Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Hi Pepe, If you want your content to remain maintainable and manageable for a long period (e.g. decades), if you can afford it, and if you have a sufficiently large amount of content, then I strongly recommend investing the time and effort in an XML-based solution. My experience is in large scale educational/commercial applications, in which managing content in XML and using tools like ConTeXt to create beautiful print output, and alternate tools to create web output from the same source, is a very good solution. I can certainly let you know the technology we use, but some of it is commercial and expensive, and other bits are just complicated! I did a talk at the user group meeting which was kinda about this: http://context.aanhet.net/epen2007/share/duncan/ The first question to ask yourself is how much effort is your content worth. The rest of the answers flow from that, in my experience. :-) Duncan Hello, I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX. Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me currently). Reading the Wiki one of those solutions would be XML, but I know very little about the subject, so this email is to ask about experiences in similar endeavors, other solutions for the same problem and how practical this is. I suppose that I would use this for general writing and for academic as well (Maths and engineering). Thanks, Pepe ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On Jun 11, 2007, at 5:49 AM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
Some of the difficulties that I faced with simple documents was:
1. What is the xml equivalent of ||
2. What is the xml equivalent of ~ (nbsp; ??)
3. What is the xml equivalent of
\abbreviation {EECS} {Electrical Engineering and Computer Science}
and then \EECS\ and \infull{EECS}.
Hi Aditya,
I've just begun experimenting with xlm (because, as Duncan has
pointed out, I'm sure that every line I write is for eternity...).
Anyway, what I say here may be totally wrong, but here's how I treat
this stuff:
1. For || or |-|, I have defined an entity in my DTD:
!ENTITY conthyph -
In my environment for processing the xml files, I have
\defineXMLentity[conthyph]{|-|}
so I can write contextconthyph;specific and get the output I expect.
2. Yes, I use nbsp; with these definitions:
!ENTITY nbsp #x000A0;
\defineXMLentity[nbsp]{~}
3. Abbreviations: does xtag-ent.tex do what you want?
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it does appear to
work for me.
All best
Thomas
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Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On Sunday 10 June 2007 23:49, Aditya Mahajan wrote: On Sun, 10 Jun 2007, Pepe Barbe wrote: Hello, I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX. Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me currently). I don't think it is possible to come up with an universal elixir that does any format from source and is efficient to use. Plain text is the exchange medium I use. XML is too cumbersome to code by hand. Therefore I have solutions for specific situations. For example when a customer presents me with a non-fiction document already laid out in MSWord, I first save it as rtf. Then I run it through the program rtf2latex2e. This gives me an executable LaTeX file, with all the font changes etc. preserved. The I edit it in Gvim, using mass changes to convert LaTeX tags to an equivalent Context format. Some, like all the begin/end tags I just delete en masse. It is easy to go from the output of Context to plain text. There are plenty of pdf to ascii converters in GhostScript and PSUtils etc. The only big problem comes when there are columns involved. In that situation cut and paste from a pdf viewer window to an editor window can be helpful. -- John Culleton Able Indexing and Typesetting Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost. Satisfaction guaranteed. http://wexfordpress.com ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Hi Thomas,
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
On Jun 11, 2007, at 5:49 AM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
Some of the difficulties that I faced with simple documents was:
1. What is the xml equivalent of ||
2. What is the xml equivalent of ~ (nbsp; ??)
3. What is the xml equivalent of
\abbreviation {EECS} {Electrical Engineering and Computer Science}
and then \EECS\ and \infull{EECS}.
Hi Aditya,
I've just begun experimenting with xlm (because, as Duncan has
pointed out, I'm sure that every line I write is for eternity...).
Anyway, what I say here may be totally wrong, but here's how I treat
this stuff:
1. For || or |-|, I have defined an entity in my DTD:
!ENTITY conthyph -
In my environment for processing the xml files, I have
\defineXMLentity[conthyph]{|-|}
so I can write contextconthyph;specific and get the output I expect.
2. Yes, I use nbsp; with these definitions:
!ENTITY nbsp #x000A0;
\defineXMLentity[nbsp]{~}
Ah. Thanks. This was easy :)
3. Abbreviations: does xtag-ent.tex do what you want?
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it does appear to
work for me.
Hmm... somehome I had missed xtag-ent.tex. I was looking at xml
introductions, and did not look into ConTeXt sources. I will have a
look and see how it goes.
Thanks,
Aditya
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Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, John R. Culleton wrote: On Sunday 10 June 2007 23:49, Aditya Mahajan wrote: On Sun, 10 Jun 2007, Pepe Barbe wrote: Hello, I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX. Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me currently). I don't think it is possible to come up with an universal elixir that does any format from source and is efficient to use. Plain text is the exchange medium I use. XML is too cumbersome to code by hand. Therefore I have solutions for specific situations. For example when a customer presents me with a non-fiction document already laid out in MSWord, I first save it as rtf. Then I run it through the program rtf2latex2e. This gives me an executable LaTeX file, with all the font changes etc. preserved. The I edit it in Gvim, using mass changes to convert LaTeX tags to an equivalent Context format. Some, like all the begin/end tags I just delete en masse. This approach is fine if you have to convert only once. However, if you want to occassionally update the sources and get an updated html and pdf output, it can be too much work. For situations like this, I think that, at least for just text + graphics, xml is the most robust way. Of course, there are also plain text markup formats, like wiki markup, restructured text, textile, etc. If the document is really simple, they may be easier to use. There are many plain text markup to LaTeX convertor, but no plain text to ConTeXt convertor that I know of. I remember there was someone on the list who had written scripts to convert wiki markup into context and then to pdf. I do not know if these scripts are publically available. Aditya ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
2007/6/11, Aditya Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hmm... somehome I had missed xtag-ent.tex. I was looking at xml introductions, and did not look into ConTeXt sources. I will have a look and see how it goes. Thanks, Aditya Hi Aditya, the XML-Document example.pdf is a little bit outdated (Hans changed a few commands). The important files for xml are xtag-ini and xtag-ext, you should take a look into the contml module. Wolfgang ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Quoting Wolfgang Schuster [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 2007/6/11, Aditya Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hmm... somehome I had missed xtag-ent.tex. I was looking at xml introductions, and did not look into ConTeXt sources. I will have a look and see how it goes. Thanks, Aditya Hi Aditya, the XML-Document example.pdf is a little bit outdated (Hans changed a few commands). The important files for xml are xtag-ini and xtag-ext, you should take a look into the contml module. Thanks. I had not looked at them and some of the things about handling at the ConTeXt end are more clear now. But I think that I did not explain my question correctly. What I do not understand how are abbreviations etc. handled by xslt for conversion into html. For example, how do I write an xsl style sheet that converts this xml input abbreviation value=EECS, short=EECS, full=Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / p I study abbrev value=EECS which stands for abbrev value=EECS, infull=yes /p into html as p I study EECS which stands for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science /p I know that this is not the right list to ask this sort of questions, but I am hoping that there are xml users here and they will be able to point me to the right direction. Thanks, Aditya ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:42:23 -0400, Aditya Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks. I had not looked at them and some of the things about handling at the ConTeXt end are more clear now. But I think that I did not explain my question correctly. What I do not understand how are abbreviations etc. handled by xslt for conversion into html. For example, how do I write an xsl style sheet that converts this xml input abbreviation value=EECS, short=EECS, full=Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / p I study abbrev value=EECS which stands for abbrev value=EECS, infull=yes /p into html as p I study EECS which stands for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science /p I know that this is not the right list to ask this sort of questions, but I am hoping that there are xml users here and they will be able to point me to the right direction. I haven't followed the thread, but attached an idea of doing what you want with XSLT. Note that your example is not valid at all (commas between attributes, missing ending '/' for empty elements). BTW, it's not a good idea to use the same attribute (value) as an reference identifier, and for referencing to another element. Regards, myxsl.xsl Description: Binary data body abbreviation value=EECS short=EECS full=Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / p I study abbrev value=EECS/ which stands for abbrev value=EECS infull=yes/ /p /body ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Hello, On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:45 -0500, Pepe Barbe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX. Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me currently). Reading the Wiki one of those solutions would be XML, but I know very little about the subject, so this email is to ask about experiences in similar endeavors, other solutions for the same problem and how practical this is. I suppose that I would use this for general writing and for academic as well (Maths and engineering). XML is a good format if you need several output formats without losing information (XHTML, HTML, PDF, manpages, plain text). But I recommend some well established grammar (DITA, DocBook) to be able to use their official transformation tools, and to be able to use some XML WYSIWYG editor that supports them natively (like XXE). Strangely enough the PDF output is weakest point since most of the tools use FO and the related compilers (well known FOP, maybe xmlroff, maybe fotex) which can give very ugly output. The only good compiler I know is XEP, but it is not free (there's a full featured personnal edition that sticks its logo on every page). For docbook, you can try marginal tools to convert the XML to *tex formats (DocbookInContext, db2latex, dblatex). You can also directly use the native XML handling of context (method used by DocbookInContext) but IMHO it needs some context knowledge. Personnaly I use docbook, mostly because I have to produce PDF, HTML, and troff (manpages) outputs. It is even possible to convert some already existing manpages to docbook with doclifter. Regards, BG ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Quoting nico [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:42:23 -0400, Aditya Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks. I had not looked at them and some of the things about handling at the ConTeXt end are more clear now. But I think that I did not explain my question correctly. What I do not understand how are abbreviations etc. handled by xslt for conversion into html. For example, how do I write an xsl style sheet that converts this xml input abbreviation value=EECS, short=EECS, full=Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / p I study abbrev value=EECS which stands for abbrev value=EECS, infull=yes /p into html as p I study EECS which stands for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science /p I know that this is not the right list to ask this sort of questions, but I am hoping that there are xml users here and they will be able to point me to the right direction. I haven't followed the thread, but attached an idea of doing what you want with XSLT. Note that your example is not valid at all (commas between attributes, missing ending '/' for empty elements). Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted. I will now go back to using xml for simple documents and see how things go. BTW, it's not a good idea to use the same attribute (value) as an reference identifier, and for referencing to another element. Ok. I will keep this in mind. Thanks, Aditya ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
[NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
Hello, I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX. Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me currently). Reading the Wiki one of those solutions would be XML, but I know very little about the subject, so this email is to ask about experiences in similar endeavors, other solutions for the same problem and how practical this is. I suppose that I would use this for general writing and for academic as well (Maths and engineering). Thanks, Pepe ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On Sun, 10 Jun 2007, Pepe Barbe wrote:
Hello,
I have used ConTeXt in the past and I have been very pleased with it
and the results obtained, much more than LaTeX.
Now I am looking into a solution that would allow me to layout the
content ConTeXt and in other formats that ConTeXt does not (Forgive my
ignorance, if I am wrong) output, like HTML, Plain Text, or RTF (Those
are the formats that I can think of that are interesting to me
currently).
Reading the Wiki one of those solutions would be XML, but I know very
little about the subject, so this email is to ask about experiences in
similar endeavors, other solutions for the same problem and how
practical this is.
I have been exploring for something like this, but unfortunately have
not found anything completely satisfactory. For simple documents,
that is, only text, XML is the easiest. You have to determine a xml
dtd, and then it is relatively easy to write context commands to parse
it. It is also easy (but slightly cumbersome) to write a xsl
stylesheet to parse xml into html. Most browsers do the xslt
transformation on the fly. I found xml+css to be the easiest way to
go, since you can do almost a one-to-one mapping of your ConTeXt
commands. But most xml websites say that it is the old method and
should not be used.
To get plain text, you can do lynx -dump or something similar. I am
sure there will be ways to convert xml to rtf, but I have not explored
them.
Some of the difficulties that I faced with simple documents was:
1. What is the xml equivalent of ||
2. What is the xml equivalent of ~ (nbsp; ??)
3. What is the xml equivalent of
\abbreviation {EECS} {Electrical Engineering and Computer Science}
and then \EECS\ and \infull{EECS}.
I did not have time to explore further, so I left my xml experiments
there. For me the hardest part was to learn the xml way of thinking.
I suppose that I would use this for general writing and for academic
as well (Maths and engineering).
For more complext documents (esp math), I do not like xml as an input
format. Mathml is too verbose for me to write. Then there is the
question of how useful is it to have a xml + mathml document. ConTeXt
can parse it, and so can some of the browsers, but most browsers can
not. Converting to html + images looks ugly, unless you put in a lot
of effort. I have not tried converting xml+mathml to rtf or some
office format. For complicated documents, I do not see the use of
having an xml document. Most people are happy receiving a pdf. If
someone wants to edit my files, and cannot edit tex file, he/she will
not be able to edit xml files. If they use an office application to
edit the file, I will need to backport the modifications manually. So
he/she might as well use pdf annotation tools.
If you do want to explore furhter, perhaps the easiest way is to use
tex4ht, which does a decent job with most context documents and can
convert to html, xml, and open office format. I do not like tex4ht
because its html output is too verbose, and its documentation is a bit
hard to follow.
Aditya
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Re: [NTG-context] Write once layout everwhere (?)
On 6/11/07, Aditya Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reading the Wiki one of those solutions would be XML, try tbookdtd.sf.net myabe can help you. -- luigi If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : https://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___
