Using XML and XSLT for publishing a church bulletin on web and paper

[Tim Dempsey]

Folks,

I need some advice. I hpoe some of you can advise me.

Our church's weekly bulletin has been published on paper for years. It is created in MS Word and sent to the publishing company. Now I need to publish the same information on our new web site. But I don't want to put an image of the paper bulletin on the web site. I want it to look natural there, as if it were produced with god web design principles.

Although I have years of software development background including web-based applications and am familiar with HTML, XHTML, DOM, etc., I have not worked with XML at all. But from my reading, it appears that I may be able to accomplish what I need by applying XML to the job.

I think it is possible to define the bulletin as a structured document in an XML schema. I also think it is possible to develop two XSLT stylesheets (if that's what you call XSLT files). One would transform he XML-marked bulletin into an MS Word document using WordprocessingML and the other would transform it into a pretty web page using XHTML.

My questions are:

1.) Is the above approach feasible? Is it natural? Are there better ways of accomplishing the same thing?

Assuming the answer to #1 is that it is approriate to take this approach:

2.) Has anyone done this before (perhaps for things besides church bulletins)? If so, can I learn from those efforts?

3.) What tools are available to help with this? I use Dreamweaver for normal web page development. Are there similar tools for XML? What are recommended? Are they expensive? (I am a single person - not a team - with a single application. I may parlay this into more applications in the future.)

4.) The church secretaries currently use MS Word in a simple fashion to enter the weekly bulletin. How will they do it if I develop this solution?
Will they still use MS Word?

I will greatly appreciate anyone's advice.

Thanks in advance....

-- Tim Dempsey

 

[Steven Burr]

Folks,

I need some advice. I hpoe some of you can advise me.

Our church's weekly bulletin has been published on paper for years. It is created in MS Word and sent to the publishing company. Now I need to publish the same information on our new web site. But I don't want to put an image of the paper bulletin on the web site. I want it to look natural there, as if it were produced with god web design principles.

Although I have years of software development background including web-based applications and am familiar with HTML, XHTML, DOM, etc., I have not worked with XML at all. But from my reading, it appears that I may be able to accomplish what I need by applying XML to the job.

I think it is possible to define the bulletin as a structured document in an XML schema. I also think it is possible to develop two XSLT stylesheets (if that's what you call XSLT files). One would transform he XML-marked bulletin into an MS Word document using WordprocessingML and the other would transform it into a pretty web page using XHTML.

My questions are:

1.) Is the above approach feasible? Is it natural? Are there better ways of accomplishing the same thing?

Assuming the answer to #1 is that it is approriate to take this approach:

2.) Has anyone done this before (perhaps for things besides church bulletins)? If so, can I learn from those efforts?

3.) What tools are available to help with this? I use Dreamweaver for normal web page development. Are there similar tools for XML? What are recommended? Are they expensive? (I am a single person - not a team - with a single application. I may parlay this into more applications in the future.)

4.) The church secretaries currently use MS Word in a simple fashion to enter the weekly bulletin. How will they do it if I develop this solution?
Will they still use MS Word?

I will greatly appreciate anyone's advice.

Thanks in advance....

-- Tim Dempsey

Hi, Tim,

Depending on which version of Microsoft Word you're using, you may well have the option of saving the file as XML directly from Word. This might be your best option, as the secretaries are already familiar with Word.

After that, you could certainly use an XSLT stylesheet to transform it into HTML (that is, assuming that the default HTML that Word can be saved from Word is unacceptable).

Hope this helps,
Steve

 

[Speck]

Folks,

I need some advice. I hpoe some of you can advise me.

Our church's weekly bulletin has been published on paper for years. It is created in MS Word and sent to the publishing company. Now I need to publish the same information on our new web site. But I don't want to put an image of the paper bulletin on the web site. I want it to look natural there, as if it were produced with god web design principles.

Although I have years of software development background including web-based applications and am familiar with HTML, XHTML, DOM, etc., I have not worked with XML at all. But from my reading, it appears that I may be able to accomplish what I need by applying XML to the job.

I think it is possible to define the bulletin as a structured document in an XML schema. I also think it is possible to develop two XSLT stylesheets (if that's what you call XSLT files). One would transform he XML-marked bulletin into an MS Word document using WordprocessingML and the other would transform it into a pretty web page using XHTML.

My questions are:

1.) Is the above approach feasible? Is it natural? Are there better ways of accomplishing the same thing?

Assuming the answer to #1 is that it is approriate to take this approach:

2.) Has anyone done this before (perhaps for things besides church bulletins)? If so, can I learn from those efforts?

3.) What tools are available to help with this? I use Dreamweaver for normal web page development. Are there similar tools for XML? What are recommended? Are they expensive? (I am a single person - not a team - with a single application. I may parlay this into more applications in the future.)

4.) The church secretaries currently use MS Word in a simple fashion to enter the weekly bulletin. How will they do it if I develop this solution?
Will they still use MS Word?

I will greatly appreciate anyone's advice.

Thanks in advance....

-- Tim Dempsey

Hello Tim,

A couple of points might help:

Using a schema to describe your document is a good idea, but if you're new to XML, using a DTD might be easier. The syntax is simpler, DTD's are more suited to the mixed content of your newsletter, and you probably won't need all the bells and whistles of a schema. Some people say DTD's are dead but they are appropriate in many cases.

The latest versions of MS Word have an option to save documents as XML and optionally apply transformations in the process. So, I could imagine your secretaries would continue to use Word as they do now. But, they would save an extra copy as XML which would then be transformed by XSLT to HTML. You could then pick up this HTML output with Dreamweaver and do any tidying up you think appropriate (or build it into the XSLT when you get a handle on what's required).

Regarding tools, XML Spy by Altova is a serious, top-drawer XML development tool you could use to create and test your DTDs and/or schemas. When I cought my copy it was around US$400. If you want to go open-source (and free) there are plenty of free plug-ins to the Eclipse workbench that will do the job without all the muscle of XML Spy.

If you need any pointers to books or the Eclipse tools, just re-post here.

Speck.

 

[John Allen]

"Tim Dempsey" > > I need some advice. I hpoe some of you can advise me. in

Hello Tim,

A couple of points might help:

Using a schema to describe your document is a good idea, but if you're new to XML, using a DTD might be easier. The syntax is simpler, DTD's are more suited to the mixed content of your newsletter, and you probably won't need all the bells and whistles of a schema. Some people say DTD's are dead but they are appropriate in many cases.

The latest versions of MS Word have an option to save documents as XML and optionally apply transformations in the process. So, I could imagine your secretaries would continue to use Word as they do now. But, they would save an extra copy as XML which would then be transformed by XSLT to HTML. You could then pick up this HTML output with Dreamweaver and do any tidying up you think appropriate (or build it into the XSLT when you get a handle on what's required).

Regarding tools, XML Spy by Altova is a serious, top-drawer XML development tool you could use to create and test your DTDs and/or schemas. When I cought my copy it was around US$400. If you want to go open-source (and free) there are plenty of free plug-ins to the Eclipse workbench that will do the job without all the muscle of XML Spy.

There is now a free version of XML Spy, for download from their web site. This has plenty of functionality to get you started.

John