jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) (09/30/90)
We are considering switching our textprocessing and desktop publishing
to our workstations (Risc/Ultrix). We want to use the DECwrite
documentation tool. The functionality of DECwrite seems sufficient for
our purposes.
However, we have lots of existing documentation, that must be imported
in the new tool. Fortunately, all documents adhere to some very keen
standards that make it possible to exchange the contents of the
documents between several text processing tools. But until now, I
haven't found a way to import our documents into DECwrite. Yes, I can
import them as plain text, but that would need extensive (manual)
postprocessing.
What I need is a way to tell DECwrite that it must apply specific
styles to the paragraphs while loading the document. (The load
document is generated automatically and I can control what is
generated, and how.) I think this can be done with a suitable CDA
converter, but I don't have any experience with writing one.
Can FrameMaker do this? This could be a reason to choose FrameMaker
instead of DECwrite.
Any help is appreciated.
Johan
--
Johan Vromans jv@mh.nl via internet backbones
Multihouse Automatisering bv uucp: ..!{uunet,hp4nl}!mh.nl!jv
Doesburgweg 7, 2803 PL Gouda, The Netherlands phone/fax: +31 1820 62911/62500
------------------------ "Arms are made for hugging" -------------------------jg@crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys) (10/05/90)
Look at the CDA converter/converter libraries. They are a seperate utility from DECwrite, but convert to and from lots of formats... - Jim
morris@uninet.dec.com (Tom Morris) (10/08/90)
Path: uninet.dec.com!morris Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop,comp.text,comp.sys.dec,comp.unix.ultrix,mail.framers Distribution: comp References: <1990Oct3.184114.22869@Matrix.COM> From: morris@uninet.dec.com (Tom Morris) Message-ID: <1990Oct8.142137@uninet.dec.com> Reply-To: morris@casee.enet.dec.com Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Valbonne, France Subject: Re: Importing documents in DECwrite / FrameMaker |> What I need is a way to tell DECwrite that it must apply specific |> styles to the paragraphs while loading the document. (The load |> document is generated automatically and I can control what is |> generated, and how.) I think this can be done with a suitable CDA |> converter, but I don't have any experience with writing one. Without knowing what kind of document format you are trying to import into DECwrite it is hard to be specific, but I can think of two other possibilities in addition to the CDA Converter Library mentioned by Jim Gettys. The first possibility is to look for a CDA converter from someone other than Digital if the converter you need isn't in the Digital converter library. The second possibility is to use DECwrite's macro facility to apply search for markup tags in the imported document, delete them, and then apply the relevant style to the element. This will obviously only will work if you document has easily identifiable markup or you can generate the same, but it is a technique that I know several people have used successfully. -- Tom Morris morris@casee.enet.dec.com Digital Equipment, Centre Technique Europe S.A.R.L DTN 828-5729 B.P. 129 - Sophia Antipolis Tel. +33 92 95 57 29 06561 Valbonne Cedex - France Fax +33 93 65 41 58
morris@uninet.dec.com (Tom Morris) (10/24/90)
Several weeks ago Johan Vromans asked about labor efficient ways to import text from other text processing and desktop publishing tools into DECwrite, preserving style element tagging. (article <1990Oct3.184114.22869@Matrix.COM>) |> What I need is a way to tell DECwrite that it must apply specific |> styles to the paragraphs while loading the document. (The load |> document is generated automatically and I can control what is |> generated, and how.) I think this can be done with a suitable CDA |> converter, but I don't have any experience with writing one. Jim Gettys already suggested checking out the CDA Converter Library, but I recently received some more detailled instructions explaining exactly how to do this which I thought would be worth passing along. The specific instructions are for importing text from Interleaf, but this should generalize to other formats which contain explicit markup. These instructions were created by a publications consulting group here at Digital. They offer a wide variety of services that may be of use to folks publishing problems, so I've included contact information for them at the end of this post. Here are the instructions from Dan Dube of the Customer Publications Consulting group: -- Begin Quote -- "The process I established for converting Interleaf text into DECwrite is listed below: Converting Interleaf text into DECwrite 1) Save your Interleaf document in INTERLEAF ASCII format. (This is basically an ASCII file with Interleaf markup.) The beginning of this file contains information about each component in the document (typeface, leading, tabs, etc.) 2) Use the information from the Interleaf ASCII file to create a corresponding template in DECwrite. You must create a corresponding DECwrite element for each Interleaf component. Save this DECwrite template with a .DOC_STYLE file extension. 3) EXPORT this document to AFS format. (NOTE: You *must* have CDA Converter Library installed on your system to do this.) This will create an AFS style reference file that you can use later. 4) In Interleaf, open a document you wish to convert. At the beginning of each section of text in the document, add the component name in angle brackets. For example, if you have a component named "para", insert <para> at the beginning of the text of that component. At the end of the text of that component, insert the same tag, with a backslash before the tag name. For example, at the end of the "para" component, insert </para>. (This is similar to an ending tag in VAX DOCUMENT.) You need to do this for your entire Interleaf document. 5) Once you have completed tagging the Interleaf document, use the Interleaf STRIPFILT procedure to remove all of the Interleaf markup. This will leave you with a tagged ASCII file. 6) You need to add a few commands to this file: - at the top, add <afs$styleref>afs$filename.ddif (copy this line from the AFS file you exported from DECwrite) - the next line, add this command: <flow.0> - at the bottom, add this command: </flow.0> 7) Open a new DECwrite file. When you are prompted for a style file, choose NONE. 8) Import (in AFS format) the tagged ASCII file you created from Interleaf. After you've imported the file, very little cleanup work should be required. Each block of text should be a separate element with the correct formatting information. --End Quote-- --Begin short advertisment-- The folks that created these instructions do consulting on all aspects of publications from planning to writing to production. Their advertising blurb says that they know about: on-line documentation, user interface design, electronic publishing, internationalization, Digital's Compound Document Architecture, hypermedia, demand print, and electronic film mastering. For more information, contact one of the following people: Karen Andersen, +1 603-884-7591 John Franzosa, +1 603-884-5363 Carolyn Haneke, +1 206-952-0605 Polly Prescott, +1 603-884-1535 --End advertisment-- -- Tom Morris morris@casee.enet.dec.com Digital Equipment, Centre Technique Europe S.A.R.L DTN 828-5729 B.P. 129 - Sophia Antipolis Tel. +33 92 95 57 29 06561 Valbonne Cedex - France Fax +33 93 65 41 58