Cuckoo is a content authoring tool implemented as a Word plug-in.

It is a PageBox subproject.

The core of Cuckoo is written in Word Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

It leverages on the similarities between Word and HTML model:

• A Word document can be programmatically read and created using an object model that looks like Document Object Model (DOM).

• Like a HTML document, a Word document is made of paragraphs with styles and contains tables and hyperlinks.

Cuckoo core is a Word converter. It reads a Word document and transforms it into a mix of XML and XHTML.

The rest of Cuckoo is a set of utilities (mostly XSLT) transforming generated XML documents in a format suitable for publication and that can be:

• ASP

• JSP

• PHP

• XSP (Cocoon)

• XTP (Resin)

Cuckoo is not the first Word to HTML converter and it doesn’t try to generate CSS styles matching your Word styles. Cuckoo users write content and presentation hints. It is the job of the Webmaster or of the artist to render this content.

On the other hand, Cuckoo allows creating mouse overs and forms. It evens generates the scripts and server pages able to handle forms requests. These server pages can be ASP, JSP or PHP. We could also support CGI and any other server page model.

Because Cuckoo uses an intermediate XML format it allows generating sites with elements common to all pages of the site, such as disclaimers. It also allows merging different Cuckoo-generated documents on the same page.

See the Presentation, the Customisation guide, the Runtime Generation guide and the Forms guide for more information.

You can download Cuckoo here. We will go to CVS if the number of developers grows.

Contact:support@pagebox.net
©2001-2004 Alexis Grandemange. Last modified .