[vox] [OT] More XML Weirdness: XML to MS-Word

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 08:52:51PM -0700, Richard Crawford wrote:
> 
> 
> > Another part of my project involves involves converting an XML document
> > into (ugh) MS-Word format.  I've Googled, but haven't found anything
> > useful.  Anyone got any ideas?
>
> To expand on this...
> 
> Obviously, since XML has no presentation information, I'd need to create
> some sort of XSL stylesheet to do the job.  That's what I need hints on.
> 

(Posting order re-arranged)

Will RTF do? If so, the DocBook XML format, Norman Walsh's
Docbook-to-XSL-FO XSLT stylesheets, and Apache FOP may be your best
bet. You may also find XSLT-to-RTF stylesheets (unlikely, but
certainly possible, given that RTF is a fairly simple text-based
format), and I'm positive that there are also tools which will
translate DocBook directly to RTF. The quality of each of these items
is something you'll have to research yourself.  The Norman Walsh
stylesheets are pretty good, but not perfect, and don't always meet my
rather picky needs. FOP does a good job, but doesn't really handle
ligatures, which is something I've gotten too used to from TeX, and
have come to demand after having read Robert Bringhurst's "The
Elements of Typographic Style ([ISBN: 0881791326]--a terrific and
truly masterful book, but a little extreme in its ideals).

-Micah, loves that you can simply rename .rtf to .doc and pass it off
 to clueless M$ folks... :-)