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Originally Posted by Toxaris
They are not limited to closed software that needs buying, but also to open source software.
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“Open Source” software might need buying, too. Commercial use is a freedom of free software.
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Originally Posted by Toxaris
There are various programs out there (both commercial and open source).
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Commercial and “Open Source” aren't opposites. Closed, proprietary, restrictive, unethical and free software are.
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Originally Posted by Toxaris
how would convince them to use this?
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By the benefits?
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Originally Posted by Toxaris
just don't see it coming for this area without great, great issues.
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Well, one might start simple and improve from it.
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Originally Posted by Toxaris
Without Word support, you can forget about it. Since you are ethically prohibited to use it, there is no way you can support it.
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Why? Word XML output and Word itself are two separate things, XML itself is an open format and can be read, no matter with which software it was generated. The XML output of Word may be unfortunate, so it might be technically unusable. Further, there's no need to change the mind of all Word users - if Word is incapable of outputting usable XML, then writing in Word excludes its users from the benefits of automated processing. I'm looking for a software to apply semantic markup for myself, which could also be used by other users as front end for automated processing workflows. Such a tool could also be used to apply semantic markup to a text written in Word and exported to plain text.
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Originally Posted by Doitsu
AbiWord 3.0
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In AbiWord 2.8.2, it seems there's no direct way to edit a style template. However, since direct formatting can be disabled and XHTML output is present, it could be used as front end for automated processing workflows. Looks interesting to me, I will look into it. Thanks for the hint!
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Originally Posted by Doitsu
But, as is all too common in the Linux world, both projects have not released any Windows binaries thus excluding about 90% of all potential users.
It'd be great, if you could create Windows builds for these projects. You could also either join the development team of these projects to further your ideas or create a customized version that encourages using styles instead of direct formatting.
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Obviously, by supporting a proprietary operating system, you'll never get people to change to the free alternatives, since it is the goal of free software projects like AbiWord and Calligra to provide free alternatives in the first place (otherwise you could just be fine with a proprietary “solution”). It is a freedom of free software to build and distribute binaries for whatever system preferred (as long as it comes with the source code), even if it doesn't make sense at all. I won't even think about providing Windows binaries, I'm working on making things more free, not the opposite.
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Originally Posted by Doitsu
- what tool they actually use for writing books (Word, Jutoh, AWP, Scrivener etc),
- why they don't use Sigil,
- what authoring features they'd like to see implemented etc.
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What I'm looking for is some kind of “special purpose”, which would be used by a formatting guy if the writer doesn't want to do the semantic markup himself, or by the writer after he has completed the entire text. It should be possible to apply style templates on the flow (and direct formatting needs to be prevented), but I'm convinced that writing and formatting are two separate steps.