Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: OpenOffice and DocBook

[shawn <javajunkie at koyuru dot com>]

"somewhat preliminary" is a somewhat of an understatement.

As someone completely new to docbook, I found OO useless at this stage.

1.0.1 only had support for sdocbook (which is what at that time I
intended to use), and in terms of useability wasn't really unless I
wrote stylesheet to transform the "docbook xml" that had been
transformed from the oo xml.

There are instructions for Xsl Transformation wizards though to open the
jar and improve the stylesheet used to generate the docbook xml.

On OO side, they could use a mechanism for allowing users to choose only
docbook xml tags.  As it is, all the sytles are mixed together so unless
an author knows the docbook tags (which are very limited currently -- no
tables for instance), they won't be able to use it effectively.


IMHO Shawn


Go go go OO!!  Could be a very useful tool someday.

On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 09:45, Bob Stayton wrote:
> Mark Evans asked me to forward this message
> about an open source DocBook editor.
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from "M. Evans"  -----
> 
> Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 13:21:47 -0700
> From: "M. Evans" 
> Subject: OpenOffice WYSIWYG DocBook
> 
> You might be interested to know that OpenOffice Writer can serve as a
> WYSIWYG DocBook editor. The support at this stage is somewhat
> preliminary, but worth exploring (see below). OpenOffice.org can
> always use more help if you care to participate in the project.
> 
> Native OpenOffice files are themselves XML, but the suite also
> integrates support for DocBook XML. There is a mailing list,
> http://xml.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=dev
> 
> Native DocBook and PDF import/export will feature in the next major
> release of OpenOffice (a few months away).
> 
> DocBook is already possible in the current release 1.0.1, albeit not
> 'out of the box.' You must install add-on components.
> 
> OpenOffice is fully cross-platform and even runs on Mac.
> http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html
> 
> To a large extent OpenOffice can import legacy Word files. (Worst
> case: RTF can bridge from Word to OpenOffice.)
> 
> Since OpenOffice itself uses XML file formats, the conversion to and
> from DocBook involves XSL transformations. These we can inspect and
> change if need be.
> 
> OpenOffice is free and open-source.
> 
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
shawn <javajunkie@koyuru.com>