Submitted by davet on 2011/04/29 10:09
Pierre,
 
It seems to me that you might be able to create Word or PDF documents from any arrangement of items if there were a way to compile the editor windows like in Scrivener.  You might consider this when creating the new RTF editor features. I don't know if that would be practical...this may be very difficult to implement.
 
It looks like Scrivener is great for writers, but it has no project management or task management capabilities whatsoever...nor does it have many of the other information management features that are available in IQ. So, at this point in time, I am considering using IQ for project management, task management, and general all around information management. But, I am thinking of using Scrivener (when they finish the Windows version) for writing, because of the way you can compile any arrangement of outlined items. I don't see how I could do that with IQ at the present time.
 
It would be awesome if I could use IQ for my writing tasks too instead of using Scrivener. And, if I could use the power of MS Word as the editor--the way I can now in IQ--that would be soooo much better than Scrivener for writing. There is no way to use Word as your editor in Scrivener.
 
 
 
Dave

Comments

There has been many discussions about IQ and writing in the past, And a few suggestions are stored in Mantis. Maybe a few of those mirror what you have in mind ? There might be others:
 
 
 
 
 
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davet

2011/04/29 11:41

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Armando,
 
Thanks for the Mantis links.
 
The second link above (http://mantis.sqlnotes.net/view.php?id=177) pretty much defines what I'd like to see, but with the addition of being able to compile the string of displayed editor panes into an RTF document. And, I'd like to be able to use MS Word as the RTF editor.
 
Also, I don't know what Pierre is planning to do with the HTML editor. I hope is stays like it is so that you can convert back and forth from HTML to RTF. This is awesome. I don't see any other 2-pane outliner that can do this.
 
Hmm! The third link above (http://mantis.sqlnotes.net/view.php?id=911) would be great feature too. I see Scrivener has that one.
 
Dave

Hi Dave,
 
Scrivener is a neat application. But did you know that apart from multi-item editing, all of this can be done in IQ ? In particular, if you select multiple items and print (option 2: selected items and HTML), you can get a combined view of all items ... Improvements can be made to the printed output if desired ! Don't hesitate to ask.
 
HTH
 

davet

2011/04/29 12:19

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Pierre,
 
No, I did not know you could do this stuff in IQ. Thanks for letting me know that most of what I want is is already available. At this point in time, I just barely know how to outline and add columns in IQ...not much more. I've only known about IQ for about 5 weeks now, and have been spending all my time testing and giving feedback, but hope to be able to start learning and using the app seriously now.
 
Will I be able to compile and save an RTF document from the RTF panes of selected items in the future? And will I be able to use MS Word as my word processor with the new RTF editor?
 
Dave

davet

2011/04/29 16:23

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[quote=Pierre_Admin]
Hi Dave,
 
Scrivener is a neat application. But did you know that apart from multi-item editing, all of this can be done in IQ ? In particular, if you select multiple items and print (option 2: selected items and HTML), you can get a combined view of all items ... Improvements can be made to the printed output if desired ! Don't hesitate to ask.
 
HTH
 
[/quote]
 
Pierre,
 
I played around with the "select multiple items and print (option 2: selected items and HTML)"...and that is pretty much what I am looking for, except that I need to be able to do that with RTF.  If I could create RTF docs and use MS Word as my RTF word processor, then I think I'd be in fat city and have no need for Scrivener. And, I think with that feature plus IQ's query capabilities writers could do single source publishing too. There is powerful stuff here...far beyond Scrivener.
 
Dave

Pierre_Admin

2011/04/29 16:24

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Hi Dave,
 
The same works with MHT documents. And editing MHT documents with Word is just about the same as RTF documents.
 

davet

2011/04/29 16:28

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Pierre,
 
Thanks...I played around MHT but could not figure out how to get it to produce one compiled document out of all the selected parts. I'll give it another go.
 
Dave

davet

2011/04/29 19:25

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[quote=Pierre_Admin]
Hi Dave,
 
The same works with MHT documents. And editing MHT documents with Word is just about the same as RTF documents.
 
[/quote]
 
I can't figure out any way to make a composite MHT document from selected pieces. Can anyone help me with this?
 
Dave

Pierre_Admin

2011/04/30 01:36

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No, you get a composite HTML file. Should not make any difference.
 
It could be a useful enhancement to have a check box to generate MHT instead of HTML (especially since now FF has a nice extension to support MHT: Mozilla Archive Format)
 

Armando

2011/05/01 14:35

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Here's an example with the sample DB :
 
 
 
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Hi Armando,
 
Thanks for the demo. I switched my default browser from Firefox to IE and tried following your demo. I got similar results and tried saving the output as MHT with IE. I then opened the MHT file in in MS Word. The result was of no use. The MHT file was strange looking and it contained no images. I tried to upload a video of this but could not do it. After several tries, I gave up.
 
The bottom line here is that MHT to HTML conversion appears to be of no use to me.
 
Dave

Armando

2011/05/01 21:05

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Thanks Dave. Following your steps : 1-exported items with MHT content  from IQ  to HTML (including with html pane content) ; 2- and then converted the html document to MHT from  ie since the HTML file didn't show any content in word.
 
I got the same results : no html pane content at all showed up in word. The export works well with html content, but not MHT content.
 
This is actually an old "bug" I reported a while ago, and forgot about it :
 
[Edit : This is probably something we should all do before getting into the slow bug reporting process of explaining steps, uploading screencasts, etc. : first check if it's already in Mantis. Just saying as I know bug reporting is often long and difficult, and it happened a few times that I spent almost an hour to report something that had already been reported. :)]
 
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davet

2011/05/02 08:45

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[quote=davet]
Hi Armando,
 
Thanks for the demo. I switched my default browser from Firefox to IE and tried following your demo. I got similar results and tried saving the output as MHT with IE. I then opened the MHT file in in MS Word. The result was of no use. The MHT file was strange looking and it contained no images. I tried to upload a video of this but could not do it. After several tries, I gave up.
 
The bottom line here is that MHT to HTML conversion appears to be of no use to me.
 
Dave
[/quote]
 
I tried uploading the video again, and it finally uploaded: /drupal5/files/351/HTML using IE.swf
 
My point is not that there is a bug between the HTML and MHT transformation, but the fact that even if what I saw in IE transferred perfectly to MHT, and it opened okay in Word, it would still not be useful. What is needed is a real transformation of the selected items in IQ to a useful Word document be it via MHT, RTF, or XSLT.
 
For example, If the output of IQ selected items where done with an XSLT transformation to MS Word, then you'd have something of great value. Once in Word users could save the output as doc, docx, PDF, MHT or other formats. The end goal of the IQ editor pane should not be to produce MHT. MHT really has no value except that you can open it in Word and then save it as a doc, docx, or PDF...I couldn't care less about MHT itself...yes, you might have an occasional need to save a Word doc as an MHT file so people could see it in a browser, but that is a nit.
 
When I'm a technical writer aiming to produce reusable content from a single source (known as single source publishing), or when I'm an instructional designer developing reusable learning objects,  I need to be able to conditionally produce RTF output. I think that could be done in IQ by adding metadata to items and then using the power of SQL queries to selectively produce documents based on need. But this could only be done if IQ could produce usable RTF output from selected items. Scrivener has little capability to build custom metadata, nor does it have SQL queries, but IQ has these capabilities. That is the power of the IQ core design.
 
End of sermon.
 
Dave

Armando

2011/05/02 10:56

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I agree with that.
MHT isn't ideal (although it has some strengths...), but the new component Pierre wants to use to replace the current HTML pane should take care of all these problems -- whether it'S though XSLT or something else.
 
In the mean time, there is still this problem : it's not possible to open any exported/concatenated MHT documents in word. Whether it's in HTML or converted in MHT through IE. AFAICT, these can only be opened in IE.
 
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