Re: [docbook-apps] Using OpenOffice as a DocBook editor

[David Tolpin <dvd@davidashen.net>]

> No matter how much you tell Johnny, "Don't use the the styles in  
> this list or
> apply local formatting." Johnny is just unable to contain himself.  
> Walla you
> sit for hours normalizing files before putting them through ooo2dbk  
> or after
> the have been run through ooo2dbk.


This is because the interface between visual and structural  
formatting is ill-designed. Insist of asking Johnny to stand on his  
ears, you should give him an editor that will accept his visual  
markup and guess what structural element a single-line bold paragraph  
without a dot at the end correspond to, and ask Johny whether it is a  
heading indeed, if it is in doubt. That's what a human is doing when  
reading rich text.

This way, the human will be doing what suits him most, that is,  
achieving visual expressiveness, the program will choose (and ask for  
a confirmation when needed) structural roles for the parts, and will  
infer style information and apply it to structured parts. It is easy  
to implement, it even worked to years ago (embodied as a Word  
plugin). As usually happens, there are other things that keep me from  
finishing it.

David