As a Word conversion tool, we use a modified version of Majix (http://sourceforge.net/projects/majix/).
The code on the SourceForge site has not been maintained since 2004, hence the
modifications reside on my server and can be available to anyone who wants it. I
have not had the time to prepare a real release and the project administrators
have not returned my emails. (Email me if you are interested in the modified
version of Majix).
I have modified the Majix base code a bit to emit Docbook 4.5
XML that can be compiled without errors.
Since most Microsoft Word documents are not structured, there can be a bit
of cleanup to
do in the document. The conversion will create a "Docbook" file
that can be compiled, and
may look acceptable in the output, but may not be
structured as you would like. Here are
some issues that you may find:
•
The conversion will be a Docbook "section". You may have to relabel this if this
is not
appropriate. The section will have a "FIX ME" title and the real title
may be a paragraph
directly below the title. This can be an easy copy and
paste.
• Most images are converted to WMF format and deposited into the
"images" directory. You
can convert or replace these figures. The titles for
the figures will be a "FIX ME" title.
• ENTITY declarations will be placed in
the XML headers. If these are not appropriate, you
will have to modify the
"entity*" declaration in the "Metriguard.tdef" file or manually edit
them in
the converted XML.
• All tables will default to 20 columns. You will have to
edit the number of columns and
remove unnecessary colspecs. If there are any
spans in the table, you will have to replace
these manually.
This is usually good enough for me to use for starting a Docbook XML
document. It usually doesn't take much time to clean up a document after
conversion and make it "production XML" .
Regards,
Dean Nelson
In a message dated 4/2/2010 11:45:33 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
writes:
On Fri,
02 Apr 2010 13:51:05 +0200, Nathalie Sequeira
<>
wrote:
> I am currently looking for a docBook
editor that is directed towards end
> users
> ...
> -
And especially:
> ability to import and transform rtf documents
preformatted in a
> specified way by contributing authors (or at least
open them and
> reformat, instead of having to cut and paste single
text blocks, which
> seems to be the necessary procedure e.g. in
XMLmind?)
Three or four years ago, we had to start our project with
MsWord. Once we
had XMLMind, we imported the Word doc into XXE (=
XMLMind Editor) using a
tool which I have long since forgotten. The
tool worked reasonably well,
and we were able to import the doc as a whole;
I think we had to do some
clean-up after we got it into XXE. Unless
you're doing this conversion on
multiple documents, I would consider that a
one-time cost, and a small one.
I haven't looked at tools to convert
Word to DocBook since then, but I
would guess that they have gotten
better. I don't know whether there are
tools that do both the import
and allow editing; conceptually, those are
rather different
tasks.
There was a slight learning curve for XXE, but we have now at
least half a
dozen people who have learned it and are reasonably happy with
it. (Some
are happier in XXE than in Word 2007, but your mileage may
vary.)
I do have a few minor gripes about XXE:
1) It doesn't handle
right-to-left text well (that's probably not an issue
for most
people!)
2) It doesn't do "track changes" (yet; that's on their list, and
there are
work-arounds if you don't mind having the changes flagged only in
your
PDFs)
3) It mungs the XML code by adding newlines in places no
human would add
them (but that's only an issue if you want to hand-edit the
XML in a
programmer's editor; it has no practical effect
otherwise)
I will also mention that they have an active mailing list
for users, and
they are *very* responsive to reasonable
requests.
Unless you are lucky, you will need someone who can figure
out how to
modify the standard configurations for XXE, and for DocBook as a
whole, to
do what you want. Our own setup is decidedly non-vanilla,
and it does take
some work to keep on top of things.
In sum, we are
satisfied customers of XXE. (We have gladly paid for the
Professional
version.)
Mike
Maxwell
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