Publishing tool ideas for W3C editors

Hello,

Philippe Le Hégaret and I are discussing what tools we can
make available to W3C editors to make it easier to publish
technical reports. Philippe has recently rewritten the production
scripts for the DOM specification using the DOM (in java). Given
a document that uses the DOM spec DTD [3], the java scripts (which 
still require some testing) produce a document that has a good
chance of conforming to the W3C publication rules [1]. (The java
scripts will be available on the public cvs server [2].)

Here's our idea:

1) Provide tools to W3C editors to make publishing easier,
   but don't require people to use them to conform to the
   publication rules. 

2) Make available a standard XML format for W3C specs. To this
   end, the DOM and XML WGs should strive to use a common XML
   format.

3) Given a document that conforms to the common format, offer
   tools (e.g., xslt style sheets or java scripts) that will
   generate a TR document. Philippe's scripts offer the following
   functionalities:

     1) They generate a table of contents and sub-tables
        of contents.
     2) They generate/manage an index.
     3) They manage a list of references and
        links to those references from the document.
     4) They generate/manage a glossary.
     5) They can be used to generate HTML 4. Tidy can be used
        to turn these documents into XHTML.
     6) For the DOM, they manage interface definitions. 

4) Given a valid XHTML document that uses some predefined classes,
   offer an xslt style sheet to convert the document to
   the common format.

5) Given a valid HTML 4 document, tidy can be used to create a 
   valid XHTML document.

In short, we would like people to be able to use the tools at
various entry points. We would also like people to be able to 
use whatever tools they prefer to create their documents.

Questions:

1) Would people find this suite of tools useful? 

2) Would people with expertise in xslt volunteer to help 
   create the xhtml->xml translation? 

3) Do people have specific requirements for the common format?

4) How extensible should the common format be?

Any comments and suggestions are welcome. 

  - Ian

[1] http://www.w3.org/Guide/pubrules
[2] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/
[3] http://www.w3.org/DOM/Group/drafts/pubtext/spec.dtd

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                         +1 831 457-2842
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Thursday, 20 July 2000 11:13:26 UTC