Re: Saving markup formats

[Nic James Ferrier]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

>>> Could you give me a more concrete example of what you want to do?
>>> (Or did you give that before?)
>>
>> I am talking about editing a word processor file from OpenOffice or
>> something like that and being able to edit the file in such a way that
>> I (or someone else) can open it up in the native editor and it will
>> work.
>>
>> I don't care much about WYSIWYG facilities. I just want to be able to
>> edit it safely.
>
> Editing a word processor file can mean different things.  I see at least
> three levels:
>
> - editing raw XML files (e.g. with the help of nxml);
> - editing DOM trees (like in graphical XML editors: expand/collapse
>   subtrees, add/delete a node, change its attributes);
> - editing on the visual representation of the XML file (WYSIWYG).
>
> Which one from these you are talking about?

Not one of those.

What I am talking about is something not much above editing raw
XML... but above it none the less.

For example, here's a use case.

I want to provide my CV in Word because agents over here use that (I
always give them an HTML version as well... but for some reason they
like to mail each other Word files).

I would like to be able to open the word file directly in Emacs and
see some view of it. It doesn't matter if it's structural rather than
WYSIWYG but I don't want to look at Word XML thanks... it's awful.

I want to add a Job Description for my recent job to the list. It is
formatted as a heading followed by a list of technologies used and
then a paragraph or two.

I should be able to simply:

- add a heading and mark it as such (by picking from the style list) 

- add a list (same thing) and some list items

- add a paragraph

It doesn't have to be WYSIWYG, it could be more like WordPerfect used
to be (or more complex than that as long as the text is quite
central). 

But it does have to deal with the document natively and allow me to
use it in the way that the document format intends (adding list items,
paragraphs, etc...)


I'm not sure this is desirable or possible with Word. But with opendoc
it certainly is.

It seems to me that the key thing is not the WYSIWYG bit... but the
rendering of one form (in this case XML) into something not directly
derived.

I guess that's why there's resistance here to adding libxml2 to emacs,
because a DOM model would supplant a traditional buffer?

-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk