Re: Publishing tool ideas for W3C editors

Well, XHTML would make a good common format I think. It is XML, and is
therefore extensible through the use of namespaces (in spec if not in
browsers...) and is renderable relatively widely.

And there are editing tools that are relatively easy to use, and transforming
some kind of xml -> XHTML is not new for people who are currently
transforming to HTML.

Charles McCN

On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Ian Jacobs wrote:

  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
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Thursday, 20 July 2000 11:41:42 UTC