Thanks Chris, The reason I am trying to use OO vs. something like emacs is that as we propose the use of Zope/Plone to our clients we want to offer them a solution which they will understand in the context of a world of word processors. It is difficult for someone to convert their word processor-based training manuals, for example, into a BackTalk book based on how structured text works. I don't mind emacs but clients won't feel quite as comfortable. Any thoughts on this? Chris McDonough wrote:
Structured text has some well-known idiosyncrasies. One of these is that a body paragraph is defined as a block of lines followed by a carriage return where each line is indented to the same number of characters. Another is that a "heading" is defined as a single line of text followed by a carriage return and a further-indented block of text. Your examples show that you've created something that you think is a body paragraph, although structured text rules consider it a heading because it has no line breaks. Structured text has these idiosyncrasies because one of its tenets is that its source should be as "human-readable" as its rendering.
For an example of "correct" structured text formatting, see http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/ScriptingZope.st... (and its rendering at http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/ScriptingZope.st...).
You're not doing anything wrong, really, but BackTalk does make the assumption that you are willing to author your content in structured text (this is mentioned prominently in the docs). If you step outside the bounds of structured text, your formatting will suffer, as you've found out. I'd suggest using an indent-aware text editor instead of OpenOffice. I use emacs in "indented-text-mode" via External Editor. BackTalk can also create PDFs, so if you're comfortable with editing like this, you can deliver PDFs to your customer instead of .doc files. On the other hand, if structured text is hamstringing you, you might want to consider using something other than BackTalk, because it's nontrivial to teach it to use an input format different than structured text.
On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 10:49, Asad Quraishi wrote:
Here's the application:
We have Zope and Plone installed and working for some months. We also installed BackTalk and CMFBackTalk in order to publish docs with inline comments in Plone. Works but there must be a better way. Let me explain:
We create our documents in OpenOffice (OO) and then cut and paste them into stx docs. This works fine. However to use stx you have to indent each heading/content level. I can do this in a paragraph indent scenario like this with a BackTalk comment example: -------- This is a Heading
This paragraph has the first line indented but all of the other lines will wrap over to start flush with the margine. This is how it should work so that I can cut my content after commenting and paste in back in my OO doc. It also turns 'This is a Heading' into a heading. I can continue with first line indents in order to generate different heading levels.<p>
% this is a comment --------
When I do this, first of all I don't get a comment icon unless I break the rules (i.e. no inline html) and enter a <p> at the end of the paragraph where I want it. However this creates another problem. Once the comment is entered, since it is indented it makes the paragraph above it a heading. It also removes the comment icon once a comment is entered.
However if I do this: ------------ This is a Heading
The paragraph following is created by indenting the entire paragraph / and having to enter CR's at the end of each line. Boy this makes it a pain to enter the text into word processor afterwards.
% the comment is indented again but doesn't turn the above paragraph into a heading -----------
This works. The paragraph above the comment doesn't become a heading and the comment icon remains meaning I can enter as many comments for one paragraph as I like. This really sucks when I want to paste it back into OO.
What am I doing wrong? Is our process wrong? i.e. "create doc in OO -> copy to stx -> comment with BackTalk --> copy back to OO for formatting and delivery to client as .doc"
Thanks.
- Asad
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )