[GSOC] About DocBook WebHelp Project

[Visitha Baddegama <visithauom@gmail.com>]

Hi David,

I'm Visitha Baddegama, a 3rd year undergraduate from Department of
Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa. This time
I'm planning to contribute DocBook Project under Google Summer of Code
2012.

These days I am gathering lots of information about DocBook since I'm
very new to DocBook. At first I walked through the DocBook Ideas
page[0] and found very interesting and familiar project, "WebHelp"
since I have good background knowledge about Java, JavaScript and CSS.
Because of I'm new to DocBook, I searched about so many articles and
gathered lots of information about DocBook[1] since It was a very
interesting project to me and realized that the main purpose of that
project is, for given file generating another type format files like
html, xhtml, pdf, man pages etc.  .

 Then I followed the book by Bob[2] and got good high level over view
about DocBook, XSLT processors, XSL-FO processors, DocBook DTD, and
DocBook stylesheets. Then I installed "Xsltproc" as XSLT Processor[3]
to my windows OS, configured environmental variables and downloaded
DocBook Xsl style sheets[4]. After I learnt about some of most used
DocBook elements[4] like "<article>,  <articleinfo>, <section>,
<para>, <orderedlist>", I followed a tutorial[5] and converted a xml
document to html format succesfully. Now I'm converting a xml document
to pdf format. Then I could understand the usage of DocBook and became
much more interesting about DocBook. Therefore Now I have sufficient
knowledge about what is happening at the client side.

What I got about this conversion is, the Xsltproc takes both xsl style
sheet which I targeted and my xml source document and produce a our
desired output(in my case html) according to xsl style sheet. Please
correct me if I wrong..!!

I think it is better to learn about the structure about the xsl style
sheets and  learn about how these style sheets are used to generate
different output formats. I searched about "WebHelp" from several
articles[6] and very interested about "Add other search options,
Automate search results summary text and Parameterize list of files to
exclude from indexing" features within WebHelp and understood what is
happening at the Webhelp. I'd really  appreciate if you can provide me
some directions to WebHelp and guide me to gather lots more
information about WebHelp features.

Since I am very new to docBook, I warmly welcome any advises and
guidance from you to improve my knowledge about WebHelp project and I
have huge eager to contribute Webhelp Project. Even though Docbook is
new to me, I have capability to familiar with  any technology as soon
as possible. And I have done all my university and other projects in
java language, made firefox extensions using java scripts and have
good knowledge about CSS. Therefore I have a great confidence to join
with WebHelp project and give my all strength to improvement of the
project.
.
[0]  http://docbook.xmlpress.net/tiki-index.php?page=Ideas2012
[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook
[2]  http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/index.html
[3]  http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/InstallingAProcessor.html#InstallXsltproc
[4]  http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/files/docbook-xsl/
[5]  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DocBook
[6]  http://blog.kasunbg.org/2010/08/docbook-webhelp-project.html

Thank you in Advance...!!!
Visitha.

Visitha Warna Baddegama
Undergraduate
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Moratuwa
Sri Lanka