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List:       openoffice-discuss
Subject:    Suggestion for an XML import/export filter
From:       "Thomas Jacqueau" <thomas.jacqueau () inha ! fr>
Date:       2003-05-31 7:59:05
Message-ID: 004901c3274a$82b307a0$0200a8c0 () inha ! 2k
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Hi all,

Would it be difficult to provide an XML import/export filter that would simply map \
tags in the xml document with style names in writer ?

There wouldn't be any DTD control nor anything of the sort, but simply the ability to \
get a tagged document according to whatever styles are defined in the writer \
document.

Of course this filter would not allow importing of any xml document with too \
intricated structure, but would be a great step in making writer an XML frontend for \
some kinds of more or less simple document-oriented XML files.

The paragraph and character styles provide a two levels natural tagging structure. It \
could be enhanced with the convention that numbered paragraph style names (like foo1, \
foo2, foo3...) are supposed to be imbricated <foo> tags.

Another useful convention would be to map simple text formatting (not styles) like \
italic, bold, superscript, to default tags like <em>, <b>, and <sup>.

There is no obvious way to cope with XML attributes, though some attributes could be \
introduced at the "paragraph" level by mapping them to character styles named \
"att:foo" and their content simply displayed at the beginning of the paragraph. 

It would be nice that index entries be mapped to some <index ...> tags too.

Does this sound stupid or rather inspiring ? Many of us are looking for some good, \
free, XML editor for document-oriented XML, and as far as I know none is to be seen \
around. I feel pretty sure that oowriter can be pushed in that direction ! 

Thanks
Thomas Jacqueau



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