Marty:
Arbortext Export has both advantages and limitations. The viability often
depends on who the consumer of the Word document is to be.
If the purpose is ...
1. content review, such as review by subject matter experts who do not have
(nor want) an XML Editor,
2. and if PDF review is considered unwieldy,
3. and you are using a Styler stylesheet...
then Arbortext Export can be a great solution.
Granted those are three qualifiers, but often they are all true at the same
time.
The RTF output, by and large, looks identical to Word .doc or .docx files,
and looks similar to PDF output from the same stylesheet. There is a
limitation that Word graphics which need to be scaled, must also be embedded
rather than linked, but if item # 1 (above) is true, you want probably want
embedded graphics in order to provide one RTF file (like PDF) rather than a
collection of a .doc file plus many image files (like HTML output). There
are other limitations, such as the export of tables within tables, but
that's not usually an issue.
Out of the box....
. a Styler stylesheet for your document type will export RTF that
generally looks and feels like PDF output from Styler.
. it will automatically create a Table of Contents as a TOC field,
but the TOC will have to be manually (or programmatically) generated (once)
by Word or by the person viewing the file using Word's "Update Fields"
command (CTRL-A, followed by F9)
. a single checkbox in Styler allows you to embed all graphics (that
Word will support as embedded graphics)
. a single checkbox allows you to generate the Word built-in list
styles for numbered lists and bullet lists
. Links, cross-references, footnotes, tables, index terms, and
indexes all work out of the box, although indexes have the same one-time
limitation as TOC's because INDEX fields generate the Index tables (and
there is no automatic updating of certain generated text in Word).
. Headers and footers as defined by Styler, although there are a few
limitations
If the goal is page-by-page fidelity with your Styler-generated PDF output,
RTF Export will be frustrating.
If the purpose is for RTF to be the primary composition output for your
documents, RTF Export is not the best choice.
If smarter, advanced Word documents are the goal, that is to say, Word
documents which use Word styles to do the things in a Word-like manner, you
can do that using Styler RTF-specific features. Block elements can be
mapped to built-in or user-defined Word styles. Inline elements can be
mapped to Word character styles. TOCs, Indexes, Word fields, and Headers
and Footers can be built according to Word specifications rather than
standard Styler practices. Customer-derived Word templates (.dot) files can
be embedded in, and referenced by, the RTF output.
This more advanced level of effort is more applicable if the consumer of the
Word doc is going to be making extensive changes to the RTF file, adding new
content, new headings, new lists, etc. I don't mean to imply that
round-tripping the information back to Editor is a good idea without
realizing that round-tripping is a long and winding (expensive) road, and is
sometimes an impassable road. If planned carefully within the boundaries of
Import/Export limitations, Word limitations, and the limitations of logic J,
round-tripping can be useful in a review process, but there are significant
hurdles.
So the bottom line is, if your use case fits and you already have a Styler
stylesheet, then Arbortext Export is probably a short path to nice-looking
Word documents. They cannot have the same degree of formatting complexity
as PDF output from Arbortext, because Word is, after all, merely a flat
paragraph-based word processor. There are limitations, many of which are
defined by Word's feature set.
Hopefully this helps you too, along with all the other info you have seen
today.
Mark Lambert
Oberon Technologies, Inc.
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