.net/spec/notes.html#body-verse; there's a list of
alternate names at the end of the item.

It could also be thought of as a bulleted list with no bullets.  Hmm
-- gives me an idea, for another name and for a way to think of the
construct: line list.

-- 
David Goodger  <go...@us...>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/