[Scribus] Comment about object tag names and xml file format

[Timo Stollenwerk]

Timothy Boyden schrieb:
>>From what I've seen I think you could turn a Scribus document into a HTML
> form with a XSL stylesheet and then submit the changes to a script that
> could output a new Scribus document containing the changes.

My approach is the opposite of what you describe. The content of a
Scribus document contains no structural information about the content,
so it's hard to generate html forms that make sense. If you generate the
forms in the way they appear in a Scribus source document, it's hard for
the user to know where to put the content, even if you use the ANNAME
attribute to describe every corresponding Scribus Pageobject.

The general idea is that the CMS takes care about the form generation
and the content types. That way, the CMS can keep track of the
structural information of the data and present it to the user in a
meaningful way.

> I've done that
> to a certain extent with a PHP script that I've been playing with. The
> schema definition will help as a documentation tool for the Scribus format,
> that could allow me to build a PHP class for manipulation of Scribus
> documents.

It should be pretty easy to take my XSL stylesheets and write a wrapper
class in PHP. It is easy in Python. :)

> The XSL would also allow you to translate the Scribus doc to display it in a
> web page, sort of a Scribus viewer plug-in for the web. The most efficent
> way to do that most likely would be to create a schema that translate
> Scribus objects to SVG objects. Then create a XSL to display the Scribus
> doc.

I don't think this is necessary. Scribus can generate pdf files, and you
can preview these pdf files in a CMS (e.g. there is a product to preview
arbitrary files, including pdf, in Plone)

> The combination of these technologies of course could lead to a web-based
> version of Scribus.

I'm trying to avoid this with my solution, because I don't think it
makes sense to reinvent the wheel in a web-based version. Scribus and
other DTP applications are complex software products that can't be
easily be rewritten.

What I'm trying to do is to seperate the structural information of a
document from the layout specification so that every application
(Scribus and CMS) can do what they are best at. Scribus can take care of
the layout specification and the CMS can take care of handling the content.

Regards,
timo