Re: [docbook-apps] New Branch: website5

[Doug <doug.duboulay@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 21 May 2010, Sina K. Heshmati wrote:
> Hello Denis,
>
> Denis Bradford wrote:

> >> "Denis Bradford" <denis.bradford@verizon.net> said:
> >>> 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.

> > Sina K. Heshmati wrote:
> >> 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.

> Denis Bradford wrote:
> > 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. 

Most immediate issue I can see is that you then have to generate a 
layout.xml sitemap that contains hierarchically layed out entries for 
every chunked node of any embedded documents and which is automatically 
updated as they evolve and are rebuilt. So you need a "meta-layout.xml" 
file that knows how those documents are chunked (and which directories 
they are in). 
That and replacing the headers and footers of the chunks.

When the chunking to html is part of the same website generation process, 
then the layout machinary can work it out for itself. I would have to 
say that it took me six months to achieve this effect with tabular-toc. 
It was not a trivial thing. IIRC I had to write a customisation 
for the DocBook HTML chunking layer, as well as modifying a good deal 
of Website itself.
 
> I never meant to imply that X would not be useful but
> should X be part of DocBook Website?

dunno