From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Nic Ferrier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: A new online publishing tool for Texinfo documents. Date: 22 Nov 2003 20:50:39 +0000 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <8765hcf7q8.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1069534388 30024 80.91.224.253 (22 Nov 2003 20:53:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 20:53:08 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Sat Nov 22 21:53:04 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ANeka-00059j-00 for ; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 21:53:04 +0100 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ANeka-0005wb-00 for ; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 21:53:04 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ANfh0-0008Br-52 for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:53:26 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ANfgf-00088s-Hu for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:53:05 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ANfg6-0007ud-AI for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:53:01 -0500 Original-Received: from [217.34.135.17] (helo=tf1.tapsellferrier.co.uk) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ANfg5-0007uX-8j for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:52:29 -0500 Original-Received: from host217-34-135-22.in-addr.btopenworld.com ([217.34.135.22] helo=kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk) by tf1.tapsellferrier.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ANeiT-0001Mj-00; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 20:50:53 +0000 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk ident=nferrier) by kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ANeiG-00031C-00; Sat, 22 Nov 2003 20:50:40 +0000 Original-To: emacs-devel@gnu.org, bob@rattlesnake.com, karl@freefriends.org, epameinondas@gmx.de, juri@jurta.org Original-Lines: 71 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:18028 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:18028 Bob Chasell and I have been discussing a new way of making Texinfo available online. I am planning to build what we have discussed over December. This message has been sent to all interested parties. The aims of the new system are to make a web based info reader that would be as good as the console based Info reader and that can be used by people with slow Internet connections and free software web browsers (Mozilla, Galeon, etc... as well as Emacs/W3, Lynx, etc...) Our plan is to do this: 1 alter makeinfo --xml so that it splits the XML by Texinfo nodes. The --no-split switch will cause the existing output (or maybe add a new switch for the new XML output?) 2 write an XSLT stylesheet that transforms the chunked XML into specialized HTML; the specialized HTML will include Javascript to emulate Info navigation, index lookups, etc... 3 write a CGI script that will lookup a regular expression in the HTML files and return either a list of hits or the HTML file containing the Nth hit (N being an optional argument supplied to the CGI script) 4 write a shell script for linking all this together, and possibly to auto-magically install the produced files into an Apache webserver (other webservers to be supported as and when I have time). The shell script(4) will be dependant on a tool called xsltproc which comes with the GNOME libxsl library and is quite commonly available on free software machines. xsltproc runs on all free operating systems and also some non-free ones such as Windoze (but obviously we don't care much about those /8-) I personally don't think this will deprecate the existing HTML output from makeinfo because that has good support for ALL browsers. There is one big problem with the current plan: Emacs/W3 and Lynx do not support Javascript so we will have to find another way of binding actions to keys within the HTML pages downloaded to those browsers. Does anyone have any bright ideas about that? I am considering the potential of adding Mozilla's Javascript engine to Emacs and Lynx which would solve this problem. The licence of Mozilla's Javascript engine is compatible with the GPL. However, I think this might be rather a big job, certainly bigger than the new publishing system for online Texinfo. On the subject of Lynx, has anyone tried this version of Links? http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/ It apparently has Javascript support and is GPLed. Nic