Re: [docbook-apps] docbook to wordml conversion questions

[Steve Ball <Steve.Ball@explain.com.au>]

Hi Mayo,

I am the current maintainer of the roundtripping stylesheets.  One  
thing to note is that there are two different sets of stylesheets to  
converting to/from DocBook; the original stylesheets that are now  
deprecated, and a new set that have better support for the different  
word processors (Open Office, Pages) and are more easily  
maintainable.  It would help me tremendously if you could be clear  
about which set you are using.

As Fabian has pointed out, thee stylesheets assume valid DocBook.  The  
new set of stylesheets are designed to work with DocBook v5.0.

See below for further comments.

Cheers,
Steve Ball

On 05/01/2008, at 8:33 AM, Mayo Jordanov wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm having some issues with docbook to wordml conversion, and was  
> wondering if anyone on this list would be able to help me out.
>
> The document gets converted with no errors, but there are some big  
> problems with ordered and itemized lists.
>
> 1)the text in the lists does not show up. It is in the generated  
> wordml document, however there are some elements missing around it  
> (<w:r><w:t> specifically, as if the <para> inside of <listitem>  
> wasn't getting parsed by the xsl sheet).
> 2) the current docbook-xsl release (1.73.2) itemized lists don't  
> have bullets, but ordered lists have numbers, and with the docbook- 
> xsl snapshot bulleted lists have bullets, but ordered lists don't  
> have numbers.
>
> The document I'm trying to convert is as simple as:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
> <article>
> 	<para>testing</para>
>
> 	<itemizedlist>
> 		<listitem><para>bullet one</para></listitem>
> 		<listitem><para>bullet two</para></listitem>
> 	</itemizedlist>
>
> 	<orderedlist>
> 		<listitem><para>number one</para></listitem>
> 		<listitem><para>number two</para></listitem>
> 	</orderedlist>
> </article>
>
> To solve 1) I've tried  with both <para> and without <para> inside  
> of <listitem> elements, but that doesn't help, and according to the  
> comments in the xsl stylesheet it expects <para> (as it should). The  
> only solution I found was to modify the roundtrip/docbook.xsl sheet  
> and insert <w:r><w:t> around the contents of the <listitem> element  
> definitely helps to solve this problem. (I'm fairly fluent in xsl,  
> but don't have much experience with debugging xsl files, so putting  
> it there manually rather than trying to track why the <para> inside  
> of <listitem> is getting ignored was easier for me.) According to  
> the wordml 2003 spec (http://rep.oio.dk/Microsoft.com/officeschemas/welcome.htm 
> ) the <w:r><w:t> is required.
>
> My second issue seems to be related to the worldml template  
> document, and I haven't been able to figure out what exactly changed  
> in it and why it suddenly shows bullets but numbers are gone.

The template has been changed to better support the new stylesheets.   
Sorry if that has broken anything, but if you need the old version  
then grab that from the 1.73.2 distribution.

> I was also wondering if anyone is actively maintaining the docbook  
> to wordml xsl sheet (roundtrip/docbook.xsl) or if they are just  
> occasionally updated. Or are they intended just as an example and  
> should be developed further by users?

Yes, that's me.  They are intended as a complete application, but also  
include a customisation layer (documentation on that is coming soon).
>