Subject:
Re: looking for an editor
From:
Tabatha Marshall ####@####.####
Date:
4 Dec 2003 01:21:44 -0000
Message-Id: <1070500870.11175.27.camel@mysticchild>
On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 16:50, Martin WHEELER wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Rick Meyerhoff wrote:
>
> > anything that met my requirements:
> >
> > open source
> > spell checking
> > DocBook XML validating
> > produces HTML
> > is past release 1.0
> > must work on Linux :-)
>
> In *theory*, OpenOffice.org v. 1.1 *should* meet all the above
> requirements.
>
> However, I use xemacs + psgml myself, and have no problem with it, so
> haven't actually bothered to find out how to install the XML filter into
> OOo to be able to specify the DTD to validate against.
>
> Has anyone else on the list managed this; and could they give us all a
> brief rundown on the hows and wherefores?
I finally have some information to report on my experiences with
OpenOffice for XML.
First problem was I tried to do everything on version 1.0.1. That was
obviously a problem. I have RH8, and it was installed via rpm packages,
so I ripped it out and did a full, new install of OpenOffice 1.1. It
took a while to find out 1.1 was a requirement for XML to work.
During the install process I believe I was offered the choice to install
the XML features. I have a tendency to do full installs of my office
programs, so I selected everything.
I can't offer any advice to those trying to update their current OO
1.1. Their "3 ways" aren't documented very well at the site
(xml.openoffice.org) and as of this writing, I can't even find THAT on
their site anymore. I think more current documentation is needed there
to walk people through the process. Most of this was unclear and I had
to pretty much experiment to get things working.
Well, after I installed everything I had some configuration to do. I
opened the application, and got started by opening a new file, choosing
templates, then selecting the DocBook template. A nice menu of
Paragraph Styles popped up for me, which are the names for all those
tags, I noticed (you can see I don't use WYSIWYG often).
With a blank doc before me (couldn't get to the XML Filter Settings menu
unless some type of doc was opened), I went into Tools --> XML Filter
Settings, and edited the entry for DocBook file. I configured mine as
follows:
- Doctype: -//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN (I put that in)
- DTD: http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd (I put
that in)
- XSLT for export:
/usr/local/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/share/xslt/docbook/ldp-html.xsl (I put it
there)
- XSLT for import:
/usr/local/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/share/xslt/docbook/docbooktosoffheadings.xsl (default, was already there)
- Template for import: /home/tabatha/OpenOffice/user/template/DocBook
File/DocBookTemplate.stw (default, was already there)
At first, if I opened an XML file that had even one parsing error, it
would just open the file anyway and display the markup in OO. I have
many XML files that use © and other types of entities which show up
as parse errors (depending on the encoding) even though they can be
processed through. But today I was unable to open any of those files.
I got input/output errors instead. Still investigating that one.
However when you do successfully open a document (one parsing with no
errors), it puts it automatically into WYSIWYG based on the markup, and
you can then work from the paragraph styles menu like any other such
editor.
To validate the document, I used Tools --> XML Filter Settings, then
clicked the "Test XSLTs" button. On my screen, I set up the XSLT for
export to be ldp-html.xsl. If you test and there are errors, a new
window pops up with error messages at the bottom, and the lines that
need to be changed up at the top. You can change them there and
progress through the errors until they're all gone, and keep testing
until they're gone.
If you want to open a file to see the source instead of the processed
results, go to Tools --> XML Filter Settings --> Test XSLTs, and then
under the Import section, check the Display Source box. My import XSLT
is currently docbooktosoffheadings.xsl (the default) and the template
for import is DocBookTemplate.stw (also default).
I think this might work for some people, but unfortunately not for me.
I've never used WYSIWYG to edit markup. Emacs with PSGML can tell me
what my next tag is no matter where I am, validate by moving through the
trouble spots, and I can parse and process from command line.
With OpenOffice, you have to visit
http://xml.openoffice.org/filters.html to find conversion tools. I
don't know how any of them work, but can experiment if anyone would find
that helpful.
If anyone has something to add to this, please feel free!
Tab
--
Tabatha Marshall
Web: www.merlinmonroe.com
Linux Documentation Project Review Coordinator (http://www.tldp.org)
Linux Counter Area Manager US:wa (http://counter.li.org)
