[generguide-devel] Commented entities and standards

[Cameron S. <ca...@sh...>]

On Friday 12 Sep 2003 3:55 pm, Sean Wheller wrote:
> > 2. Commented entities are difficult to work with,
> > but it is closely associated

It seems Sean misunderstands our attitude to commented entities.
The reason we are using commented entities is a hack to get around the 
difficienties of XXE and something we plan to remove as soon as we stop 
talking and get back to coding.
Currently we use:  <!--&project_name;--> in our souce text.  Pre-processing 
from the generpublishing script converts this to &project_name; .  
"project_name" is defined as an entity in guide/resouces/entities.ent

What we plan to do is replace the above with xlinks which reference the 
generconfig.xml file.  (I haven't worked out how to do this yet and am not 
sure if XXE supports it, but I plan to look at it soon).

Sean, you are rightly concerned that we are not using standards, and I agree 
that we need to move back to using standards.  (I think this is the only 
place where we have deviated from standards.)

--

With regards to normal Entities from legacy documentation.  They can still be 
used within the current generguide framework.  We are not planning to remove 
this functionality.

---
On Saturday 13 Sep 2003 3:28 am, Sean Wheller wrote:
> Do we set a standard. In some respects yes. In others
> no. When it comes to tools and their technological
> functionality. I think NO. When it comes to a
> Framework that works with most Publishing Models, I
> think YES.

I agree.
I believe the job of generguide is:
1. Define the interface.  Ie Docbook XML using modular docs.
2. Ensure at least one free editor supports this interface and your average 
tech writer is happy using it.  Ie, WYSIWYM, edits docbook xml, supports 
modular documents.
3. Provide publishing tools.

-- 
Cameron Shorter              http://cameron.shorter.net
Open Source Developer        http://generguide.sourceforge.net
                             http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net
                             http://geotools.org
Senior Software Engineer     http://www.adi-limited.com