Davin
11-03-2000, 06:29 PM
Charles, I have been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out and work with XML as a publishing framework. I have been working especially hard on developing a navigation scheme in XSL/T to provide for an automatic TOC and Index generation as well as navigational entities like previous/previous section/top/next section/next. This has been a frustrating ordeal that has led to limited success partly because of the lack of good quality practical XML information on the web.
What are my motivations for developing a framework? In a word: PCGuide. The biggest benefit of XML (extensible markup language) is that it separates the content from the presentation from the logic. So there is an XML file that contains the content. There is an XSL (extensible stylesheet language) file that defines the presentation and there is usually (but not always) an XSL file that contains the logic for generating things like a navigation system. Additionally, you can use a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for better control over the presentation of the generated HTML. For a brief tutorial on XML visit http://www.xml101.com/ and http://www.w3schools.com/.
What is the appeal? The separation of the content from the presentation and logic means that we can share the content XML file and have our own presentation layers (think, skins). The tutorials I mentioned above should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
There is an initiative at apache for server-side support for XML document publication frameworks called cocoon http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/index.html. I have setup cocoon with apache and Jakarta-tomcat and all the auxiliary programs needed to make cocoon work. There is great step-by-step instructions for installing cocoon (and everything else you need) on their website. This setup is what I’ve been using to develop my framework.
While getting frustrated at my navigation system, I took to the web to find a “boxed” solution. Sure enough I stumbled across something called DocBook. This looks like the perfect solution http://oasis.oasis-open.org/docbook/index.html. It seems to be highly developed, accepted and looks like there is sufficient documentation on it. O’Reilly puts out a book called DocBook: The Definitive Guide (ISBN: 1-56592-580-7) but you can download a full copy of it for free here http://docbook.org/tdg/index.html.
You can publish PCGuide in a wide variety of formats and have user selectable “skins” (like Jive, which also uses XML/XSL and JSP). Formats include browser compatibility, PDF, markup for both fat (desktop browsers) and thin (cell phones, PDA’s) clients, etc. Automatic generation of TOC, index, glossary, bibliography and navigation are all part of the system. Once the system is in place, all modifications to the content XML are automatically carried through without touching the presentation or logic layers making maintenance a snap.
You might want to get this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/general/xmlparser.asp
Then after you install the Microsoft XML SDK, go here C:\Program Files\Microsoft XML Parser SDK\Docs\xmlsdk30.chm for the compiled HTML documentation.
Let me know what you think.
-Davin
[This message has been edited by Davin (edited 11-03-2000).]
What are my motivations for developing a framework? In a word: PCGuide. The biggest benefit of XML (extensible markup language) is that it separates the content from the presentation from the logic. So there is an XML file that contains the content. There is an XSL (extensible stylesheet language) file that defines the presentation and there is usually (but not always) an XSL file that contains the logic for generating things like a navigation system. Additionally, you can use a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) for better control over the presentation of the generated HTML. For a brief tutorial on XML visit http://www.xml101.com/ and http://www.w3schools.com/.
What is the appeal? The separation of the content from the presentation and logic means that we can share the content XML file and have our own presentation layers (think, skins). The tutorials I mentioned above should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
There is an initiative at apache for server-side support for XML document publication frameworks called cocoon http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/index.html. I have setup cocoon with apache and Jakarta-tomcat and all the auxiliary programs needed to make cocoon work. There is great step-by-step instructions for installing cocoon (and everything else you need) on their website. This setup is what I’ve been using to develop my framework.
While getting frustrated at my navigation system, I took to the web to find a “boxed” solution. Sure enough I stumbled across something called DocBook. This looks like the perfect solution http://oasis.oasis-open.org/docbook/index.html. It seems to be highly developed, accepted and looks like there is sufficient documentation on it. O’Reilly puts out a book called DocBook: The Definitive Guide (ISBN: 1-56592-580-7) but you can download a full copy of it for free here http://docbook.org/tdg/index.html.
You can publish PCGuide in a wide variety of formats and have user selectable “skins” (like Jive, which also uses XML/XSL and JSP). Formats include browser compatibility, PDF, markup for both fat (desktop browsers) and thin (cell phones, PDA’s) clients, etc. Automatic generation of TOC, index, glossary, bibliography and navigation are all part of the system. Once the system is in place, all modifications to the content XML are automatically carried through without touching the presentation or logic layers making maintenance a snap.
You might want to get this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/general/xmlparser.asp
Then after you install the Microsoft XML SDK, go here C:\Program Files\Microsoft XML Parser SDK\Docs\xmlsdk30.chm for the compiled HTML documentation.
Let me know what you think.
-Davin
[This message has been edited by Davin (edited 11-03-2000).]