Re: [Refdb-devel] new-document and doc-processing menu behavior

[Bruce D'A. <bd...@fa...>]

On Dec 9, 2003, at 3:22 AM, Michael Smith wrote:

>> With 2, could you then create the makefile if it didn't exist?  Say 
>> you
>> have an existing document that wasn't created with the "Create New
>> Document" feature you outline: choose process document, and if there
>> was no makefile, user is prompted for the style file and it's created
>> and the transformation is run.
>
> Yeah, that's doable. Seems like that's the way it should work. Only
> alternative is to have Emacs just emit a "No makefile found" error with
> some kind of instructions about what to do in order to create the
> makefile (which of course would need to be something different than
> going to the Create New Document" menu),

Maybe the solution should also be suitable for changing output styles 
too?  So then perhaps the new doc thing shouldn't specify and output 
style and create a makefile?

Let's see:

As with the database menu, styles are drawn from refdb.  When one needs 
to process the document but no style is selected, go to the style, 
choose the output option, and the makefile is created, and run with the 
appropriate option.

If later the user needs to change output styles, it involves the same 
process:  a simple menu click.

Menu structure might be:

	- Process Document
		- Style 1
			- all
			- html
			- pdf
			- xhtml
		- Style 2
			- all
			- html
			- pdf
			- xhtml

I'd like output to be customizable.  For example, I sent Bob S. some 
stylesheet customizations that use (x)html + css to fool MS Word into 
thinking it is importing a native doc file.  It would be nice, then, 
for me to be able to customize RefDB and its menu so I could have a "MS 
Word" output option.

Bruce