RE: [docbook-apps] anyone have a windows-based publishing infrastructure?

["Bill Lawrence" <scribe at matrixplus dot com>]

There are several reasons to produce a Word document that won't
"round-trip."

1) Other departments can use pieces of the documentation for their own
purposes.  For example, the training group can cut-and-paste sections of
the documentation into training materials.  (It is out of the question
for those departments to learn to use XML tools.)

2) It provides a way that offsite developers can use Word's commenting
and revision capabilities.  This means that we can email a draft (in
Word), a developer can comment on it, and then email it back.  

Until XML editing tools become as intuitive as Word (don't hold your
breath), most folks in office environments won't embrace XML as a
document solution.  Most managers won't authorize the training or put up
with the steep learning curve either.

Bill 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gisbert Amm [mailto:gia@webde-ag.de]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 9:03 AM
> To: 'Bill Lawrence'; 'docbook apps list'
> Subject: RE: [docbook-apps] anyone have a windows-based publishing
> infrastructure?
> 
> > The big drawback in the Windows world is that you'll get lots of
folks
> > in the company asking for output as Word documents instead of PDF or
> > help.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm told that the XMLMind FO
> > processor does a pretty good job of converting FO to RTF.  Most of
the
> > other RTF converters (such as JFOR) don't really to a good enough
job.
> 
> The approach of Mark Pilgrim
(http://www.diveintopython.org/about.html)
> uses
> the Python Win32 modules and Word itself as a COM object to produce
real
> Word documents. It worked for me (well, a simple test document) but
I've
> found it useless: There is no way back.
> 
> Why should I produce a document which can be changed when there's no
> possibility to get the changes back into my DocBook sources?
> 
> Regards,
> Gisbert Amm
> 
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