Re: [docbook-apps] Using offline and online content in Webhelp

[David Cramer <david@thingbag.net>]

On 08/10/2012 03:05 PM, Jeff Powanda wrote:
> Using the current DocBook Webhelp stylesheet, is there any way that you
> can generate a help system that uses both offline (local) and online
> (web hosted) content?

Hi Jeff,
The short answer is maybe. You could easily customize a template and add
nodes to the toc that point to remote content, but even if you had the
same toc tree in the remote content, the nodes in the remote content
couldn't take you back to the local content. Similarly, the next and
previous buttons would be a problem. If you had this in the toc:

local chapter 1
 local section 1
 remote section 2
 local section 3

Would the next button in section 1 take you to "remote section 2"? But
the next and prev buttons on "remote section 2" aren't going to be able
to take you back to the local content. You could just suppress the
next/prev buttons and rely only on the toc.

If you simply want to add some nodes to the toc tree that take you to
remote pages such that the links leave the helpset, then that's easy. If
you wanted to have something that keeps the helpset feel, combining
remote and local content, then that won't work with webhelp as
implemented. You could do a bit more if you reimplement it with an old
fashioned frameset or an iframe.

If you do want to customize the left pane toc, the template to look in
is <xsl:template name="webhelptoc"> in webhelp-common.xsl. I imagine
you'd customize it to look for some markup in your book and add nodes to
the toc accordingly. E.g. you might allow the content author to add some
processing instructions like so:

<?vocera label="Cool Remote Content"
href="http://vocera.com/remote/content/ipsum.html";?>

Then have the template add a node to the toc tree.

David