Obvious question but why not use DocBook for all of this rather than write
a whole new XML format? Converters already exist for most normal hardcopy
formats.
Tim
On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Mark Taylor wrote:
> To anyone who's interested ...
>
> TOPCAT's help system is now XML-based.
> The source document is a single XML file (sun178.xml) which is
> processed at build/install time to produce:
>
> (1) a single-page HTML version
> (2) a multi-file HTML version, looking rather like a
> traditional HTX-type SUN
> (3) a JavaHelp set of files (multiple HTML files, plus the other
> two or three XML files that JavaHelp needs to keep track of stuff)
>
> The STIL document SUN/252 is produced in a similar way, though it
> doesn't need a JavaHelp set.
>
> It would be nice to have a printable (ps or pdf, but probably in
> practice latex) output version too, but I haven't written the
> XSLT for this as yet. In the mean time it would be possible to
> print out the single HTML file from mozilla or something.
>
> This is all done using XSLT and java, so works under ant control - in
> particular there's no LaTeX/latex2html/star2html business, neither
> is there DSSSL or dependence on the Starlink SGML system (SSN/70).
> The actual work is done using XSLT plus one new java class
> uk.ac.starlink.util.MultiXML, which assists in turning a single XML
> document into multiple documents, which can't be done within XSLT itself.
> Where it makes sense to do so, I've used a DTD which resembles
> that from the SGML package, but there are discrepancies becuase
> of different requirements, and there are certainly large parts
> of the SGML DTDs which my XSLT stylesheets would not cope well with.
>
> I've done this because I was getting seriously fed up with writing
> and keeping up to date a mess of raw HTML + XML files for TOPCAT's
> help system. I didn't use the SGML set or LaTeX/star2html
> because I wanted it to work within starjava without external
> dependencies. An alternative way forward would have been to
> write a set of downconverters in XSLT which match the existing
> DSSSL ones in the SGML set. I've done it like I have partly as
> a proof of concept and partly because I wanted something I could use
> in short order. I don't rule out throwing this lot away and doing
> it properly from scratch at some point.
>
> The conversion machinery (mostly XSLT files) is currently in a
> not-particularly-public part of the TOPCAT package (topcat/src/docs
> if you want to know), i.e. it's not really set up for use by other
> packages. This is largely because it's not very well documented
> and it may undergo changes as I see things I want it to do that
> it's not doing yet.
>
> I mention this here just in case anyone else is planning to do something
> similar; at such a time it would probably make sense to think about
> where this is going. However, at the moment I'm not particularly
> encouraging use of this, since as I say it's not much beyond test
> stage.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Mark Taylor Starlink Programmer Physics, Bristol University, UK
> [log in to unmask] +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
>
--
Tim Jenness
JAC software
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~timj
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