[LINK] RFI: Cross-Media Publishing under Linux/OO

[Roger Clarke]

Since 1994, I've been preparing documents in Word that can be used to 
produce both printed/PDF'd format and web-pages.

I'm looking at a 2-year plan to escape from the increasingly 
manipulative Apple world (where I've been since April 1984) to Linux 
and hence OO.

(The idea is to buy a pre-IOS Mac, dual-bootable with Linux - 
although I'm not at all sure which distro yet - and migrate from OSX 
to Linux over a couple of years.  Replacing MYOB may prove to be one 
of the challenges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linux_accounting_software ).

But I can't see how to replicate my convenient publishing environment!?
(I'm looking for a *functional* equivalent.  I can learn new habits).

OO save-as HTML is far too primitive of course.

The key requirements are:
-   headers and footers, incl. parameter-setting
-   hotlinks, anchors and own-HTML insertions

Details are below.

The Link Institute's thoughts on how to do it will be much appreciated!

________________________________________________________________________

I produce my web-pages in the following way:
-   in MS Word 5.1a (1992 - not just unintrusive but very usable)
     -   making disciplined use of a set of styles that map readily
         to HTML layout (not CSS of course - this was 1994!)
     -   with a couple of formatting tricks, described below
-   save-as RTF (v.1.0)
-   run it through rtf2html 2.7.5 (also 1992 vintage)
-   convert any images to jpg
-   use an editor to clear a couple of HTML format-gremlins that arise

Primitive-but-very-usable markup facilities enable the inclusion of:
-   hotlinks in double-underlining
-   URLs in front of the hotlinks, in double-underlining and hidden
-   anchors in bold, outline and hidden
-   paragraphs pre-coded in HTML format, using a style called HTML,
     which is hidden, and is simply carried over into the output ...
-   ... and enables HTML headers and footers, including PHP calls,
     at the beginning and end of the document - key content below

To produce a version for printing or PDF, I need to hide all 'hidden' 
text, and remove all double-underlining (although I usually do a bit 
of prettying up as well).

The current template is at:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Web-Paper-Template.mw5

The current style-sheet definitions are in a .txt file at
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/html-trans

A recent document that exercises most of the features (but not all of 
the styles) is:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Passwords.html

The .rtf file that gave rise to it is at 
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Passwords.rtf.
(The .rtf versions are normally stored on my machine, not uploaded to 
the web-server).

_________________________________________________________________________

The key header-content is:

<?php include("pathname.txt"); ?>
<?php include($home_directory."/Library/stylescall.php"); ?>
<?php include($home_directory."/Library/header_publicns.txt"); ?>
<title>Roger Clarke's 'TITLE'</title>


The key footer-content is:

<?php $created = 'DATE'; ?>
<?php $lastperson='Roger Clarke'; ?>
<?php $lastamended = 'DATE'; ?>
<?php $footertext = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>
<?php include($home_directory."/Library/prelimfooter_publicns.txt"); ?>
<?php include($home_directory."/Library/sponsorshipfooter.txt"); ?>
<?php include($home_directory."/Library/adminfooter.txt"); ?>


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University