XSLT Training and Word Woes - Cross Posted to XML-DOC

["Karen Koldyk" <kkoldyk -at- email -dot- fleming -dot- com>]

Can anyone point me to some good sources for XSLT training? I would also need to narrow down the better books on XSLT and CSS.

Appreciate any help.  

BTW, for those of you that wanted to be updated on the progress of our XML project........

We have started the first phase of our implementation with Arbortext Epic, the E3 Engine and Oracle IFS. Over the last two days consultants were in gathering information to help us develop our system. There is still a lot of excitement among some of the user base although some are definately hesitant and it will take proof in the pudding to get buy in from them. 
The scope is also changing; what WAS a probable 10 user installation has suddenly ballooned into a likely startup of over 50 users with over 150 within a year. That is just in IT alone. Eventually this will be migrated enterprise wide. Am i getting dizzy yet??? You bet I am!  

The biggest hurdle we will have to cross is the lack of in-house expertise in XML and management support to spend money for development in this area. They spent the money for the software and equipment but now I will have to convince them that legacy data doesn't just magically convert itself.  Here was one of my manager's statements...... "This system is supposed to be very easy to use and take word document automatically. What's the problem?" When told that Word documents have to adhere to styles....."what's a style" - and these are very advanced functions and what type of user would EVER do this......... - See my problem??? I almost left the office in tears and quit on the spot......but I guess I'll just take this one day at a time for now. 

I was not aware that there WOULD be any legacy data to convert. I was originally told this would all be NEW information with the exception of documents I do in Framemaker which are well formed simply because I'm strict. I was also aware of 3000 pages of Word docs which I figured would need some work but that's not much to fix up when I saw they were fairly consistant........ Now I'm finding out we have several thousand pages of Word docs which although structured are tagged with mainly H1, H2 and NORMAL.  If anyone has any ideas on how to get styles applied very quickly to about 10000 pages of table type text, screen shots and visio graphics so they can then be mapped for conversion I would sure be willing to listen!! I could probably get some resource to help me with the effort of applying styles but that's likely about it. 

For this effort - I'm the the DTD writer/maintainer, the application developer, stylesheet developer, and the gatekeeper of the data,  in otherwords EVERYTHING except the Oracle DBA and server administrator. I don't even have a backup.......I haven't yet shown them what a DTD looks like - maybe that will give my manager a spark of the level of work I'm having to do now versus the basic writing I USED to do.....  I've had some of my training and am a little bit overwhelmed and tired of traveling.  I have learned to hate Michigan and airlines after 3 involuntary bumps in 2 days which caused me to be stranded overnight on the way home after being away for two weeks, a rude hotel night audior (netted me a few free nights, getting lost during a very scary trip to the Detroit airport in a storm, losing my wallet including all of my ID and a greencard - thankfully it was found completely intact,  and a host of other mishaps. A nightmare to horrible to even WANT to remember!! It's amazing I managed to learn anything!

As I see it right now, my  budget will likely cover DTD writing,  mapper files,  and interface changes to the editor.  I think I'll have to do all the stylesheet writing unless I can plead more money. This is why I'm in desparate search of XSLT and CSS materials. I've taken FOSI training and I'm very novice but at least I have the notes. Thankfully, print isn't one of our big requirements at the moment.

Thanks!!!!!!!



Karen Koldyk
SQA Tech. Writer
Fleming Companies Inc.
kkoldyk -at- email -dot- fleming -dot- com
(405)858-6574


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