Save as XDiML (DissertationMarkupLanguage), Writing and Converting digital Theses and Dissertations using OpenOffice

For 5 years now, doctoral candidates of Humboldt- University at Berlin can choose the digital publication as one option to publish their dissertation. The ?Electronic Publishing? Group provides stylesheets for Microsoft Word, WordPerfect and Staroffice/Openoffice in order to allow the authors to structure their digital documents semantically. It is neccessary to prepare documents that way, because they are converted into an XMl format afterwards. The XML document than is an instance of the xDiML.DTD (DissertationMarkupLanguage). This DTD has been developed within several electronic publishing projects at Humboldt-University. Since 1997 an SGML/XML- based concept for the long term preservation of digital publications has been used, in order to store digital documents in an media neutral archival format, to use the possibilities of a structered retrieval within the semantic structures of documents, and to enable an automated production of different information products (like PDF format for print, HTML for WWW layout, metadata for use within different retrieval networks). In order to increase the efficiency of OpenOffice with it?s end format XML, a document style sheet and a filter for Openoffice was developed at the Computer- and Media Service of Humboldt- University. Authors are enabled to write their digital dissertation using this document style sheet and to save those within an XML based format. At the same time the ?Electronic Publishing Group? uses OpenOffice as a conversion tool to convert Microsoft Word documents written with the digital dissertation stylesheet as XML. This talk will focus on demonstrating the needs for a dissertation.dtd and it?s structure. Secondly the converter ?save as xDiml? will be presented and the advantages and disadvantages of writing a complex document as a dissertation using OpenOffice will be discussed