Re: Word > clean HTML / SGML > HTML

[Carl Stieren <carls -at- CYBERUS -dot- CA>]

To solve John Corneiller's problem - and that of anyone who want the power
of SGML without having to buy a $15,000 solution:


>I have a 2000-page SGML doc set. I have decided discontinue this format
>because:
>a) I need a special server software to convert to HTML for web serving
>b) SGML editors are expensive, not practical corporate solution
>
>So I'm converting the lot to HTML, which I'll then publish via HTTP, or on
>CD. So far so good, using Word macros (though if anyone has any Dynatext
>conversion utilities, I'd like to hear from them -- I'm having to recreate
>the links to graphics by hand).

My suggestion: use OmniMark.

OmniMark (my employer) makes a programming language that does text and
pattern-matching extremely well. In fact, the original uses of OmniMark
were to do just what you are doing - to keep the source documentation in
SGML and output to whatever format you want (MIF, RTF, HTML, Word, etc.).

We use it internally to keep a single source for documentation for one of
our products, SureSpeed. We use a simple DTD (SGML template, or "Document
Type Definition"), and we generate output to HTML in 11 seconds! We use
another OmniMark program to generate output to Microsoft Word in 2 or 3
minutes.

The original programs to do this were written in a couple of hours. After
we had written these programs, we wrote our source documentation - and
marked it up according to a simple DTD (which is way simpler than HTML).
While we were writing the documentation, another writer expanded our two
programs to add things like index and table of contents. In the meantime,
we could generate final output with the original programs for the editor
and technical reviewers to use.

OmniMark just came out with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
that has all the bells and whistles. You can paste in a script (or write
one) and step through it, watching the colored tags and the values of the
variables and seeing just what your program is doing.

People also use the IDE to learn OmniMark. (I used it to learn a new
feature of OmniMark 5 called "catch and throw".) True confession time: they
used to rant and rave at work about how "discoverable" the OmniMark
language was. Well, OmniMark was always easy to read, but some features
weren't that discoverable - until the IDE came along. Now you can see
exactly what OmniMark is doing at any point.

The OmniMark Home & School IDE is free for use at home or at school
(including colleges and universities), and you can use it for two weeks at
the office to try it out.

The OmniMark Developer IDE costs $696 US, and also allows you to compile
into byte code.

Also, there's a mailing list called OMUG-L you can subscribe to where users
share solutions and sometimes even programs.

So ... you can download the OmniMark Home & School IDE for free and try it
out for a couple of weeks at work, or play around with it forever at home,
from:

http://www.omnimark.com

Hope this helps.

- Carl Stieren
Technical Writer
OmniMark Technologies
Ottawa, Canada

P.S. I'm presenting a paper at SIGDOC 99 in New Orleans, Sept. 12-14, on
"SST: Using SGML, Single-sourcing, and Teamwork for Documentation". You can
find out more about the SIGDOC 99 conference from:

http://www.acm.org/sigdoc

P.P.S. The system I described above is a very simple one, and not to be
confused with the more complex single-source documentation system we have
for the OmniMark language, a system called OMDE (OmniMark Development
Environment). This system also uses OmniMark, but has its own user
interface, with internal writing, editing, reveiw and approval steps and
link generators and all.

- Carl
#

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