[alphonso]

Hello,

I have been trying to come up with an applescript to make a html table (in html text) out of my outline. I have been trying for hours unsuccessfully (but I have never coded before either....I have the feeling it is not very hard, but I have no experience what soever with coding...). The goal is to turn a linear outline into a table, with the following rules:


Can anyone help me come up with an applescript
Thanks to any code litterate peer,

Alphonso

An XSLT export plugin might be the natural route.

[alphonso]

Thanks for the information, but I am not exactly sure how I should go about that. Is there already a plugin that exists or is it something to do. Since I had never heard of xslt (no wonder as I am not really into computers, yet...) I googled it and came up with pretty technical results...not super helpful. I googled OO xslt, stumbled on a few old pages (2004, etc...) but nothing helpful.
Could you please point me further in the right direction,
Thanks a lot, you help is much appreciated,

J.

It's not *too* technical, as these things go, but it might be daunting if you haven't done much programming. The first rule of programming is to get someone else to do it. (I'm unfortunately busy with a dissertation just now).

You would need to understand the XML structure of an OmniOutliner document, and the basics of how XSLT works. You could then use Apple Xcode to put together an export option that would show up in OmniOutliner's export dialog.

Essentially, you would start by writing a sample of the kind of HTML that you want to generate, and then turn it into a template by putting in some XSLT place-markers where you want OO3 to supply the data. XSLT has a pattern matching syntax which would let you specify where in the OO3 XML you want to get the data from.

O'Reilly has two or three good books on XSLT, but in the meanwhile the first step would be to download the Omnioutliner SDK.

The subtlest part would be handling the nesting of sub-headers under their parents. You might want to start by thinking what your HTML will look like once there are several layers of nesting.

But before you launch into programming at all, do check out the Omnioutliner Extras page which includes a set of extra export plugins (including HTML).
There may be one which you could use.

[alphonso]

Thanks a lot for your answer. This week end I will:
1. look up a wikipedia article on xml and work my way to understanding what it is from there with reference articles...
2. download the OO SDK, look at the documentation and try to gather what it takes to "develop" something for OO
3. look at the code of the plugins already written
4. post here a template of what a complete html code would look like

Maybe by then you'll be able to help me further too !

Thanks