Microsoft Word to XMetal 6.0

[avenkatesan]

Hi,
I am trying to convert a Word Document (created in Office 2007) to XMetal document.
  a) Are there any importing tools?
  b) Is there a way I can validate the word document against a DTD/XSD?

Thanks.
-av

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[Su-Laine Yeo]

Hello Av,

XMetaL can work with a wide range of different document types, as long as they are in XML. There isn't really any such thing as an “XMetaL document,” because the documents that XMetaL works with are simply XML documents. There are many varieties of XML. How you go about converting a Word document to XML will depend on what variety of XML (e.g. what DTD or XSD) you want to use.

If you want to see how one of your documents would look as an XML document in XMetaL, the best way is to contact JustSystems for a free consultation: http://na.justsystems.com/content-about-contact-us . We can discuss your requirements, convert a few pages of your sample content for you, and demonstrate to you how we did it.

Another option is to use the “Paste” feature for DITA documents in XMetaL Author Enterprise. To use this:

1) Start XMetaL Author Enterprise.
2) Click File > New.
3) Click the “DITA Topic” tab on the dialog box that appears.
4) Select the “Generic Topic” icon, then click OK.
5) Select the text that you want to copy in Microsoft Word and paste it into this topic.

Note that this method is not designed for long documents, and the results are rarely ideal right away. This feature is preconfigured for DITA documents only.

Another option is to use a third-party product or service, such as http://www.stilo.com/Products/tabid/159/Default.aspx or http://www.dclab.com/. If you know what variety of XML you want to use and have a large amount of content to convert, you'll probably want to go this route.

After converting a Word document to XML, XMetaL will automatically validate it against its DTD/XSD whenever you open the document or through the Tools > Validate Document command.

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[avenkatesan]

Thanks Su-Laine for the quick reply!
That was helpful.
Just to give you a little more info on my project.
I have lots of pages in our system built using XMetal (With the dtd specification).
  We have a new set of pages (written in Word) that need to be converted to xml, so that authors who have XMetal can collaborate on the documents.

Based on your suggestion – this is what I am planning to do:
I will copy paste  the data from word document into XML Author.
(Point the XML Author to the DTD that is already being used to generate other documents in XMetal (this way we have uniformity across documents).
Let me know if I am going in the right direction.
Thanks.
-Av
 

Reply

[Su-Laine Yeo]

Hi Av,

If your DTD is DITA, that procedure would work at least to some extent, because XMetaL's “Paste” feature for DITA documents includes a script that converts Word content into DITA XML markup. Are you using DITA or a custom DTD/schema?

If your DTD is not DITA, your Word content would be converted to one very long text string when pasted. You would lose all formatting, including paragraph breaks. This is standard behaviour for XML authoring tools.

It would probably be best to contact a document conversion specialist and have them look at one of your Word documents and your DTD, and give you some options and quotes for converting them to XML. The Stilo and Data Conversion Laboratory groups have a lot of experience in this area. There are also other very good XML consultants out there who can help.

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