Re: [docbook-apps] [GSOC] About DocBook WebHelp Project

[Visitha Baddegama <visithauom@gmail.com>]

Hi David, Stefan, and Kasun,

Since past few days I had our 3rd year individual project evaluations,
I could not keep actively this thread..It was finished yesterday and
now I have more time to involve with webhelp project..But during my
last busy days, I have gone through lot of resources about webhelp and
got familiar with docbook and webhelp..

>> To further your exploration, if you like IDEs and build-in
>> convenience, you should check out the oXygen XML Editor [1]. It's
>> commercial, but they're generous with licenses for people working on
>> open source projects. They also include Webhelp from the previous GSoC
>> and the webhelp output in the svn tree [2] includes code that they
>> have contributed back. oXygen includes assisted authoring for writing
>> DocBook documents, xslts, xproc pipelines, etc.

As David said,  I downloaded oXygen XML Editor. Even though I
downloaded it I could not go through it too much..I will get familiar
with it as soon as possible..

>> I'd encourage you to explore XPath and XSLT. XSLT can be a bit
>> mind-bending at first, but is fun and powerful in the long run. Use
>> some resources on the web. The DocBook xsls are a great way to learn
>> xslt since they exercise so many features.

I followed a great tutorial about XPath and XSLT and gathered good
background knowledge about both of them..According to my point of
view, XPath is a language which is used to navigate through the XML
documents and XSLT is used to transform XML documents into XHTML or
any other type of document. Now I familiar with lots of XSLT and XPath
Elements, their usages and developed a XML and XSL documents my self
and converted them to HTML. Then what should I follow about Webhelp's
technologies?

>> But before all that additional exploration, your real next step is to
>> put together a proposal!

I made a draft proposal for webhelp project as a Google doc  and
shared it.When I get more details about Webhelp and its features, I
will update it properly. And I will appreciate very much if you can
guide me to create a strong proposal to webhelp.

>> addition to the ideas on the Webhelp ideas
>> page on the xmlpress wiki [6]. I'll be happy to priorities the
>> features presented there, and others on this list using webhelp will
>> have their own ideas on what should be added, changed, or improved in
>> webhelp and what the priorities should be.

I have gone through the priority feature list and searched about some
of them. To get more knowledge about these features, what should I do?
What are the resources I should follow.?

Now I am going to read webhelp documentation, gather knowledge about
XProc and do some GUI testing of webhelp in different browsers. I have
found some differences in different browsers and I will inform you
about them in near future. Since now I have more time to dedicate to
this project, please advise me to get more knowledge about Webhelp
project..

Thank you in advance..!!


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