Re: DOC/RTF to ConTeXt via XML

[Duncan Hothersall <dh@capdm.com>]

Slightly OT, sorry:

>>OpenOffice.org does allow you to attach an XSLT stylesheet to an export
>>process which therefore allows you to do a (limited) transformation from
>>the visual markup which is its native format to a more structured one
> 
>  Why „limited“?  

Well, XSLT seems to have been designed, and certainly tends to be
implemented, as a tool for simple transformations of small XML chunks.
Obviously complex transformations can be constructed from a bunch of
simple transformations, but there comes a point when you should really
just use a better tool - though these tend to cost serious money (e.g.
OmniMark). Also, most XSLT implementations use the DOM model, which is
fine for a 50Kb file but will be incredibly resource-hungry if you're
processing files of 5Mb. At that point you want a streaming model, and
for a streaming model you want a better suited language than XSLT. As I
say, horses for courses. For article-length pieces and simple
transforms, XSLT might suffice.

>  Also, don't limit your authors to Word.  Offering Word is obviously a
> requirement, but if you go the way through OOo, there would be no point
> in not offering an OOo template file.  If you are using a standard xml
> format, such as (a subset of) DocBook or TEI, you probably should accept
> articles in that format, too.  And, of course, ConTeXt.

Absolutely; particularly if you can offer authors an incentive or direct
benefit from adopting OO.o, such as speed of turnaround of proofs, etc.