Re: [docbook-apps] olinking in webhelp

[David Cramer <david@thingbag.net>]

On 10/24/2012 01:47 PM, Bob Stayton wrote:

Ah, the dreaded Saxon 6.5 DOCTYPE bug. When I set up a system to use
olink previously I recall I hacked around it by having Ant remove the
DOCTYPE as part of the build process (or maybe I used xinclude, I can't
recall, I've used both tricks in different situations).

Webhelp is based on the xhtml xsls because originally the indexer could
only parse xml files. Quite some time ago however, Kasun added tagsoup
into the mix so that it could accept html as well.

> Now I'm not sure how to proceed.  It appears that the xhtml5 output
> works in the two browsers I tested, but I have not done extensive
> testing.  The xhtml5 stylesheet provides support for videoobject and
> audioobject, which could be nice for help systems.

Testing would be the only reason to hesitate. One reason I've liked
xhtml with the doctype in the past is that it kept browsers out of
quirks mode, but I don't keep up with the latest trends in browser
behavior.

> An alternative to switching over to xhtml5 would be to modify webhelp's
> base stylesheet to work like the xhtml5 base stylesheet. That stylesheet
> sets up a replacement for xhtml/docbook.xsl that imports all the other
> xhtml modules but does *not* have the problematic <xsl:output> element. 
> You can look at xhtml5/xhtml-docbook.xsl to see what I mean.  That means
> webhelp would stick with xhtml instead of xhtml5.
> 
> I would suggest that if we don't switch webhelp to xhtml5, that we add a
> webhelp5.xsl anyway, for those who want to generate webhelp based on
> HTML5 so they can get video and audio working.

I don't have strong preferences. Switching base xsls could affect
customization layers, but progress is good too.

David