Migrate allows you to guide the conversion of your documentation to the desired output format.
The Challenge: Going from Visual to Semantic #
Migrate is typically used to convert documentation created in WYSIWIG authoring environments to some semantically rich XML format. The source format is full of visual cues that indicate, to varying degrees, the meaning or purpose of the content. With Migrate, you leverage these visual cues in order to indentify units of text and map them to the target XML format. You create Migrate rules to express this mapping, which we also call a rule set. To successfully create or modify such a rule set it helps to understand:
- your document’s structure
- your existing mapping
- the target format
Facing the Challenge #
The starting point, therefore, is understanding your own document. Choose a representative document and open it in the rules editor. Migrate will display a rendition of it in the content panel. You can explore your content and see what properties each piece of content has. These properties are the visual cues that you will base your rules on.
Work with your document to create a rule set that works well. You should then be able to convert similar documents with the same rule set. If you need to make small changes for a particular document to convert propertly, consider creating document specific rules. If these small changes apply to more than one document, you can create a variant of your rule set by cloning it.
