[Zope] Structured text is inconvenient esp. w BackTalk

[Chris McDonough]

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.stx/document_src (and its rendering at http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/ScriptingZope.stx).

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
> 
> 
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