Re: Designing Help System for 2.0

["David C. Mason" <dcm redhat com>]

Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu> writes:


> I think this will be sort of a non-issue.  My understanding (and please
> correct me if I'm wrong) was that the new help system would not be using
> Jade/OpenJade for anything, but would be rendering direct from the SGML/XML
> source into the help browser, much the way that it's done with info/man
> pages now.  With DocBook 4 being XML, and Norm having some XSL stylesheets,
> I think this will be easier than while DocBook 3.1 was it.  And if we can
> convince Mozilla to do our XML/XSL work, then we'll really have it made. 8^)


It does not look like the XSLT stuff will make it into the first
release of Mozilla... mainly because the guys doing the work.. haven't
done the work. It is very tricky, they had a good start but decided to
use their own parser instead of expat which is *in* Mozilla. I expect
someone else will come along and do it over before theirs ever makes
it in.

So where does that leave us.. well DocBook 4.0 is both SGML and XML
versions and while it is exciting to see the XML version the Modular
XSL sheets are not up to snuff... nor should they be, the spec isn't
even finished! I think we should not be too hasty to jump to XML, or
at least use XML with DSSSL until we are more confident that XSL can
a) format our documents before they ship b) format them on the fly in
the manner in which we *want* and *need* them to be formated. 

I think at the current time we should either stick to SGML using DSSSL
or work with XML using DSSSL (all 4.0 as well so we can drop the silly
png support DTD).

While we are doing this we should keep a very close eye on the XSL
work being done by Norman and the XSL engine or engines being done for
Mozilla (even though it will not go in the first version) - Once we
are all confident of its capabilities we will be able to move over
very easily.

-- 

          David Mason
        Red Hat AD Labs

        dcm@redhat.com
  http://people.redhat.com/dcm