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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: MS files included with elements?


On Thu, 10 May 2001, david@usermode.org wrote:

> You're looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

I guess it might look that way, but I don't think I am.  I know
what the author's say in the book as well, and I see the point of
giving up control of formatting and style and why this is such a
pain point.  But that seems to apply when one is starting the
document in docbook.  It doesn't seem to apply when one is
converting existing wysiwyg documentation.

Maybe I'm wrong and still having my own issues with giving up the
control, but I think there is meaning in them thar fonts.

> If you see italics and the content suggests that it was used
> for emphasis, use <emphasis>. On the other hand, if italics
> were used to markup the title of a book, then use the
> appopriate DocBook tag. 

This is the type of thing I was looking for and therefore why I
disagreed above.  You are starting to answer my question.

Most of the time, in a wysiwyg editor, it is pretty clear why
someone has used a certain emphasis.  Looking at a wysiwyg page,
one should be able to make the translation to docbook because
there is meaning to the original authors wysiwyg organization and
style.  I just am lost sometimes, because I know the meaning the
author of the word doc is trying to get across but can't come up
with the corresponding tag which would support that meaning.

I will get it in time, but I was hoping there was some reference
point for making those translations easier.  It is probably very
similar to trying to translate between languages when their isn't
a direct one-to-one translation.

> If all else fails, save the Word file as plain ascii to filter
> out all remnants of style markup leaving only the bare
> information. Then start wrapping the appropriate tags around
> stuff.

Yes, I am currently trying to work with catdoc and catdoc.el for
this purpose, but I end up having to look at the word doc for the
formatting to get the "meaning" :-(

Sort of like, if I gave you the list,

States
Virginia
Maryland
Massachusetts
Cities
Boston
New York
Countries
US
Russia

How would you, without the common body of knowledge, know that
the list should have had the indentation

States
   Virginia
   Maryland
   Massachusetts
Cities
   Boston
   New York
Countries
   US
   Russia

Without the wysiwyg, I get the first list.  The wysiwyg gives me
the second list.  It is then my job to convert that to chapters
and sections in docbook.

> If something comes out not looking quite right in your final
> PDF document, then fiddle around with the stylesheets. By all
> means, don't fiddle around with the tags.

I'll keep that in mind, but I am going to stick with the canned
stylesheets for a little while.  I need to learn docbook and then
sell it to a boatload of Word users.

Thanks.
-- 
Galen
I don't want to be the rock.  Yeah, okay, what do you want to be?
I want to be the piece of glass.



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