Re: [tlug] HTML app packager?

[Shawn <javajunkie@example.com>]

> off an XML  file data set,...

> I thought I might instead be able to
> generate a set of HTML output files, compile/index them, and package
> them with some sort of search function.

> So, my question is: has anyone come across a platform-independent
> application that would help me do this (I've been searching around for a
> while, and haven't turned up anything)? Or perhaps some other
> suggestions as to how I might try to approach this problem?

What about docbook. xml?

Once your xml files are in docbook format, you can easily transform it 
into html (or pdf if you wanted to print the whole thing out).

We are not using searching in the manual I maintain using docbook, so I am 
not so familiar with it but I know htmlhelp (one format for windows you 
can generate from docbook xml) offers it OR there is javahelp (again 
outputtable from docbook.xml) which offers searching too.  But neither of 
which may be quite what you are looking for.

So to go the docbook route it would probably be output to html/xhtml and 
devise a searching scheme yourself.   One possibility would be to then go 
with a java applet which could be distributed along with the html archive 
and search the index which docbook would create if you tag it correctly.  
Otherwise a simple "find in page" type search in javascript would seem 
possible using either:

<indexterm> 
--http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/library/linuxguides/docbook/indexterm.html
<indexentry> -- 
http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/library/linuxguides/docbook/indexentry.html

An alternative way might be to use <refentry>

  (an appropriate wrapper for any small unit of reference documentation 
describing a single topic.   In UNIX parlance this has historically been 
called a "man page")

http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/library/linuxguides/docbook/refentry.html

that way you could use citerefentry.link to generate URL links when 
cross-referencing RefEntrys

Perphaps a little daunting at first but...

Um, there's also a website output format that I have never used and may or 
may not have searching, but I suspect not.

-- 
Shawn

PS.  Both philosophically speaking and as a daily practical matter, I 
agree most closely with Dogen (the founder of Soto-Zen) so of course there 
is a soft spot in my heart for some of those terms you mention.   Please 
let me know if you have questions.