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Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Planning For Legacy Content Conversion: Microsoft Word Snafus
Software tools exist to help convert legacy content to structured XML. Unfortunately, these conversion products work best on highly structured documents that are consistently formatted. Even the best-of-breed conversion tools cannot address the multiple ways authors use word processing tools in the real world. In an article for CMSWatch.com entitled, Planning for problems when converting legacy content, Michael Gross, Chief Information Technology Officer for Data Conversion Laboratories examines “5 ways to break your conversion engine”. The problems discussed in this article are focused on issues caused by inappropriate and inconsistent use of Microsoft Word.
Common problems include:
- improperly formatted paragraphs
- absolute positioning of text boxes
- simulated tables (using spaces and tabs to align text)
- misaligned table column separators
- improper table/row separation
- fonts not mapped to ISO character set
- use of implicit links (cross-references)
Read the article.
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