Re: [docbook-apps] Tools for DocBook authoring by non-hackers

["Paul A. Hoadley" <paulh@logicsquad.net>]

Hi Christian,

On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 10:43:55AM +0100, Christian Roth wrote:

> The actual user then authors the document in Word, chooses it as
> input document in our tool and starts the conversion with the click
> on a button, which carries out the previously defined processing and
> conversion steps on that document.

That might be feasible.  Particularly in an environment where people
really only know how to use Word, and actually like using it.

> You will probably want to create a styleguide ("author lists using
> the Word list feature; don't create tables using tabs, but real
> tables; use styles, not manual formatting; use heading styles for
> headings; don't use nesting tables;" etc.) for the author and
> possibly a Word template with appropriately defined formatting
> styles that you pick up in the DocBook export configuration to
> achieve best results.

Certainly if I could appropriately constrain Word, this might be one
of the lower cost solutions.  I'll look into it.

> There are also XML editors which create an Office-like WYSIWYG UI to
> DocBook editing (I see that other respondents mentioned some of them
> already). However, it is still quite different from the usual
> Word-type editing, especially editing with invisible (in the layout
> view) container/grouping elements so authors will need training.

It seems almost insurmountable given the (technical) ability of the
authors I'm constrained by.  The screenshot of Epic Editor with the
form-style input window looked interesting---being able to enter even
just the document metadata in this way would solve some of the
problem.


-- 
Paul.

mailto:paulh@logicsquad.net
mailto:phoadley@maths.adelaide.edu.au