[NTG-context] Re: ConTeXt Switcher?

Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 01:27:34 +0100 From: Giuseppe Bilotta To: ntg-context@ntg.nl Subject: Re[2]: [NTG-context] ConTeXt Switcher? Reply-To: ntg-context@ntg.nl

Not that I see the purpose of using Word in the frist place. Any decent editor has enough macro power to do the same.

-- Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

You missed the point. You markup and style your document using Word styles, and then XML is a matter of search and replace. I am not interested in Word per se, but I find using emacs to insert markup during document creation gets in the way of my thought processes. This way I can push markup worries to the editorial stage. People are fond of pointing out Words vices, and I wouldn't quibble with arguments about its stability, but it is about time OpenOffice and its ilk stopped resting on their laurels and started implementing some macro capability. I notice that AbiWord has a DocBook output format, but how well integrated this is I don't know. On Micro$oft's part if they had some real competition a real market in third-party templates might arrive. As it stands I have a 50% solution that handles footnotes and lists, but re-distribution is hampered by the way Word handles its templates and virus worries. Theoretically I could do tables and limited image markup using the same techniques. Leveraging the visual layout tools of a word-processor makes so much sense I wonder at the mentality of people still struggling with text-editors. I have emacs set up on my machine, but it really looks like back to the future from my point of view. I use WinEdt when I'm booted into Windows. btw you can use the same technique to generate native Context markup. It needs hand-editting, but as a rough draft, this works fine for me, and I don't have to re-invent the wheel every time I have a new document. Christopher