WordProcessingML and Tables, CALS

We recently had a customer inquire about a WordProcessingML -> CALS conversion. Well, I had never heard of CALS, and neither my immediate colleagues. So, it was digging time. As a side note: when customer questions make it to the product team, we can become almost maniacal about finding an answer. I know that MS employees regularly give up "off the clock" hours (if there is such a thing) in order to solve customer problems.

Lucky for me, CALS was pretty easy to figure out. It is an SGML representation of tables. But, it has limitations, and it is a bit arcane. So, there is the Oasis representation, a sort of CALS-lite with some extra features. Converting to CALS from WordProcessingML may or may not be easy; I have not tried. But, I am guessing there is no "simple" XSLT to do the job. If there were, I would have already found one out there at least partially done. It's a skunk-works revenue opportunity waiting for a taker!

There is a cool tool I found that converts CALS tables to Excel spreadsheets. It's sensibly called X2XL. If anyone has experience with it, please let me know.

I also found this helpful article: Converting Tables to XML. The background info is useful. Finally, you may be interested in this article: The CALS Table Model History by Harvey Bingham. Good times.

OK, now on to the...

Rock Thought for the Day: I'm sorry that I'm not on a positive note for the last two entries, but I just cannot be enthusiastic about everything that is legitmately rock and roll (although Bright Eyes is not rock and roll, I still needed to dampen the enthusiasm for his "music"). Today's equally deserving victim: My Chemical Romance. They have an album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. In short, they just scream too much. Now, these aren't "cookie monster vocals", mind you. By the way, this constant shrieking is what makes some emo bands so distateful. It certainly doesn't work for My Chemical Romance's genre either. The punk ancestry can be detected in the DNA of this album, but it is corrupted by too noisy, less present and less gritty vocals. I love the rumble of a Harley Davidson. It's rough and real. But, put through a trumpet horn and given polished effects? In a word: No. My Chemical Romance is a botched experiment.

Rock On

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 02, 2005
  Great stuff, David! I am happy to mention products that help our customers, and yours certainly does! (I accept company t-shirts I can wear around my little, too: size=M) :)
  
  CALS is a technology that was new to me when the customer asked about it. I always wonder what else is out there that I know nothing about.
  
  I'll check out your XML content management hook-up today.