Word 2003 Beta: XML tags vs. character styles

[Sam Brow]

I am working with Word 2003 Beta 2.

If I am editing an XML document and I select an empty tag
pair (like <emphasis></emphasis>) and press Control+B to
make it Bold, and then place the caret between these
elements and start typing, I'd like the typed characters
to be Bold but they come in as non-Bold.

I think most end-users will expect these characters to
come in as Bold. As an example... Users may create XML
templates where the user must fill in the contents of
empty tags. They may want to apply character styles to
the empty tags so the user's text appears styled.

Perhaps this is a behavioral change that can be made
before Word 2003 is officially released.

Thanks

Sam Brow

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Sam,

I am working with Word 2003 Beta 2.

If I am editing an XML document and I select an empty tag
pair (like <emphasis></emphasis>) and press Control+B to
make it Bold, and then place the caret between these
elements and start typing, I'd like the typed characters
to be Bold but they come in as non-Bold.

just curious: are you opening an XML-file as a textfile (which it is) in
Word 2003? I would expect the same thing as you, but if this file is
later on saved in a text format again, all style (and paragraph/text)
formatting information would be skipped anyway, no?

2cents
..bob
...Word-MVP

 

[Sam Brow]

just curious: are you opening an XML-file as a textfile
(which it is) in

Word 2003?

No, Word 2003 supports editing of native XML files. It
parses the XML and shows the start/end tags inline as
little stylized graphics (that look like tags).

I would expect the same thing as you, but if this file is

later on saved in a text format again, all style (and paragraph/text)
formatting information would be skipped anyway, no?

Yes. When Word 2003 saves an XML file, any "formatting"
you've applied will be dropped *unless* you save in WordML
format. WordML is basically your original XML plus gobs
of namespaced markup that allows it to remember the
formatting the next time you bring it in. It is still
100% pure XML. Pretty cool stuff.

My app will be applying formatting to an XML doc in memory
in Word 2003 and doesn't care that it will get lost on
save.

Thanks

-Sam

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Sam,

No, Word 2003 supports editing of native XML files. It
parses the XML and shows the start/end tags inline as
little stylized graphics (that look like tags).

ahh, thanks... time to try to get hold of a Beta-2003 after all here,
then! .-)

I'm off for a week now so I hope you find someone else from the MVPs to
comment on this behaviour and/or pass it along.

Greetinx from good old Europe
..bob
...Word-MVP