Re: [docbook-apps] New Branch: website5

["Sina K. Heshmati" <sina@khakbaz.com>]

Hello Denis,

Denis Bradford wrote:
> Sina K. Heshmati wrote:
>> "Denis Bradford" <denis.bradford@verizon.net> said:
>>
>>> Sina, I'm so glad to see active development on Website, it's such a
>>> terrific product. As long as you're thinking about its next stage of
>>> development, has anyone suggested folding Website into DocBook? I use
>>> both all the time, and I think each has features that could enhance the
>>> other.
>>>
>>> I once implemented a doc set that pulled together a bunch of DocBooks
>>> and some non-DocBook content using an olink sitemap. I was amazed to
>>> learn how powerful sitemaps and generated olink databases are. It
>>> occurred to me that they could be used to do far more than enable
>>> olinks: they contain all the metadata you need to organize and process a
>>> whole doc system -- not unlike Website layouts (and ditamaps, for that
>>> matter). On the company web site we served our doc set as an Eclipse
>>> infocenter, but I couldn't help thinking how much easier it would have
>>> been to post it as a Website.
>>>
>>> Another example, on the Website side: why should only books and help
>>> systems have an index? It's a great navigation tool for an informational
>>> web site, too. So, I hacked the Website stylesheets to generate a
>>> DocBook index for the site. Not pretty XSL, but my readers love the index.
>>>
>>> I realize this is not a trivial thing. Besides the layout, there doesn't
>>> appear to be much difference between the DocBook and Website (full)
>>> documents -- mostly a few elements at the top. But the big difference is
>>> in the processing, and that would no doubt require a lot of work to bridge.
>>>
>>> The benefits just might be worth the effort. Making Website a DocBook
>>> output option, instead of a separate dialect, would increase its value
>>> for technical documentation -- a low-tech, frameless alternative to
>>> Eclipse infocenters and HTML-based help browsers.
>>
>> Some of these features are indeed useful for both DocBook HTML output and DocBook
>> Website but please note the fundamental distinction between DocBook and DocBook
>> Website. DocBook helps format documents and publish them anywhere, including the
>> Web whereas DocBook Website helps publish *websites* on the Web and only on the
>> Web.
> 
>> That said, DocBook Website can, in theory, support all the features provided by
>> the HTML stylesheets for DocBook but it's important to know that DocBook and
>> DocBook Website do not share a common goal.
> 
> I don't see how the distinction you draw between DocBook and Website is
> fundamental. The DocBook stylesheets for PDF and HTML Help don't
> represent different goals, they're just different outputs from a single
> source.

True. FO and HTML Help stylesheets transform a single source into different outputs. In an abstract way, they are even equivalent. Now, are DocBook Website stylesheets equivalent to FO and HTML Help stylesheets? No, because the source is different.

> That was the point I tried to make in citing my own work experience,
> where it would have been useful to publish not only to help and PDF, but
> also to collection of web pages, all from the same source.

What you mean is a program, X that transforms a DocBook document into a collection of webpages, right? DocBook Website can then process those generated webpages. I never meant to imply that X would not be useful but should X be part of DocBook Website?

> Of course, if the work is beyond the scope of this GSoC project, I
> completely understand.

It is obviously a nice feature to have but it has more to do with DocBook XSL stylesheets than DocBook Website stylesheets.

SinDoc