OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Stephen Clarke <an...@longusername.worldonline.co.uk>]

Hi all,

OK. So much for pdf. Does anyone know if there is any way of turning an XML
into MS Word format? I don't think word is scriptable, is it? VBScript,
perhaps?

Just wondering.

Sorry. The very thought is rather distastefull , isn't it. But who knows.

See. Just for fun I did my resume in pdf using fop. But now everybody keeps
asking me for the same thing in MS Word format. Argh. Very annoying. So I
want to be able to change my XML and have it reflected automatically in both
word and pdf.

This could be a contender for the most twisted idea of all time.
--
Best
SC.

Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Stephen Clarke <an...@longusername.worldonline.co.uk>]

Hi Max,
Interspersed below.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Dunn" <ma...@siliconpublishing.com>
To: <fo...@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 8:14 PM
Subject: RE: OT:: XML -> MS Word??


> Also, one simple direct means of getting XML into Word (easy, but the
> styles don't generally persist well) is simply to use XSLT -> HTML,
> which Word imports.

Yes. I'd thought of that. But surely 'don't generally persist well' is an
understatement. It's only by being a stylistic perfectionist that I got me
into this mess in the first place. hehe.
>
> I've seen several resumes/book proposals that people did that way...
>
Really? Interesting. Well, I'm doing my HTML version right now, so I'll try
the import and see. Thanks.
--
Best,
SC.

RE: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Max Dunn <ma...@siliconpublishing.com>]

Also, one simple direct means of getting XML into Word (easy, but the
styles don't generally persist well) is simply to use XSLT -> HTML,
which Word imports.

I've seen several resumes/book proposals that people did that way...

Max

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Savino [mailto:matt@synergizethis.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 11:55 AM
To: fop-user@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??


I'ts not unreasonable at all. You can convert your XML to RTF, which
Word will display. You won't have access to all the 7,562,443 features
in a full-fledged Word doc, but you can probably get by.

-Matt

Stephen Clarke wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> OK. So much for pdf. Does anyone know if there is any way of turning
an XML
> into MS Word format? I don't think word is scriptable, is it?
VBScript,
> perhaps?
> 
> Just wondering.
> 
> Sorry. The very thought is rather distastefull , isn't it. But who
knows.
> 
> See. Just for fun I did my resume in pdf using fop. But now everybody
keeps
> asking me for the same thing in MS Word format. Argh. Very annoying.
So I
> want to be able to change my XML and have it reflected automatically
in both
> word and pdf.
> 
> This could be a contender for the most twisted idea of all time.
> --
> Best
> SC.

Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Matt Savino <ma...@synergizethis.com>]

I'ts not unreasonable at all. You can convert your XML to RTF, which
Word will display. You won't have access to all the 7,562,443 features
in a full-fledged Word doc, but you can probably get by.

-Matt

Stephen Clarke wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> OK. So much for pdf. Does anyone know if there is any way of turning an XML
> into MS Word format? I don't think word is scriptable, is it? VBScript,
> perhaps?
> 
> Just wondering.
> 
> Sorry. The very thought is rather distastefull , isn't it. But who knows.
> 
> See. Just for fun I did my resume in pdf using fop. But now everybody keeps
> asking me for the same thing in MS Word format. Argh. Very annoying. So I
> want to be able to change my XML and have it reflected automatically in both
> word and pdf.
> 
> This could be a contender for the most twisted idea of all time.
> --
> Best
> SC.

Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Stephen Clarke <an...@longusername.worldonline.co.uk>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Savino" <ma...@synergizethis.com>
To: <fo...@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2002 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??


> I'ts not unreasonable at all.

Wow. Three replies already. Not unreasonable. What a surprise.

> You can convert your XML to RTF, which
> Word will display. You won't have access to all 7,562,443 features in a
> full-fledged Word doc.

You're kidding about the number right? Who exactly counted all those
features.

>This means your resume may not be able to email
> itself to everyone in the viewer's address book or delete their dll
> files, but you can probably get by.
>
hahahaha. Some disappointments are worse than others. But this one is just
too much.

Thanks Matt. I'll look into it.

--
Best,
S.

Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[Matt Savino <ma...@synergizethis.com>]

I'ts not unreasonable at all. You can convert your XML to RTF, which
Word will display. You won't have access to all 7,562,443 features in a
full-fledged Word doc. This means your resume may not be able to email
itself to everyone in the viewer's address book or delete their dll
files, but you can probably get by.

By the way, I just signed up my home account to this list. Does anyone
know how to get the last 100 messages? The help-bot says ot put the
message number in like this - <fo...@xml.apache.org>.
Where do I find the message number?

-Matt




Stephen Clarke wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> OK. So much for pdf. Does anyone know if there is any way of turning an XML
> into MS Word format? I don't think word is scriptable, is it? VBScript,
> perhaps?
> 
> Just wondering.
> 
> Sorry. The very thought is rather distastefull , isn't it. But who knows.
> 
> See. Just for fun I did my resume in pdf using fop. But now everybody keeps
> asking me for the same thing in MS Word format. Argh. Very annoying. So I
> want to be able to change my XML and have it reflected automatically in both
> word and pdf.
> 
> This could be a contender for the most twisted idea of all time.
> --
> Best
> SC.

Re: OT:: XML -> MS Word??

[David Wood <ob...@panix.com>]

I'm afraid I have extensive experience scripting MS Word. It's not
something I like to talk about much, but sometimes the painful memories do
surface...

I think the RTF idea is a good one, because it will help you avoid having
anything to do with programming Word. But let's just say you wanted to for
the sake of argument...

These days they're building an entire Visual Basic mini-IDE into word, and
you can use VB to access almost every aspect of Word's byzantine feature
set through the MSWord DOM, at the COM level. I think the best way to
describe it is that this DOM is to object oriented programming what
penetrating your forehead with a power drill is to psychotherapy.

However, if you manage to claw your way through to getting what you need
operating, the next thing you will discover is that VB is mind-bogglingly
slow.  How slow, you ask? Well, I was processing two-page word documents
into a database, XML-izing different parts to preserve formating and
storing them into different fields. Trivial. This program wouldn't take
more than 200ms to run on any decent system. On MS Word, on my PIII/500,
it took 30 *seconds* per document. While it was running, it rendered the
computer basically useless, and it couldn't be stopped without killing the
task.

In theory, it's a great system, and it's trivial to access the database or
the filesystem or XML classes alike from inside the word processor. It's
very powerful.  Microsoft has even written and published a tutorial of
sorts where they explain how to go _from_ MSWord to XML using these
techniques (it's on MSDN, sorry no URL handy). Although the compiled VB
executable in that example crashes on startup...

In practice, the implementation is a raving nightmare, and you should
avoid it at all costs. Not to mention the security implications of it all,
which by now have been well explored to the tune of many billions of
dollars in damages worldwide...

On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, Stephen Clarke wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> OK. So much for pdf. Does anyone know if there is any way of turning an XML
> into MS Word format? I don't think word is scriptable, is it? VBScript,
> perhaps?
>
> Just wondering.
>
> Sorry. The very thought is rather distastefull , isn't it. But who knows.
>
> See. Just for fun I did my resume in pdf using fop. But now everybody keeps
> asking me for the same thing in MS Word format. Argh. Very annoying. So I
> want to be able to change my XML and have it reflected automatically in both
> word and pdf.
>
> This could be a contender for the most twisted idea of all time.
> --
> Best
> SC.
>