[StrongED] Re: StrongED Instructions

[Tim Hill <tim@xxxxxxxxx>]

In article <d00ee9ab56.John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John Rickman
<rickman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In message <mpro.p13slx01fqtqk025n.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Steve
>           Fryatt <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >> We could operate a two, or three step process: 1. write-up  discrete
> >> topics in plain text - anyone in the commmunity can do this. 2. an
> >> expert can wrap the text in XML or whatever

> > If you can write simple HTML web pages, you can mark up a manual in
> > XML. HTML is just one subset of XML, and in this case you define tags
> > for things like sections of the document, images, the names of icons
> > in dialogue boxes, menu entry names, and so on.

I find this thread highly amusing.

The beauty of XML it's flexibility and all those marking up content need
to know are the tags used for the manual and where to use them.

I assume the XML would use an external, private DTD and the authors would
share the agreed tags so that the body of the XML pages could end up
looking something like...

<page>
<subject>Manual Format</subject>
<sub-head>
> However simple XML tagging is one more learning hurdle for any
> potential contribitor.
</sub-head>

<comment>
> Furthermore, assuming we have an editor (there can be only one!) 

Wikipedia has only one editor? 300,000 people have each edited it more
than 10 times. This is thanks to its standardised format.

> and
> assuming he or she would like help with the writing of the content. It
> is likely that the Ed would prefer submissions either in plain text or
> in word processor format. This may be less work for the editor than
> retagging to suit the style of the manual.

> If we have more than one person tagging, is there not a danger of
> stylistic clashes?
</comment>

<response>
It's not a question of retagging to suit the style of the manual or
something personal. Well, yes I suppose it literally is but it's more a
question of keeping the content separate from what it looks like. XML
tags describe what each item is, with a <label>, like this 'page'. Then a
parser program takes that XML content and spits out text, Word, PDF,
EasiWriter, Draw, HTML, and whatever other esoteric formats your users
demand. Nobody gets an XML format manual to read. ;-)

XML looks like HTML but they are not the same thing. One has no
prescribed tags but you make up your own for storing data in a human and
machine readable form, the other describes how to display something and
must conform to standard tags. In converting this 'page' to HTML, the
<tags> would be removed and  things like styles, <p> and <br> would be
added to create HTML by the parser; much more markup would be added to
create a pile of linked HTML pages to accompany the software. perhaps
every instance of HTML would be in small caps, for example, but not
marked up that way in the XML but decided for the parser stage. However,
shouldn't this stuff all be online these days? 

I'm a fan of parsers being written in PHP. If a manual's source (XML)
files are kept online (but not necessarily directly downloadable by Joe
or Jill Public) people can see the very latest version of the manual in
whatever formats the parser can generate on the fly from that latest
version of the XML. I do something similar with a couple of CSV files and
from them PHP can generate 20 differently ordered listings in HTML.
Fortunately, many of the subroutines to help achieve this sort of thing
are freely available: don't think that web developers need to invent
everything from scratch.

Google "PHP convert XML to PDF" for examples. Other filetypes too.


"I'm going to submit my content in the format my favourite editor creates
and someone can translate it"

Yes, fine, as long as someone is prepared to do that.

A friend introduced me to the nightmare of sending me .doc files from
which I had to extract the content and then markup as HTML and having to
lose all his formatting as I went. Although each heading was bold and
italic (but not a heading per se so HTML export was useless) he would
underline things which weren't links (it confuses people) and the fonts
he chose had to be ignored as they were unavailable webside. Even all his
sentence-ending punctuation is preceded by a space FFS . Give me strength
! "Just send it as plain text in the body of an email or in a text file"
I would plead. When he upgraded to Win 10 he bought MS Office so now I
get .docx files instead. That goes into Libre Office on the PC then I
copy 'n' paste it into Notepad to remove all the crap. All the hard work
he puts into his tidy layout is largely* wasted. Oh, and all those tabs!
Love those tabs. He is bigly on the tabs.

It's really hard to ask some people to step away from the layout, some of
which is inspired and hard-wired by use of an Imperial 66 tripewriter to
cut stencils for a Banda copier. A one-shot content and layout solution
if ever there was one and some people still think like this.

We need to get more used to content first, layout later and not do both
at the same time. it is also not beyond the wit of men to send out
template files which contain available tags with comments and examples
for the less experienced.

<!-- replace PAGE TITLE below in subject tags with main page heading -->
<subject>PAGE TITLE</subject>
...

So, anyway, looks like we'll have XML files generating output to many
filetypes and somebody who's taken it upon themselves to publish (only)
an HTML version which will now fork.

Super.

                      
*entirely
</response>
</page>

-- 

Tim Hill

timil.com : tjrh.eu : butterwick.eu : blue-bike.uk : youngtheatre.co.uk

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