Re: MS Word as XML editor?

[Bob DuCharme <bob@udico.com>]

>   would you please provide any information on using MS Word as XML editor
> (ideally like FrameMaker+SGML)? Any links, ideas, addon software?

It's more like FrameMaker-SGML: there are ways to covert XML for use in MS
Word, formerly by converting it to RTF (or, in FM, MIF) and then reading
that in, and now there is the option of first converting the XML to HTML and
then reading that into Word.

To go from Word to XML, there are tools for converting RTF to XML[1] ), and
a rather convoluted option using Word's Save As HTML option[2].

I'm probably missing some tools and techniques for conversion in both
directions--for instance, I know someone who's written some Word macros that
saved a Word file as XML with element names corresponding to style names,
but I won't mention his name because I don't know if it got to the stage
where he would want other people to use it. The moral is, if you really want
to use Word to read an XML file, edit it, then save that as XML just like
the original only with your changes, you're out of luck. Your best bet is to
use another XML editor and then convert the output to Word as described
above for anyone who needs it that way.

[1] see http://www.infinity-loop.de/en/products.html and
http://www.logictran.com/
[2] Save As HTML, write a perl script or something to clean out all the
ill-formed garbage that makes Dave Raggett's Tidy
(http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/) choke on it, and run Tidy to create
a well-formed version of the HTML.

Bob DuCharme            www.snee.com/bob             <bob@
snee.com>      see http://www.snee.com/bob/xsltquickly for
info on new book "XSLT Quickly" from Manning Publications.