I think that MS has very good tools for XML generation and editing. Isn't there a utility for going between Word and XML? XML has the depth of the book organization but allows for the easy manipulation by Perl and many other tools.

I'm talking off the top of my head here, and would be hard put to give a demonstration, but this is something I would investigate if I were to do another book or more book scale editing.

What is STM books?

Update:

I found this commercial suite of products for doing the conversions between Word and XML.
perlcapt
-ben

In reply to Re: A copyeditor needs help to get started with a Perl project by perlcapt
in thread A copyeditor needs help to get started with a Perl project by wordsmith

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.