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XML editor with PDF/Word export?
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
Posts: 2
XML editor with PDF/Word export?
Hi,
I`m looking for an XML editor to edit relatively simple scientific
documents. Since the output would be used both on a website and for
publishing, I would like to have the option of exporting into more
traditional formats like PDF or Word.
So far the only application I`ve found that is capable of it is Adobe
FrameMaker. Are there any other commonly used alternatives?
One complication is that the text includes Greek letters and
sub/superscripts. I`m not sure how the editors will be able to deal
with them.
Thanks,
Simon
Joined: 25 Jun 2005
Posts: 2
XML editor with PDF/Word export?
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"simonf" <simonf@...> writes:
> I`m looking for an XML editor to edit relatively simple scientific
> documents. Since the output would be used both on a website and for
> publishing, I would like to have the option of exporting into more
> traditional formats like PDF or Word.
When you said XML and simple, the first thing that came to mind was
parsewiki (http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~villate/parsewiki/) or equivalent.
> One complication is that the text includes Greek letters and
> sub/superscripts. I`m not sure how the editors will be able to deal
> with them.
I don`t know if parsewiki handles that out of the box, but you might be
able to add that feature.
Of course, DocBook should be able to deal with your requirements, and
LaTeX could, too, except for the XML part.
All of these are "processes," not editors, though. Any old editor
should work; I use emacs with nxml-mode (or with AUCTeX for LaTeX).
Bill
- --
Bill Harris http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/
Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541
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Joined: 13 Jun 2003
Posts: 39
XML editor with PDF/Word export?
> I`m looking for an XML editor to edit relatively simple scientific
> documents. Since the output would be used both on a website and for
> publishing, I would like to have the option of exporting into more
> traditional formats like PDF or Word.
>
> So far the only application I`ve found that is capable of it is Adobe
> FrameMaker. Are there any other commonly used alternatives?
>
> One complication is that the text includes Greek letters and
> sub/superscripts. I`m not sure how the editors will be able to deal
> with them.
You might also want to look beyond XML. This is just my own
opinion, but I see XML`s strengths as:
- Reusing a library of short- to medium-length snippets to
insert (unchanged) in a variety of documents.
- Maintaining documents over a number of years, perhaps
outliving the original authoring tools.
- Organizing large documents, perhaps extracting shorter
versions (e.g. for quick references) from one base.
- Interchanging documents between users or organizations.
On the other hand, I don`t see XML providing much benefit for
one person writing short, standalone documents that won`t get
updated much after initial publication. You can certainly get
the job done using an XML workflow, but it might be easier to
use an unstructured tool built for your purposes.
For example... at the risk of oversimplifying the description,
LyX (www.lyx.org) is a graphical frontend to LaTeX and should
be able to handle anything you throw at it for scientific
documents. It can export to PDF & HTML out of the box (HTML
requires a converter program, see the documentation), and can
export to a DocBook subset with an add-on. Word is a bit more
difficult; I think the easiest way to get to Word would be to
export to HTML and load that into Word.
If you`re so inclined, you could write a script to export
LyX to just about anything -- including other XML doctypes
like DITA. If you *need* XML (beyond HTML or simple DocBook)
for some reason, you would be better off with an XML editor
though.
--
Larry Kollar, Senior Technical Writer, ARRIS
"Content creators are the engine that drives
value in the information life cycle."
-- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc
Joined: 24 Jun 2005
Posts: 2
XML editor with PDF/Word export?
Larry and Bill,
Thanks for your answers. For reference, I`ve found since that Adobe
InDesign and Quark Xpress with the XML Plus extension do something akin
to what I want.
I would like to use XML because the end users need to enter a couple of
thousand "protocols" - relatively complicated data structures that are
to be published via PDF and on the web site. The web site is already
setup to accept XML input (I`ve inherited the application), and I`m
trying to come up with the least complicated way of working with these
data. Since the end users are mostly publishing folks, and use Quark
already to boot, any kind of command-line tools, and probably even TeX,
are out of the question.
Lyx would have worked, but I do need to separate the data layer from the
presentation.
Simon
Larry Kollar wrote on 06/27/2005 11:40 AM:
> You might also want to look beyond XML. This is just my own
> opinion, but I see XML`s strengths as:
>
> - Reusing a library of short- to medium-length snippets to
> insert (unchanged) in a variety of documents.
>
> - Maintaining documents over a number of years, perhaps
> outliving the original authoring tools.
>
> - Organizing large documents, perhaps extracting shorter
> versions (e.g. for quick references) from one base.
>
> - Interchanging documents between users or organizations.
>
> On the other hand, I don`t see XML providing much benefit for
> one person writing short, standalone documents that won`t get
> updated much after initial publication. You can certainly get
> the job done using an XML workflow, but it might be easier to
> use an unstructured tool built for your purposes.
--
Simon (Vsevolod ILyushchenko) simonf@...
http://www.simonf.com
Terrorism is a tactic and so to declare war on terrorism
is equivalent to Roosevelt`s declaring war on blitzkrieg.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. national security advisor, 1977-81
Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 6
XML editor with PDF/Word export?
if your source documents are in non xml format and you need to convert
them to xml for downstream use then you might want to take a look at
exegenix which does such conversions using their technology.
[www.exegenix.com]
regards
shrikant
On 6/24/05, simonf <simonf@...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I`m looking for an XML editor to edit relatively simple scientific
> documents. Since the output would be used both on a website and for
> publishing, I would like to have the option of exporting into more
> traditional formats like PDF or Word.
>
> So far the only application I`ve found that is capable of it is Adobe
> FrameMaker. Are there any other commonly used alternatives?
>
> One complication is that the text includes Greek letters and
> sub/superscripts. I`m not sure how the editors will be able to deal
> with them.
>
> Thanks,
> Simon
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Warm Regards
Shrikant Pathak
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