Word XML HTML and a Database

[casy]

Hi all,

Background-
We are tying to put together a doc management system (MOSS platform)
where the company official manuals are controlled by a change
procedure, currently all changes are effected by the user opening the
whole doc.

We propose to store each section in a SQL db row and then the user
only has access to that section when they edit. From Brian Jones blog
we can insert one doc into a another doc, so far so good. Storing in a
DB also gives us enhanced indexing features.

We would also like to display the sections in HTML (MHT?) for easy
read only reference, but looking at the XML in the word package it
looks quite difficult to extract the content + formatting of say a
pragraph into an XML snippet and then re-render it HTML.

Question !
Would storing the sections/paragraphs as mini word documents complete,
+ the MHT version in a table row be a good approach ??

Any input much appreciated,

Casey

 

[casy]

Am I in the wrong group, any ideas anyone?

Thanks

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I suspect no-one in here - certainly including me - knows what the
feasibility issues are on this one - e.g. I read the article by Brian
Jones but have not tried it and until I do, I would not be entirely
convinced that you will not run into "conflicting style" issues.

The following is probably too obvious to be helpful...

As for the conversion to HTML, how about you programmatically
a. insert your XML snippet into an empty Word document
b. save as HTML
c. save that in your database row, at some suitable point after the
XML snippet has been created.

I assume the only other way would be to write/find a transform that can
do WordProcessingML->HTML reliably and do it that way.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Unfortunately, although you would think that
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement would be about document management, in
fact, since MS chose to use this NG for "General Questions" in its Web
interface, it is mostly devoted to fairly general, low-level end user
questions and is probably not read by anyone who can answer your question.
You might do better in one of the programming groups (the m.p.word.vba
hierarchy).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org


Am I in the wrong group, any ideas anyone?

Thanks

 

[casy]

Thanks Peter, Suanne,

As far as the AltChunk process.. what I've tried so far has been OK,
styles of the host doc overide the inserted chunk which makes sense.
And yes I think storing the snippet in an empty mini doc->HTML is
about the simplest way.

Will try another group to see if any other soul has trod this path
before..

Casey