Pasting footnotes from DocBook-generated HTML into OpenOffice

[Jennifer Moore]

Hello all

I've been working on a document in DocBook and transforming to HTML, but
the final version will be pasted into OpenOffice and saved as Word (not
my choice but that's what it's got to be in).

It's all going well, except then I thought to myself:  we don't want the
footnotes to be links once they're in OO.

(This is because they're not going properly back and forth, but trying
to open the HTML thing instead - if there were a way to have internal
links in OO/Word then that would be the ideal solution, but I'd assumed
there wasn't (?).)

I had a look at footnote.xsl and thought I could create a custom
version.  But I've got in a tangle (probably not least because v tired
from all the actual writing, which has involved staying up till stupid
o'clock!) and it's not working.  I can get rid of the links, but then
(either because of OpenOffice's pasting defaults, or else because I've
messed up the attributes in footnote.xsl) the numbers stop being
superscript as well.  I've got about 40 footnotes and I would really
rather not have to tweak them all in Word...

It may not strictly be a DocBook question;  it may be more a matter of
knowing how OO treats HTML.  But I thought it was worth asking:  has
anyone solved this before and know what will work?  or got any ideas
about best way to proceed?

Thanks!

Jennifer

--
www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/

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[Rowland, Larry]

Jennifer,

Word does support internal links.

I am not sure which versions of DocBook and OpenOffice you are using
or the platform you are working on, but OpenOffice can import some
DocBook versions.  You set the document type to DocBook in the Open
dialog box and then open the XML file.  Your mileage may vary, but
if the versions of the tools you are using support this, it is an
easier path than pasting rendered content into the editor.

It might at least be worth a try.

There are also some rendering tools like OpenJade that produce RTF,
which could be opened directly in Word.  You can also get RTF from
the DocBook transforms by producing FO and then using something
like FOP to render it to RTF.

Regards,
Larry Rowland

-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Moore [mailto:jennifer@...]
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 11:31 PM
To: DocBook Apps
Subject: [docbook-apps] Pasting footnotes from DocBook-generated HTML into OpenOffice

Hello all

I've been working on a document in DocBook and transforming to HTML, but
the final version will be pasted into OpenOffice and saved as Word (not
my choice but that's what it's got to be in).

It's all going well, except then I thought to myself:  we don't want the
footnotes to be links once they're in OO.

(This is because they're not going properly back and forth, but trying
to open the HTML thing instead - if there were a way to have internal
links in OO/Word then that would be the ideal solution, but I'd assumed
there wasn't (?).)

I had a look at footnote.xsl and thought I could create a custom
version.  But I've got in a tangle (probably not least because v tired
from all the actual writing, which has involved staying up till stupid
o'clock!) and it's not working.  I can get rid of the links, but then
(either because of OpenOffice's pasting defaults, or else because I've
messed up the attributes in footnote.xsl) the numbers stop being
superscript as well.  I've got about 40 footnotes and I would really
rather not have to tweak them all in Word...

It may not strictly be a DocBook question;  it may be more a matter of
knowing how OO treats HTML.  But I thought it was worth asking:  has
anyone solved this before and know what will work?  or got any ideas
about best way to proceed?

Thanks!

Jennifer

--
www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/

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[Markus Hoenicka]

Quoting "Rowland, Larry" <larry.rowland@...>:

> I am not sure which versions of DocBook and OpenOffice you are using
> or the platform you are working on, but OpenOffice can import some
> DocBook versions.  You set the document type to DocBook in the Open
> dialog box and then open the XML file.  Your mileage may vary, but
> if the versions of the tools you are using support this, it is an
> easier path than pasting rendered content into the editor.
>

docbook2odf (http://open.comsultia.com/docbook2odf/) might also be  
worth a try. Last time I had a look at it, it was a bit limited, but  
these limitations may be different from the limitations of OO's  
builtin DocBook support. Just try and see what it does to your  
footnotes.

regards,
Markus


--
Markus Hoenicka
markus.hoenicka@...
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de



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[Jennifer Moore]

Thanks Larry & Markus.

That particular document is finished now (with a bit of manual tweaking
at the end) - I was already very close to the deadline when I wrote here.

But I'm still interested "for future reference" in the possibilities.

Larry wrote:
>> I am not sure which versions of DocBook and OpenOffice you are using
>> or the platform you are working on, but OpenOffice can import some
>> DocBook versions.  You set the document type to DocBook in the Open
>> dialog box and then open the XML file.  

Tried this.  The Open dialog box did offer me DocBook, and it did open
the XML file, but as XML!  showing all the <para> tags and so on.  Is
there some other setting I need to use to make it behave as a
final-formatted document?

Jennifer

--
www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/

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[Rowland, Larry]

That's interesting.  I tried it on Ubuntu Linux with OpenOffice 2.4.1 and
it worked, opening my sample DocBook file as a word-processing document.  
When I tried on my Windows XP system, with OO 2.3.1 (what was installed
there -- I don't use Windows very much and haven't kept it up to date),  
I had the same result as you did.  Not sure if it is the version, the
platform, or differences between the Windows and Linux environments.  I
had actually used OpenOffice to convert from MS Word to DocBook (with a
bit of fixing up afterward, but still a lot faster than cutting and
pasting between documents) and had noticed this feature described while
I was researching how to do the conversions.  I guess I didn't test
enough before recommending it.

Trying to move from a Word dominated environment to DocBook (or any real
structured environment) is tough, and the round-trip problem is a big one.
Bob Stayton actually worked on a set of transforms to go from DocBook to
WordML and back.  It is in the SourceForge stylesheets.  Bob discusses
DocBook and Microsoft Word on his excellent site at:

  http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/MSWord.html

The transforms apparently support a subset of the DocBook elements.  He
also mentions some other approaches.

Regards,
Larry



-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Moore [mailto:jennifer@...]
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 4:24 AM
To: DocBook Apps
Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Pasting footnotes from DocBook-generated HTML into OpenOffice

Thanks Larry & Markus.

That particular document is finished now (with a bit of manual tweaking
at the end) - I was already very close to the deadline when I wrote here.

But I'm still interested "for future reference" in the possibilities.

Larry wrote:
>> I am not sure which versions of DocBook and OpenOffice you are using
>> or the platform you are working on, but OpenOffice can import some
>> DocBook versions.  You set the document type to DocBook in the Open
>> dialog box and then open the XML file.  

Tried this.  The Open dialog box did offer me DocBook, and it did open
the XML file, but as XML!  showing all the <para> tags and so on.  Is
there some other setting I need to use to make it behave as a
final-formatted document?

Jennifer

--
www.uncharted-worlds.org/blog/

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