Re: PGM scripts and Xywrite.

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to message from Mark Butler , Wed, 25
Jan 2006 14:37:06 -0000

Mark wrote:
>>A Perl Script runs to extract information from the database in to
>>text file. Then the users run XyWrite scripts over the generated file to
>>format it with Quark style sheets, fonts, changes to words etc.<<

Two things occur to me:
1. Leslie Bialler (are you still here, Leslie?) had a similar system
(only no database was involved) at Columbia University Press when they
used Xy. At some point they switched over to (ugh!) Word. He might
recall what scheme they used for the transition.
2. I don't quite understand why you need to know what the XPL scripts
do. You can still run one and see how it embeds the Quark formats, no?
So you just find a language that can output those Quark tags and write a
routine in that language to create those tags at the proper place. I.e.,
reverse engineer your new script to do what you want done, never mind
how the old method did it. Or am I missing something? The advantage of
Xy, of course, is that it is all ASCII--something I have been taking
advantage of to get dBase to output formatted Xy text files.

Patricia M. Godfrey