Manuscript to XML

A major productivity issue for publishers "going XML" is getting from a copy-edited manuscript to some form of XML as quickly and easily as possible. We see manuscripts with all sorts of markup in them for custom InDesign importing; and lots of other ugly markup which are part of some "XML first strategy". The manuscript should never be the place for this.

However the manuscript should correctly express the structure of a document with section breaks, blocks and inline styling. These are all important aspects of editorial review. So we need clean manuscripts, that deliver everything editors need, and get to XML. Enter IGP Structure Styles.

Structure Styling is a definite option for clean manuscript to XML conversion.It is simple, elegant, can be customized,and no human has to every see ugly machine mark-up.

It works so well, with standard trade books, and using IGP:FLIP you can import the manuscript and go straight to the PDF and eBook outputs with a near press ready book.

Background

OK. So Structure Styles is an Oxymoron, but a useful and real one as word processors give us their view of a documents internals using styles. We first created Structure Styles mid-2008 for eScape - the free Open Office to ePub convertor for the e-book enthusiast market. It has worked consistently and well for a year.

eScape has had nearly 10,000 downloads and we get feedback on how it is the best ePub creator tool available. It probably is if you are prepared to take a slightly formal approach and control your manuscripts.

IGP:FLIP Structure Styles for manuscripts goes further. We updated and extended Structure Styles and incorporated it into the IGP:FLIP manuscript importer. We also added end-user customization and extensibility.

How it works

Using a dedicated word processor template *.dot (MS Word) or *.ott (Open Office) configured for specific content types, it is possible to take an MS Word or Open Office documents, apply Structure Styling, and import what is a nearly fully XML tagged book. Applying structure styles is identical to applying any custom style in a Word Processor. So there is no new skill needed here.

The styles follow a standard publisher descriptive grammar - eg: Sections - Forward, Part, Chapter, Appendix; Blocks - Extract, Notebox, Epigraph, etc.; so there is no learning curve here.

The processor strips all styles except the structure styles, converts the rag-tag document encoding to publishing and archive ready IGP:FoundationXHTML, imports it into IGP:FLIP, and applies the selected  presentation templates for Print, Online and e-book formats... Voila. Done.

If you are interested in exploring this a little further, the online eScape Tutorial gives more background on the styles used in that tool.

You can also download an eScape Structure Styled manuscript as an Open Office ODT (37KB), or as an MS Word DOC (128KB). The colouring and styles in these are for tutorial purposes only. Your Structure Styled manuscripts do not have to be so exhibitionist. These example documents also contain considerable tutorial text written for eScape users.

IGP:FLIP uses a near identical strategy, but has been significantly improved for professional document/book production. 

The IGP:FLIP Manuscript Importer strips all word processor styling from the manuscript except Structure Styles. For clarity no matter what font size, height, line-spacing or other style definitions you have in your manuscript, they will not be included in the imported document when it is converted to XML. 

Example

A Chapter is marked up by placing the style igp-body-Chapter onto an empty paragraph. Immediately following that is the title as a Heading 1. Chapter number will eventually be auto generated, but you can include it in a para style <igp-title-num>, and so forth. So from three styled lines in the manuscript, the XML that is generated looks something like this:

<div class="galley">
 <div class="body Chapter"> 
 <div class="title-block">
 <p class="title-num">Chapter 1</p>
 <h1>Chapter Title</h1>
 </div>
 <p>Body text ....</p>
 </div>
</div>

The output is simple, elegant, standardized XHTML ready for multiple uses.Once imported it can be instantly generated as PDF, eBook formats and various other packages.

You can see these some of the Structure Styles on the eScape tutorial page, and if you install eScape, you can even experiment with the work method; although you only get an ePub as the output.

Other stuff

1. Inline styles have to be marked up using an inline structure style. You can 't use the Word Processor default Italic and Bold styles . Egs: igp-inline-italic, igp-inline-smallcaps. This is due to the way the Word Processors work internally.
2. Images are not imported. This is because production quality images are probably not in the manuscript and they have to go through their own process and are inserted in IGP:FLIP.
3. Tables can be imported but they will loose any layout styles you applied in the word processor. However you have to use the XML table templates anyway, so layout survives, and styles are reasserted from the production XML presentation templates.
4. Lists import well but numbering and bullets will inherit their form from the Presentation template and may be different to those in the manuscript.
5. It is excellent for marking up specialist text such as cookbook recipes, Q and A, and specialist information you need complex XML elements or attributes. It is usually always easier to do this in the manuscript than in an XML editing tool. 
6. It works in every language. If you need Chapter turned to Kapital, or Chaptre - it is a simple customization process.

Summary

Manuscript to XML to multiple formats does not have to be an arduous process. Using IGP Structure Styles, and IGP:FLIP, manuscripts become editable XML and production outputs in just minutes.

XML is the driver the whole way, but humans never have to grapple with machine markup.

Strategies for sophisticated and complex documents are easy to plan and implemen.