Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] Varii

[Malcolm T. <ma...@co...>]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 07:58:04PM +0100, Camille B=E9gnis wrote:
> Hello,

Hi. :-)

> I'm finally getting to scrollkeeper after one year hesitating, I hope=20
> this is the right place to ask my questions.

Yes, it certainly is. It is a fairly low-traffic list, but it does get
read.

> First of all, what's the status of developments? I see the last news on=
=20
> website are dated March 18, 2002: is the project alive?

The project is alive, but temporarily sleeping. Dan Mueth, the
maintainer, has been a bit busy of late. I have been trying to fix up a
few things here and there and polish the rough corners, but my day job
has interfered for the past couple of months (why is it always over
Christmas?? Grrr!).

Dan and I keep muttering to each other that we should get out a new
release, since there have been a number of fixes in CVS since the last
release. The "big picture" is that not too much has changed since the
last release. However, there have been a number of small things
(including a security fix).

> Then I plan to begin using scrollkeeper for Mandrake documentation.

Yay!

> And I have some practical quesions:
>=20
> - Is it possible to use other categories than the ones in categories.xs=
l?

I would prefer that if you wanted extra categories, raise them on this
list and we can add them to the distributed list. The problem with using
your own categories is that your documentation install scripts will not
work without your particular customised version of categories.xsl. Now,
from a distributor's point of view, you may be willing to make that
decision and argue that your users should only upgrade via Mandrake
packages. However, if there are legitimate general categories that are
missing, let's put them into general circulation.

I don't really know what is behind the above question, so I may have
missed your point. If so, can you provide more context or an example of
what you might wish to customise?

One case where you may wish to just have a distro-specific
customisation, I guess, is if you wanted to have, say, "Mandrake
documentation" as a top-level category. My personal preference would be
to rethink your categorisation at that point, but even within my own
company I am hardly known as somebody sensitive to company marketing
goals and public image, so my personal preference is worth little here.

> - Which stylesheets are used for performing docbook transformations? Is=
=20
> it possible to use a custom stylesheet layer?

Scrollkeeper does not do any document transformation. It is purely a
meta-information system used to locate the document on your system and
quickly retrieve certain bits of information about it (the stuff in the
.omf files). Once an application has retrieved a document (or, really,
just the meta-data), it can do whatever transformations it wishes.

Note, that although scrollkeeper currently is used to mostly index XML
files (in DocBook format), this is not compulsory. It can (and should)
be used to store information about PDF files, HTML, etc. The MIME type
for the files is stored as part of the OMF field (in the <format> field),
so a retrieving application can behave appropriately.

If there is anything unclear about the above, please sing out and I (or
somebody else) will try to explain.

Serious request: Please feel quite free to flame me on this list or
privately and beat me (metaphorically) over the head if you feel like
genuine requests for improvement or help are being ignored (this goes
for everybody else, too). I would like to see scrollkeeper get better,
but it's too easy for me to just push it aside and do other, potentially
more interesting, stuff most of the time, so I tend to be very slack.

Cheers,
Malcolm

--=20
The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of
the bread.