Hi Rajveer,
Are you aware that OpenOffice.org uses the OpenDocument file format,
standardized at Oasis which is an XML based file format and thus we
already do have ONE standardized "markup" for OOo? Have a look at
xml.openoffice.org if not. So IMHO user-defined markup as you suggest
which is not this/our OpenDocument markup is probably not a good thing!
Alternatively what about just creating something like "View /
OpenDocument source" in the Menu for writer,calc,draw and impress
similar to what we have with "View / HTML source" in Writer/Web when
editing HTML with OOo instead?
You could just save the documents, open a simple kind of markup text
editor for editing the XML streams in the OpenDocument file and reimport
the document after the user decides to leave this source editor.
The OpenDocument file format is basically a zip file containing XML
files for content, formatting and meta-information plus binary files eg.
pictures.
Your component would have to treat text, spreadsheet, presentation and
drawing document saved by OOo as zip file and offer to edit the
contained XML files like content.xml, meta.xml, styles.xml.
And well yes doing something like this as an OOo extension is probably a
good idea! Have a look at http://extensions.openoffice.org/ and the
developer guide on how to create extensions.
And well you say "WYSWYG is OK for small documents but when they become
more involved, keep a track of formatting gets tougher."
And I would say that OOo already has the concept of styles which does
when correctly used make it easy to keep track of formatting even in
larger documents. Styles are quite similar to what you suggest with your
user-defined markup, they do have a user definable name and they do
contain info like it means BookMan Old 20 pt Red Color etc. the only
difference is that we a) already have them b) they can be created
changed and applied in WYSIWYG mode we don´t need any special markup
mode to use styles.
Kind regards,
Bernd Eilers
Rajveer Sangha wrote:
Dear Open Office,
I am an amateur programmer, knowing primarily c++ and c. i want to
develop a
certain extension for open office which will enable a 'markup mode' or
'interpreted mode' in open office, for easier formatting, much like LATEX.
Instead of writing the text and then applying various levels of formatting
to it, for example: headlines, sub-headlines, body text etc., we can write
our document like:
<heading>this is heading</heading>
<sub>this is sub heading</sub>
<body>Text formatiing is so easier this way in a large document</body>
User would be able to define thesemarkups, like <heading> means BookMan Old
20 pt Red Color etc.
WYSWYG is OK for small documents but when they become more involved, keep a
track of formatting gets tougher.
TEX and LATEX provide exactly this functionality but they have a steep
learning curve and are limited to mainly scientific community for largely
Math Typesetting.
Say I can make a toggle button for "Interpreter mode". Press the button
and
start writing your document in this markup fashion. Once you're done,
toggle
the button and the whole document is interpreted and displayed in formatted
manner and you able to write in that WYSIWYG manner too, ie without
interpreting.
I tried studying your programming guide to begin, but it doesn't provide
much insight into my problem.
Please Reply, Regards
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