Re: [docbook] DocBook on the Web

[Per Bothner <per@bothner.com>]

Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> 
>> I think it would be possible to load an entire document into the
>> browser and use a Javascript mechanism to chunk it into logical
>> pages (along with all the on-page previous/next/ home/up links).
>> But that would still require having the whole document in memory,
>> and (through Javascript) just exposing parts of it at time.
> 
> It's certainly possible. I think the S5 stylesheet mechanism does that. 
> The problem is that:
> 
> 1. It depends on JavaScript.
> 
> 2. The URLs no longer map to individual pages. Bookmarking, linking, and 
> search engine optimization are severely hindered.

I made some patches to S5 that more-or-less fix the bookmarking
and linking issue.  For an example see:
http://per.bothner.com/papers/KawaLisps05/talk.html
Notice that as you navigate the papers that browser Location
bar is updated to show a #fragment identifier that names
each slide.  If you mouse over the lower-right-hand area of
the page you you see an "index" that allows quick jumping
to an arbitrary page, again updating the location bar.
Of course this is a real URL you can bookmark.

The fragment names are human-readable author-chosen names,
not an automatically-generated sequence number, though you
can use those as well.  For example:
http://per.bothner.com/papers/KawaLisps05/talk.html#slide10

(There is at least one bug in that if you manually edit the
location bar to indicate a different page, that somehow disables
updates on subsequent navigation.  I don't remember what the
problem was or whether it is fixable,)

The search engine situation is mixed.  I tried Googling for a
string in one of the slides, and Google found it no problem.
However, it stored a URL without the fragment name, so clicking
the link yields the "front page", not the one with the slide.
Perhaps one could change the URLs so the default fragment-less
URL goes to the outline page:
http://per.bothner.com/papers/KawaLisps05/talk.html?outline
And then have a prominent link on that page for "slideshow".
Maybe I'll attempt that the next time I have a presentation
to make.

(I submitted my patch to the S5 author, but at the time
he didn't seem interested.)
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/