[Zope] Structured text is inconvenient esp. w BackTalk

Luciano Ramalho luciano@hiper.com.br
Wed, 26 Feb 2003 17:41:20 -0300


I've found out through experience that most non-programmers find it  
very dificult to understand and use Structured Text.

Grokking STX requires thinking about computerized text in a way that  
makes no sense to most users, although it is very natural for  
programmers. Structuring by indentation, the relevance of whitespace  
and many other STX rules are only "intuitive" for us. Also, to be  
productive in STX you must use a programmer's editor, and they don't  
behave like user's expect. Word and Notepad simply don't work for STX  
editing (auto-indent is missing, for one thing).

After a few failed attempts, we gave up trying to push STX as a  
solution to non-techies. We now use a WYSIWIG editor which  
unfortunately is only IE 5.5/6.0 compatible (this is not a real problem  
for our intranet clients, who already have standardized around IE).

We are actively looking for a Mozilla compatible WYSIWYG editor.

As a final note, I'd like to say that personally I like very much the  
idea of STX and think the current implementation is very useful and  
useable. But I am not a typical end-user at all: believe it or not, I  
am one of the people who invented the "ASCII Ribbon" campaign against  
the use of HTML in e-mails...

---------
/"\
\ /   Campanha da Fita ASCII - Diga NAO ao HTML em emails
  X   ASCII Ribbon Campaign - Say NO to HTML in email
/ \
---------

Luciano


On quarta-feira, fev 26, 2003, at 16:54 America/Sao_Paulo, Asad  
Quraishi wrote:

> Thanks Chris,
>
> The reason I am trying to use OO vs. something like emacs is that as  
> we propose the use of Zope/Plone to our clients we want to offer them  
> a solution which they will understand in the context of a world of  
> word processors.  It is difficult for someone to convert their word  
> processor-based training manuals, for example, into a BackTalk book  
> based on how structured text works.  I don't mind emacs but clients  
> won't feel quite as comfortable.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
> Chris McDonough wrote:
>
>> Structured text has some well-known idiosyncrasies.  One of these is
>> that a body paragraph is defined as a block of lines followed by a
>> carriage return where each line is indented to the same number of
>> characters.  Another is that a "heading" is defined as a single line  
>> of
>> text followed by a carriage return and a further-indented block of
>> text.  Your examples show that you've created something that you think
>> is a body paragraph, although structured text rules consider it a
>> heading because it has no line breaks.  Structured text has these
>> idiosyncrasies because one of its tenets is that its source should be  
>> as
>> "human-readable" as its rendering.
>>
>> For an example of "correct" structured text formatting, see
>> http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/ 
>> ScriptingZope.stx/document_src (and its rendering at  
>> http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/ 
>> ScriptingZope.stx).
>>
>> You're not doing anything wrong, really, but BackTalk does make the
>> assumption that you are willing to author your content in structured
>> text (this is mentioned prominently in the docs).  If you step outside
>> the bounds of structured text, your formatting will suffer, as you've
>> found out.  I'd suggest using an indent-aware text editor instead of
>> OpenOffice.  I use emacs in "indented-text-mode" via External Editor.  
>> BackTalk can also create PDFs, so if you're comfortable with editing
>> like this, you can deliver PDFs to your customer instead of .doc  
>> files. On the other hand, if structured text is hamstringing you, you  
>> might
>> want to consider using something other than BackTalk, because it's
>> nontrivial to teach it to use an input format different than  
>> structured
>> text.
>>
>> On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 10:49, Asad Quraishi wrote:
>>
>>> Here's the application:
>>>
>>> We have Zope and Plone installed and working for some months.  We  
>>> also installed BackTalk and CMFBackTalk in order to publish docs  
>>> with inline comments in Plone.  Works but there must be a better  
>>> way.  Let me explain:
>>>
>>> We create our documents in OpenOffice (OO) and then cut and paste  
>>> them into stx docs.  This works fine.  However to use stx you have  
>>> to indent each heading/content level.  I can do this in a paragraph  
>>> indent scenario like this with a BackTalk comment example:
>>> --------
>>> This is a Heading
>>>
>>>    This paragraph has the first line indented but all of the other  
>>> lines will wrap
>>> over to start flush with the margine.  This is how it should work so  
>>> that I can
>>> cut my content after commenting and paste in back in my OO doc.  It  
>>> also
>>> turns 'This is a Heading' into a heading.  I can continue with first  
>>> line indents in
>>> order to generate different heading levels.<p>
>>>
>>>  % this is a comment
>>> --------
>>>
>>> When I do this, first of all I don't get a comment icon unless I  
>>> break the rules (i.e. no inline html) and enter a <p> at the end of  
>>> the paragraph where I want it.  However this creates another  
>>> problem.  Once the comment is entered, since it is indented it makes  
>>> the paragraph above it a heading.  It also removes the comment icon  
>>> once a comment is entered.
>>>
>>> However if I do this:
>>> ------------
>>> This is a Heading
>>>
>>>     The paragraph following is created by indenting the entire  
>>> paragraph / and
>>>     having to enter CR's at the end of each line.  Boy this makes it  
>>> a pain to
>>>     enter the text into word processor afterwards.
>>>
>>>        % the comment is indented again but doesn't turn the above  
>>> paragraph
>>>        into a heading
>>> -----------
>>>
>>> This works.  The paragraph above the comment doesn't become a  
>>> heading and the comment icon remains meaning I can enter as many  
>>> comments for one paragraph as I like.  This really sucks when I want  
>>> to paste it back into OO.
>>>
>>> What am I doing wrong?  Is our process wrong?  i.e. "create doc in  
>>> OO -> copy to stx -> comment with BackTalk --> copy back to OO for  
>>> formatting and delivery to client as .doc"
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> - Asad
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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