Re: Idea of a "strict" version of LO for publishers

[Svante Schubert]

Hi all,

there are different approaches to solving this scenario. Three that come
instantly to my mind:

   1. The existence of an ODF application where customers could select the
   allowed set of ODF features (e.g. disable all automatic styles for some
   scenarios - like translators) or allow only certain subsets of
   functionality (a certain type of tables and images must have a caption,
   etc.), has been a customer wish since my early times at StarOffice 1999. My
   bet would be that adding this ability to LibreOffice might be the most
   costly solution.
   2. The discipline of the editors and the alignment of requirements with
   predefined styles seem one of the easiest and cheapest solutions. But there
   would be no validation.
   3. Nevertheless, as Thorsten mentioned, TDF has well the ODF Toolkit
    in its portfolio, which contains for
   instance the ODF Validator  and the ODFDOM
   library  for
   creating, manipulating and reading ODF documents on the server-side using
   Java. Scenarios like, the listing and later elimination of automatic styles
   by exchanging them for adequate template styles might be handled by this
   library for the ODF specification. Also, as you required, some
   user-specific validation or constraint functions like the check that only
   one style is applied to a paragraph and one enrichment applied to a word
   could be added on top of ODFDOM. At least this would be likely my approach
   to solving the problem.

Have a nice weekend,
Svante


Am Sa., 9. Apr. 2022 um 18:30 Uhr schrieb Andreas Kage :

> From the view of a publishing scientist and lecturer LO is quite perfect
> to generate a variety of formats (PDF, ePub etc ) out of the odt file. The
> odt XML style can excellently handle the different Paragraph Styles
> (regular, list, legends and such) but also the implementation of different
> languages (greek, Special European Unicode) as well as other objects such
> as formulas and more.
> What is still missing and might be able to realize with your available
> budget to s certain extent is a systematic format set of Styles for the
> different scientific journals and University styles.
>
> --
> Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit GMX Mail
> gesendet.
> Am 07.04.22, 19:13 schrieb Yves Picard :
>
>> Hello,
>> On the advice of Sophie Gautier, I would like to tell you about one of
>> our "research and development" projects, for which I have a budget of about
>> two thousand euros. As a university publisher, we maintain electronic
>> publishing channels from word processing to several publishing formats
>> (html, epub, InDesign, PDF), passing through a pivot format in XML TEI.
>> This pivot format is itself derived from an XML export from Libre Office.
>>
>> A significant part of our work consists of tracking down and containing
>> artefacts from the word processor (Word or Libre Office), in particular
>> style nesting, automatic styles or language attributes, etc.
>>
>> I'm looking to test the idea of a "strict" version of LO that would
>> ensure that one style and one style only is applied to a paragraph, that
>> one enrichment and one enrichment only is applied to a word (no use of
>> styles like "accentuation" for example) or that a web link is always
>> findable despite the style applied. This would probably be an "amnesiac"
>> version of LO (without memory of the various manipulations) which would
>> either be used by authors (difficult to set up) or would be used by the
>> editor by loading an author file in this strict version.
>>
>> An alternative (and probably better) idea would be a "big cleaner" tool
>> that would flatten all style or attribute nesting to the author's work.
>>
>> I'm looking for an opinion from the Libre Office community on the
>> feasibility of such a development, while being well aware that it goes
>> against the logic of the word processor in some way. But such a version, I
>> believe, would meet the expectations of the publishing world.
>>
>> Thank you for your attention,
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Yves Picard,
>> Presses universitaires de Rennes,
>> France.
>>
>

Aw: Idea of a "strict" version of LO for publishers

[Andreas Kage]

 
 From the view of a publishing scientist and lecturer LO is quite perfect to generate a variety of formats (PDF, ePub etc ) out of the odt file. The odt XML style can excellently handle the different Paragraph Styles (regular, list, legends and such) but also the implementation of different languages (greek, Special European Unicode) as well as other objects such as formulas and more. What is still missing and might be able to realize with your available budget to s certain extent is a systematic format set of Styles for the different scientific journals and University styles. --Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit GMX Mail gesendet.Am 07.04.22, 19:13 schrieb Yves Picard :

  
   
Hello,
On the advice of Sophie Gautier, I would like to tell you about one of our "research and development" projects, for which I have a budget of about two thousand euros. As a university publisher, we maintain electronic publishing channels from word processing to several publishing formats (html, epub, InDesign, PDF), passing through a pivot format in XML TEI. This pivot format is itself derived from an XML export from Libre Office.

A significant part of our work consists of tracking down and containing artefacts from the word processor (Word or Libre Office), in particular style nesting, automatic styles or language attributes, etc.

I'm looking to test the idea of a "strict" version of LO that would ensure that one style and one style only is applied to a paragraph, that one enrichment and one enrichment only is applied to a word (no use of styles like "accentuation" for example) or that a web link is always findable despite the style applied. This would probably be an "amnesiac" version of LO (without memory of the various manipulations) which would either be used by authors (difficult to set up) or would be used by the editor by loading an author file in this strict version.

An alternative (and probably better) idea would be a "big cleaner" tool that would flatten all style or attribute nesting to the author's work.

I'm looking for an opinion from the Libre Office community on the feasibility of such a development, while being well aware that it goes against the logic of the word processor in some way. But such a version, I believe, would meet the expectations of the publishing world. 

Thank you for your attention,


   
   
Regards,
   
   

   
   
Yves Picard,
   
   
Presses universitaires de Rennes,

   
   
France.

   
   

   
  
 

Re: Idea of a "strict" version of LO for publishers

[Heiko Tietze]

Hi Yves,

educating users to work efficiently is also a goal of the design team. However, 
what you have in mind makes Writer kind of a text editor. One paragraph style 
(PS) means no headings, no lists, no citations... besides you miss all other 
style families like page style, character style. And I don't understand why 
nested PS raise problems - most attributes are just inherited and only a few 
change with the derived PS.


What you maybe think about is to avoid direct formatting (DF) - which is covered 
by the "Formatting (Styles)" toolbar [1,2]. You can also customize the UI and 
store this configuration in a template for further adjustments.


The second approach is to give feedback. Assuming users are aware of DF as a 
source of inconsistency, it is not easy to find those places where an attribut 
was set hasty. The Styles Highlighter [3] should solve this problem, and first 
steps for implementation have been made in a GSoC project last year [4].


If you think about some kind of styles checker that inspects the document 
whether it complies with a list of rules I suggest to realize this per macro. 
And do it after writing rather than trying to block the formatting.


If the goal is to have structured text input (that you process later regardless 
of the formatting) I could imagine form controls to be helpful.


Cheers,
Heiko

[1] Implemented for https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106781
[2] META ticket https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117022
[3] 
https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2019/11/05/proposal-to-conveniently-highlight-and-inspect-styles-in-libreoffice-writer/
[4] 
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/10/19/libreoffice-and-google-summer-of-code-2021-the-results/


On 07.04.22 17:23, Yves Picard wrote:

Hello,
On the advice of Sophie Gautier, I would like to tell you about one of our 
"research and development" projects, for which I have a budget of about two 
thousand euros. As a university publisher, we maintain electronic publishing 
channels from word processing to several publishing formats (html, epub, 
InDesign, PDF), passing through a pivot format in XML TEI. This pivot format is 
itself derived from an XML export from Libre Office.


A significant part of our work consists of tracking down and containing 
artefacts from the word processor (Word or Libre Office), in particular style 
nesting, automatic styles or language attributes, etc.


I'm looking to test the idea of a "strict" version of LO that would ensure that 
one style and one style only is applied to a paragraph, that one enrichment and 
one enrichment only is applied to a word (no use of styles like "accentuation" 
for example) or that a web link is always findable despite the style applied. 
This would probably be an "amnesiac" version of LO (without memory of the 
various manipulations) which would either be used by authors (difficult to set 
up) or would be used by the editor by loading an author file in this strict version.


An alternative (and probably better) idea would be a "big cleaner" tool that 
would flatten all style or attribute nesting to the author's work.


I'm looking for an opinion from the Libre Office community on the feasibility of 
such a development, while being well aware that it goes against the logic of the 
word processor in some way. But such a version, I believe, would meet the 
expectations of the publishing world.


Thank you for your attention,

Regards,

Yves Picard,
Presses universitaires de Rennes,
France.



--
Dr. Heiko Tietze, UX-Designer and UX-Mentor
Tel: +49 30 5557992-63 | Mail: heiko.tie...@documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint


OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Idea of a "strict" version of LO for publishers

[Thorsten Behrens]

Hi Yves,

a global 'mode' for LibreOffice text editing is likely pretty invasive
(i.e. lots of places need touching), so that's perhaps not the
LibreOffice project's first choice.

If downstream filtering of the document is sufficient for your use
case, then perhaps the ODFToolkit [1] library packages can help
you. They provide quite rich semantics on top of an in-memory DOM tree
of an ODF document. Svante and Michael (in Cc) are the maintainers.

HTH, Thorsten

[1] https://odftoolkit.org/

Yves Picard wrote:
> Hello, 
> On the advice of Sophie Gautier, I would like to tell you about one of our 
> "research and development" projects, for which I have a budget of about two 
> thousand euros. As a university publisher, we maintain electronic publishing 
> channels from word processing to several publishing formats (html, epub, 
> InDesign, PDF), passing through a pivot format in XML TEI. This pivot format 
> is itself derived from an XML export from Libre Office. 
> 
> A significant part of our work consists of tracking down and containing 
> artefacts from the word processor (Word or Libre Office), in particular style 
> nesting, automatic styles or language attributes, etc. 
> 
> I'm looking to test the idea of a "strict" version of LO that would ensure 
> that one style and one style only is applied to a paragraph, that one 
> enrichment and one enrichment only is applied to a word (no use of styles 
> like "accentuation" for example) or that a web link is always findable 
> despite the style applied. This would probably be an "amnesiac" version of LO 
> (without memory of the various manipulations) which would either be used by 
> authors (difficult to set up) or would be used by the editor by loading an 
> author file in this strict version. 
> 
> An alternative (and probably better) idea would be a "big cleaner" tool that 
> would flatten all style or attribute nesting to the author's work. 
> 
> I'm looking for an opinion from the Libre Office community on the feasibility 
> of such a development, while being well aware that it goes against the logic 
> of the word processor in some way. But such a version, I believe, would meet 
> the expectations of the publishing world. 
> 
> Thank you for your attention, 
> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Yves Picard, 
> Presses universitaires de Rennes, 
> France. 


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Idea of a "strict" version of LO for publishers

[Yves Picard]

Hello, 
On the advice of Sophie Gautier, I would like to tell you about one of our 
"research and development" projects, for which I have a budget of about two 
thousand euros. As a university publisher, we maintain electronic publishing 
channels from word processing to several publishing formats (html, epub, 
InDesign, PDF), passing through a pivot format in XML TEI. This pivot format is 
itself derived from an XML export from Libre Office. 

A significant part of our work consists of tracking down and containing 
artefacts from the word processor (Word or Libre Office), in particular style 
nesting, automatic styles or language attributes, etc. 

I'm looking to test the idea of a "strict" version of LO that would ensure that 
one style and one style only is applied to a paragraph, that one enrichment and 
one enrichment only is applied to a word (no use of styles like "accentuation" 
for example) or that a web link is always findable despite the style applied. 
This would probably be an "amnesiac" version of LO (without memory of the 
various manipulations) which would either be used by authors (difficult to set 
up) or would be used by the editor by loading an author file in this strict 
version. 

An alternative (and probably better) idea would be a "big cleaner" tool that 
would flatten all style or attribute nesting to the author's work. 

I'm looking for an opinion from the Libre Office community on the feasibility 
of such a development, while being well aware that it goes against the logic of 
the word processor in some way. But such a version, I believe, would meet the 
expectations of the publishing world. 

Thank you for your attention, 

Regards, 

Yves Picard, 
Presses universitaires de Rennes, 
France.