Automatic formatting of XML documents using styles (Word 2007)

L

Lyteck

Is there a way to automatically associate formatting styles to XML elements?

In other words, When an XML document (conforming to a certain schema) is
opened, formatting styles are applied according to predefined mapping for the
schema: i.e.,
- all <para> elements render using "Normal" style
- all <title> elements render using "Heading 1" style (e.g., bold, Arial,
12pt)
- all <figure><title>s render using "Figure Title" style (e.g., centered,
TNS, 10pt)
- , etc...

In Word 2007 B2TR, it seems styles can only be applied manually
to individual elements. This is a bit impractical and is likely to lead to
formatting inconsistency across large sets of documents and even within the
same document.

One huge benefit of structured authoring is of course to enable constistent
formatting of enterprise documents by separating content from formatting; in
effect, freeing authors from formatting tasks and letting formatting be
applied automatically based on element names, attributes and context.

I think it's a "must" functionality that seems to be missing for publishing
companies looking to consider Word 2007 as an alternative to more specialized
XML Publishing tool.

Will the functionality to map styles to elements and save the mapping as a
configuration that can be reused for other XML documents conforming to the
same schema be present in the final version of Word 2007? If not, can you
suggest a workaround?

Thanks,

Lyteck Lynhiavu
New York, NY


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P

Patrick Schmid [MVP]

There is a newsgroup dedicated to XML: microsoft.public.office.xml
If you don't get an answer here, you might want to post there.
Also, for everything concerning the new XML formats themselves, this is
the best resource: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/
He has links to the current Ecma spec as well as a forum dedicated to
OpenXML.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
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