NYCPHP Meetup

[Marc Antony Vose]

Hi there:

I've designed a bajillion database-driven Web projects in the past, 
but I've got a client requesting something that is entirely 
reasonable (conceptually), but a logistical nightmare.

Generally, I try not to store any HTML in a database, no matter what. 
Further, in this situation, the content editor needs a setup where 
they do zero coding, and can have the following features:

-- basic formatting, including bold, italic, underline...basically, a 
few styles that would be pre-defined and available to them

-- inline articles (not much of a problem, really, i already just 
auto-flow images into articles at regularly spaced intervals, and the 
client is happy with that approach

-- in-article footnotes that automatically link to (in this case) a 
popup window containing footnotes

-- in-article sidebar links that spawn a popup with some special 
information (like a QuickTime video, or Flash movie, or file 
download).

It sounds like their text will be originating from Microsoft Word, 
which is of course the bane of my existence, since I am a Unix guy.

So, my question is...how best to handle this problem?  The solution 
needs to be as quick and cheap as possible.  I see several 
alternatives:

(1) XML
Is it feasible to get any kind of XML output from Microsoft Word that 
could be parsed by a script and auto-imported?

(2) Visual Basic
Is it possible to write a VB script that would step through his Word 
documents and create an XML document, or something, that my script 
would parse, noting things like bolded text, footnotes, and other 
stuff along the way?

(3) ???
Can anyone share their strategy for this sort of thing?

Right now, believe it or not, I am leaning toward diving into 
REALbasic and coding my own cross-platform Windows/OS X XML document 
editor to sell to clients who make these kinds of requests, for them 
to prepare their Web-based documents in, rather than dealing with all 
the vagaries of going from Word to ASCII or Unicode-compatible 
textual content dynamically.

But maybe that is just an irrational reaction to the mounting tension 
in my head...


-- 
Marc Antony Vose
http://www.suzerain.com/

I'm looking for something in an *after dinner* burrito.
-- Homer Simpson