- From: Eve L. Maler <Eve.Maler@east.sun.com>
- Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:11:16 -0400
- To: Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
- Cc: spec-prod@w3.org
Hi Ian-- I only have a little time right now to respond, but am very interested in your project. More below. At 11:13 AM 7/20/00 -0400, 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].) I thought that the DOM folks were using XMLspec. I specifically included a bunch of structures for them a year ago. Their processing scripts are way different from the usual XSLT stylesheet that others use, though. >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. I would suggest that XMLspec be "canonicalized" and that a web page be provided that, given a valid XMLspec input, returns various forms of output. Single-page HTML, chunked HTML, and possibly PDF would be good contenders. The XSLT stylesheet I use (mostly written by Chris Maden, Ben Trafford, and me, and currently maintained by Chris) produces a pretty close facsimile to W3C HTML/style requirements. >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. I don't know of any TRs that actually have index entry, though there's plenty of in-line markup that could be used to generate hits (and interesting kinds of TOCs). I could also add index entry markup to the DTD if anyone's interested. > 3) They manage a list of references and > links to those references from the document. > 4) They generate/manage a glossary. Difficult given the current markup of XMLspec, since it assemes definitions are embedded in the text. But I've been thinking about adding better support for true "glossary entry" markup. > 5) They can be used to generate HTML 4. Tidy can be used > to turn these documents into XHTML. Exists. > 6) For the DOM, they manage interface definitions. Exists, as you mentioned above. May be useful for more and more TRs, as application-specific DOMs are invented. >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 Please also check out: http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec.dtd (latest DTD) http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec-v21.dtd (this release) http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec-report.htm (latest doc'n) http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec-report-v21.htm (this release) http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec.xsl Note that the XML specification itself, XLink, XPointer, and a bunch of other specs are using XMLspec already as-is. I maintain it actively, with new releases every few months. In summary, I think the idea is great, and we should leverage existing tools and practices as much as possible. Eve -- Eve Maler +1 781 442 3190 Sun Microsystems XML Technology Center elm @ east.sun.com
Received on Thursday, 20 July 2000 12:10:49 UTC