Re: Changes to Texinfo DTD

[Nic Ferrier <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk>]

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

> Nic Ferrier <nferrier@tapsellferrier.co.uk> wrote
> 
>    Method 1.
>    a) patch makeinfo so the XML output can be chunked.
>    ....
> 
> This sounds the best in the long run.  Some one should be able to take
> your code in ten years time and work with it usefully, for some
> purpose you never thought of.

Yeah... it seems that:

    makeinfo --xml --split 

should work because one expects it to.

 
>    Method 2.
>    a) use a command line XSLT tool such as xsltproc (from the GNOME
>       libxml2 project: http://www.xmlsoft.org) to chunk AND style to HTML
>       the output of makeinfo --xml.  
>       The styling would be as method 1, part c.
> 
> How is this different from the existing `makeinfo --html' which also
> does chunking and styling to HTML?
> 
> Without knowing much about `xsltproc', the method scares me.  Does
> this method enable me to use keybindings in Mozilla to navigate via
> regexp searching within a document that is spread over multiple files?
> If so, good and I stop being scared.  Indeed, then the suggestion
> becomes very attractive.  But if not, it is a distraction.

It's different because now one can attach javascript to elements on
the page whevever one needs it. The existing HTML doesn't do that,
nor should it because it has an existing purpose.

It's not scary - it's trivial. XSLT is very easy to read and
implement.

The XSLT solution isn't the end. To support regex searches some sort
of webapplication IS needed as well. But XSLT is exactly the best
choice for turning the Texinfo XML into something that would work with
a webapp.

Note that for method 1 and method 2 a webapplication would be needed,
but only for regexp search. All the other tools, navigation, index
lookup, etc... could be solved by javascript within the page.


Nic