Exporting to xml for use in a website

[Marty]

I am looking at the feasability of taking a formated Word Document, exporting
it to XML and then using that XML to populate a Web page. The goal is to
maitain the formating and layout (as close as possible) and to avoid the
re-entering of the content into an HTML editor. I am looking at both Server
Side (ASP 2.0) and Client Side XML functionality for the Website

Has anyone successfully used this methodology, or is it more cumbersome and
difficult than it is worth. My hope is to save overall development time

Any insights are appreciated

Marty

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWFydHk=?=,

I am looking at the feasability of taking a formated Word Document, exporting
it to XML and then using that XML to populate a Web page. The goal is to
maitain the formating and layout (as close as possible) and to avoid the
re-entering of the content into an HTML editor. I am looking at both Server
Side (ASP 2.0) and Client Side XML functionality for the Website

Has anyone successfully used this methodology, or is it more cumbersome and
difficult than it is worth. My hope is to save overall development time

Why wouldn't you export the Word document to HTML (setting the HTML filtering to
get more or less "clean" HTML as opposed to word's round-trip HTML)?

You can certainly do as you propose, then transform the result to whatever HTML
you wish. There may even be (commercial) transforms available you could use. I
can't judge how much time it would save, as you give us nothing to compare it
to...

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Marty]

Hi Cindy,

Thanks for your response. The time savings would be in the translation of
content into multiple languages.

As for not going directly to HTML, we would have to take the content
developed in Word and wrap a basic HTML "wrapper" around it so as to provide
the navigational elements and other features that would not be created in
Word. I do not want to have the writers, who are technical medical writers
and who do not have any HTML experience, have to worry about this integration.