Split word documents into small fragments and create XML file

Hi Guys,

Is this possible to split a word document in to xml fragments and those xml fragments can be used as different forms of DCR.

Idea is user should be able to download the DCR to his local machine, while downloading the dcr it should be covert into word document, user should be able to edit the word document and send back to TS and then it should convert back to dcr. Using that DCR information we can easily generate web pages but is there any specfic tools available for this conversion or we need to go for ample amount of customization?

We an enhance this further to split the XML form into multiple DCRs so that document header footer come from different dcrs

We dont want to use TS templates as
document information is huge and to load that information in the DCT will be slow
users are more comfortable to edit the word docs rather than in TS templates
They are editing them in the word format at the moment and they want to stick with the same process unfortunately

Your inputs are appreciated as always

TS6.5 + sp2

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Adam Stoller

Hi Guys,

Is this possible to split a word document in to xml fragments and those xml fragments can be used as different forms of DCR.

Idea is user should be able to download the DCR to his local machine, while downloading the dcr it should be covert into word document, user should be able to edit the word document and send back to TS and then it should convert back to dcr. Using that DCR information we can easily generate web pages but is there any specfic tools available for this conversion or we need to go for ample amount of customization?

We an enhance this further to split the XML form into multiple DCRs so that document header footer come from different dcrs

We dont want to use TS templates as
document information is huge and to load that information in the DCT will be slow
users are more comfortable to edit the word docs rather than in TS templates
They are editing them in the word format at the moment and they want to stick with the same process unfortunately

Your inputs are appreciated as always

TS6.5 + sp2

I think some of the answer may rely on what version of Word you are using. I believe the most recent version(s?) support saving Word documents as XML rather than as .doc files - if so, then this could save a considerable amount of effort on your part though it will still require user training.
Older versions (and probably the current versions) support "Save as Web Page" (or similar) - though the degree to which those pages are really worthy of being put on the web is a more subjective issue.
In either case - you're pretty much relying on TS for versioning support only as far as I can tell. The lack of using FormsPublisher means that conformance to look-and-feel of your web pages can only be done reasonably via human review.

You say you don't want to load these documents into DCTs - but you also say you want to save the documents as DCRs. Which is it? A DCR isn't a DCR unless there's a DCT to define it.

Separating the documents for header/footer information from content is something that can easily be done for FormsPublisher - I have no idea how easily (if at all) that could be done for Word documents saved as XML.

You might be able to find some Perl (or other languge) modules that will allow you to ingest/convert word documents - but then you're talking about a lot of customizations which would need to be well tested (not to mention designed and implemented).

The only commercial products I've heard of for Word conversion are for transforming Word docs into PDFs - which you could certainly put on your web site - but you still have look-and-feel conformance issues.

In short, I think you need to figure out in more detail what exactly is required (as distinct from what is wanted) before attempting to resolve this issue.

jkm

Thanks ghoti for your comments as always

I think some of the answer may rely on what version of Word you are using. I believe the most recent version(s?) support saving Word documents as XML rather than as .doc files - if so, then this could save a considerable amount of effort on your part though it will still require user training.

I checked this option already but XML it produce will still require considerable amount of work. I dont know if MS Office comes with dtd for the same.

In either case - you're pretty much relying on TS for versioning support only as far as I can tell. The lack of using FormsPublisher means that conformance to look-and-feel of your web pages can only be done reasonably via human review.

This is true and thanks for pointing this out. I will discuss this further with our client to find better ways to handle this.

You say you don't want to load these documents into DCTs - but you also say you want to save the documents as DCRs. Which is it? A DCR isn't a DCR unless there's a DCT to define it.

Yes I know, we will have DCT for this but what we want rather than opening DCT in edit mode, open the DCR in doc mode..use the xml file and convert it to DCR, apply presentation layer using tpls or something on the portal as per requirement....basically this will assist to split the content and presentation.

Separating the documents for header/footer information from content is something that can easily be done for FormsPublisher - I have no idea how easily (if at all) that could be done for Word documents saved as XML.

This is easily possible in terms of web content but in terms of word documents it can be really pain and wrong thing to commit unless do some research on this Smiley Happy

I will try to get further inputs or better ways to resolve this problem. This seems to be bit of daunting task and too much of pain at the moment Smiley Sad