[documancer] Using Documancer for HTML books on CD

[Kevin O. <ke...@tu...>]

Hi all,

First a little background: I've been working on an open source 
application that helps people to write tutorials, "learning modules" 
(i.e. computer-based training) and other forms of documentation easily. 
It is called EClass. (It originated as a computer-based training 
program, thus the "class".)

When users finish creating their EClass, they can distribute it on 
CD-ROM or publish it to web. (Or make a PDF too, actually.) For CD 
distribution, we currently support the ability to browse and search 
through EClasses through a small HTTPServer program that is put on the 
CD. Indexes are created at build-time using SWISH-E and we use a little 
Python CGI-BIN for the search page. But people don't like the fact that 
there's this little server window which seems to serve no purpose 
(except make sure they can stop running the server ;-), and people also 
would like to have highlighted search results. Enter Documancer. =) The 
underlying functions of Documancer match pretty closely with our HTTP 
server program, so it would mostly be a drop-in replacement.

However, on Windows, we really need to be able to have the CD autorun 
and load the EClass in Documancer. On my end, I can write some little 
app that checks to see if Documancer is installed or not, and install 
it if not, but I need a way to be able to automatically load a book 
into Documancer and to check the Documancer version. Furthermore, what 
would be nice is if Documancer could remember CD-based books in the 
book manager, and when such a book was selected, it would prompt 
something like "Please insert the CD-ROM for book X to load this book."

Here is what I suggest as a solution to these issues:

1) Have Documancer's wxConfig write a Version key upon startup. This 
way I can check to see if Documancer is of a high enough version to 
support what we're doing.

2) Either create a "mybook.book" persistent storage format for book 
configs, or pass in the book's "index.htm(l)" to have it added into 
Documancer's book manager. (I assume from there Documancer would see if 
an index exists, etc.)

The former approach is IMHO advantageous as on Mac I could tell people 
to double-click the ".book" file to load it into Documancer. It also 
means that you could have a simple "Open File" approach to loading 
books - just pick the .book file and click OK to load it. (If you pick 
another type of file, like html, or man, it will prompt you for the 
necessary info.)

3) Maybe some sort of BOOK_ON_CD setting.

What do you think? Would it be a problem to add these features into 
Documancer?

Thanks,

Kevin