How DOCX And XML Conversion From PublishOne Can Streamline Your Workflows
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has been around for a long time. Today, it’s still the backbone of most modern publishing processes. Many publishers around the world rely on XML-based workflows to format, structure, and tag huge volumes of content.
But there’s one problem: most authors and editors usually don’t have the required technical understanding to work in XML. And why would they? Their focus is on content creation. For that reason, content typically starts life in Microsoft Word before being converted to XML as part of a wider workflow.
And that’s where the XML conversion capabilities of PublishOne really come into play.
Write in Word. Format in XML.
Modern publishing workflows are designed to allow authors and editors to create and edit written content without touching the look and feel of the final product. To that end, authors tend to use a writing app – typically Microsoft Word – and when the content is ready for publication, it gets correctly formatted and styled by an XML schema.
In some cases, this is facilitated by a locally installed desktop tool that handles conversion to and from DOCX and different kinds of XML, including JATS, STS, BITS, and more. Even if it’s available within the Word environment, there are a number of potential problems with using a desktop tool for XML conversion.
→ See our advice on choosing the right XML authoring tool
Secure, cloud-based XML conversion
When you work with hundreds or thousands of external authors, deploying a desktop-based solution poses a security risk. That’s because it relies on authors themselves updating to the latest version of the tool. At the same time, it also limits your ability to roll out updates and changes to XML schema, which can’t be done centrally.
Another challenge of working with desktop-based XML converters for Microsoft Word is that you can only convert one document at a time. So if your publication – say an academic journal – has multiple contributors, each contribution or chapter is handled separately within your XML workflow.
In contrast, PublishOne is a cloud-based publishing platform that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Word. In fact, apart from the add-in inside Microsoft Word, you’d hardly know it was there. Hit ‘Save’ and DOCX is seamlessly converted into XML. Inside the PublishOne environment, you can combine multiple documents into one XML file and send the same content to multiple channels with a drop-down menu and just a few clicks.
The real beauty of having a secure, centralized repository for your content is that if you need to make changes, you only need to do that once and it updates everywhere.
→ Learn more about XML workflows
A complete suite or the missing piece. We’re both.
For many publishers, PublishOne is the backbone of their daily workflows, from content creation through to content management and publishing. That’s also because it’s easy to integrate other tools in your tech stack – like referencing solutions or AI translators – with PublishOne.
But here’s the thing. It’s also possible to dial down the functionality and features to fit your specific business needs. So if you just need a powerful XML converter that lives inside Microsoft Word but doesn’t intrude on your content creator’s creativity, then we can make it happen, thanks to our super-friendly APIs.
→ Find out about using PublishOne as an XML content management system
The XML converter inside PublishOne is built on years of experience and development – in fact, it’s almost as old as XML itself. Over time, we’ve enhanced and refined its capabilities so that all the heavy lifting is done for you. Not only that, built-in validations give you consistency in the quality of your XML outputs. In fact, we’re trusted by some of the biggest names in large-scale content publishing, including Wolters Kluwer.
Interested in the XML conversion capabilities of PublishOne? See how it works in a free demo. Book now
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