[Typo3-typo3org] documentation.typo3.org

Michael Scharkow mscharkow at gmx.net
Fri Apr 15 11:58:02 CEST 2005


Robert Lemke wrote:

> I tried to make a connection between our need for a manual format and the 
> general need for working with documents some TYPO3 users have. Maybe we can't 
> have this connection, because a manual is too structured and the OASIS XML 
> offers too less semantics.

I think the difficulty is that every format discussed here has too many 
features to be converted back and forth to some other format without a 
lot of work. For example, db2xhtml works wonderfully but the other way 
round sucks. Parsing sxw works (as you have yourself proven, but I don't 
know how much effort this is), writing sxw has not been done very 
frequently.

I stumbled over http://phpdocwriter.sourceforge.net/ yesterday, which 
can write sxw plus convert sxw to pdf, html and stuff. This seems the 
most promising tool so far, although it's pretty backwards, having a PHP 
class wrapping a Python class wrapping Openoffice API stuff which is 
Java or C++.

> Those who have experience with DocBook and OpenOffice and who are in favour of 
> using it: Can you prepare a document demonstrating how working with DocBook 
> in OpenOffice looks like in the reality? 

http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/

I did not get very far, because I could not install the export filter in 
my 2.0beta, which means (it took me some time to figure that out) that 
not even trivial sections (marked as heading X) work out of the box. The 
results were ridiculous.

> If that is as easy as writing manuals with OpenOffice like we do now, I don't 
> see a reason *not* switching to DocBook. 

Honestly, I had far better results with that French python script 
converting sxw than with 'native' OO export filters as mentioned above.

At this point I agree with the guys who deem it impossible to do WYSIWYG 
style docbook editing now.

Greetings,
Michael



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