Third Draft
Changes in this revision relative to Draft Two:
- Issue section: rewritten to reflect comments by Adrian and Helen.
- Scope section: to remove the reference to “Save Report As options for extra file types (DOCX, ODT, etc)”, as requested by Helen.
------
Title
“DOCX and/or ODT Report Generation Capability”
Summary of Proposal
To facilitate the import and post-processing of Family Historian reports, the current output-format selection should be augmented to include DOCX and/or ODT.
Background
The final format and general appearance of a report is as much an artistic endeavour as it is a scholarly one. Individual expectations of what it can contain and how it is formatted is very much a personal preference. This may be as simple as including images or as complex as major structural changes and typesetting. Some programs supply extensive configuration parameters in an effort to meet user expectations. However; no autogenerated report can meet the needs of everyone and some form of post-processing by other applications is typically required.
Issue
As noted; end-users may need to post-process reports. To date, Family Historian has a limited set of standard output formats available; “PDF”, “Web Page (HTML)”, “Word-Processor Document (RTF)” and “Text File”. Of these; only the latter two are formats that are intended to be edited. Text documents can be edited, but provide very limited formatting capability and cannot handle graphics or tables. Standard RTF supports formatting in a limited sense, but lacks sufficient information content to accurately lay out and format graphics and text. DOCX and ODT, on the other hand, were designed with word-processing and desktop publishing in mind and have no such limitation. So; DOCX and/or ODT are able to transfer a more “true” representation of the original report to a 3rd party program for further editing.
While not a currently supported output format in FH7, Markdown is a supported input to some desktop publishers and web-design applications. When exporting a document that must be an accurate reflection of the on-screen report, as in this case, it is not a suitable choice. This because, like RTF, it lacks the capability to accurately reflect the on-screen layout and formatting of report graphics and text. However; in instances in which such fidelity is not required, it may be a viable option. eg. as a basis for web-pages
Proposal
It is suggested that FH7 be augmented to provide the ability to export reports in standard DOCX and/or ODT format.
Constraints
The following key requirements stem from observing ongoing difficulties encountered by FH competitors in implementing a similar capability.
- To ensure reliability and compatibility with the largest number of word-processors and desktop publishers, the DOCX and/or ODT file must adhere to the respective published standards for the file format/content.
[Note: Some programs, like Scrivener, may depend upon footnotes being implemented per the standard. This may require some care, since MSWord text-to-footnote linking works bidirectionally.]
- The implementation must use the standard MS default parameters, especially with respect to format tag-names. [Note: Some programs, like Scrivener, depend upon the presence of default tag-names to mimic the document structure and correctly extract references upon import.]
- Any optional customization and deprecated capabilities must be avoided in order to ensure the highest level of compatibility with third-party post-processors.
- As the changes could easily result in regression of existing capabilities, it is recommended that the product be thoroughly regression-tested. The resulting output files must also be verified to be compatibile with commonly-used post-processors such as MSWord, LibreOffice and Scrivener (amongst others).
Scope of Changes
While, on the surface, the requirement is simply to produce reports in standard DOCX and/or ODT format, the necessary programming changes are likely to go well beyond the code responsible for generating reports. The target formats will likely require changes to other areas of the FH code to provide the required content to the report generator code.
This request has consistently used the phrase, “DOCX and/or ODT”, but it is hoped that both can be offered. While many post-processing applications accept both formats, some like Scrivener, seem to work best with ODT. However; if only one format is possible, then external converters between DOCX and ODT do exist.
To avoid confusion; it is intended that this wishlist capability, being focussed solely on the provision of a robust DOCX and/or ODT capability, is considered as separate and distinct from the following and any other Markdown-related wishlist items;
