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List:       lyx-devel
Subject:    Re: Progress on the MS Word to LyX conversion (xml)
From:       Charles de Miramon <cmiramon () kde-france ! org>
Date:       2008-07-24 10:15:11
Message-ID: g69knf$6gm$1 () ger ! gmane ! org
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Abdelrazak Younes wrote:


>> Xml is slow to parse,
> That's a generalisation that is not really true, it really depends on
> your XML syntax. We are free to do what we want, so I am pretty sure the
> parsing will be as fast as nowadays. Really, do you see an increased
> difficulty when parsing <document>...</document> instead of
> \begin_document...\end_document ?

The slowness of XML parsing has been a complaint for KWord, OpenOffice,
MsWord2007. If you cannot use a parser from the shelf (QtXml, LibXml2) but
have to tweak something, what is the point.
   
> 
> Because XML is easy to transform. That is really the *main* reason. For
> example the transformation to TEI will be very, very simple, believe me.
> Not only that, but also transformations to HTML, ODF, etc.

If it was true, there would be today rocksolid ODF <-> Docbook, ODF <-> TEI,
ODF <->XML-FO converters. The idea that is very easy to transform one xml
jargon to another xml jargon, is a myth.

> Heck, even a 
> transformation to LateX would be possible if one day we decide that it
> is not worth maintaining the LateX code in C++.

At some point in Koffice development, Robert Jacolin wrote a XSLT converter
between KWord first XML format and LaTeX. He left the project but nobody
continued its work because everybody hates XSLT.

XML is nice for archival, interchange, standardized formats but is not an
universal swissknife.

Cheers,
Charles
-- 
http://www.kde-france.org

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