[osis-core] Word 2003 as OSIS editor -- questions

[Harry Plantinga]

Andrew Proper and I are working on configuring Microsoft Word 2003 to 
edit OSIS 2.0 documents. The OSIS-to-WordML and reverse transformations 
are mostly done, but we have come to the point where we really have to 
decide how to store the formatting.

What do you think should be used to store the formatting, CSS or 
XML-FO?  The latter is richer and would make OSIS-to-PDF easier; the 
former would make OSIS-to-HTML easier. The XML-FO route also enables one 
to check the validity of the formatting with an XML parser.

My inclination is to use XML-FO since it is easer to validate and easier 
to convert XML-FO to CSS than vice versa. Any other opinions?

Also, is it possible to embed the stylesheet in a single file somehow? 
XSLTs can only generate a single output file, so saving a word document 
in OSIS format would be easiest if it could be done as a single file.

Also, do we want to save every possible bit of formatting, or is there 
some we should ignore -- e.g. page margins? Woudl it be sufficient, for 
example, to maintain paragraph margins and indent, font, style, size, 
line spacing, and alignment?

- Images

Word can embed images in saved documents. Do we want to try to do the 
same? There are some problems with images in separate files -- namely, 
that we don't know of a way to get the current directory in XSLT, so we 
can't open Word's temporary directory to find the image files to load.

Unless we get this resolved, images will have to be linked manually in 
this version of the editor.

- Document Templates

We're currently planning to create OSIS templates for the following 
document types. Any suggested additions or deletions?

bible
commentary
semron
dramatic text
daily
dictionary
theological treatise
fiction

Are there any well-marked samples embodying recommended practices? 
Lacking guidance, we'll take our best shot based on the documentation, 
but this is an issue the osis-core group really ought to address as a whole.

Harry Plantinga
(with Andrew Proper)