On Wed, 24 Jul 2002, [utf-7] Beck, Mike wrote:
+AD4- I would actually go against that idea. Have XML master files +AD4- instead, as +AD4- those can be kept in CVS a lot easier than a database. Each translator +AD4- would just open up the XML file in his editor, and update it directly, +AD4- then post a patch to the tracker. To keep track of when +AD4- changes are made +AD4- to the english documentation and not the translations, I +AD4- suggest having +AD4- small tag in them that is noted as out of date when the +AD4- english is updated +AD4- and the translation isn't.
well as has been noticed, i am not at all firm with XML yet, so i possibly i really thought too complicated there.
Trust me, writing documents in XML directly is even easier than writing HTML by hand. Since you have control over your own elements and attributes, the language is usually a lot simpler. A list might be: <list type='dot'> <item>foo</item> <item>bar</item> <list>
Paragraph: <para>I'm a little paragraph. (This is actually SGML compliant I think)</para>
possibly it is even ok when we just add the new parts to the docu at the end of the file as it is done with the language now and when the xml is converted to html, pdf or whatever there is a possibility to order the stuff using some tags there? can this be done with a XSLT?
Yes, that is definetly doable, but not very common. As for keeping things straight and easier to edit, the document frequently gets re-arranged to keep all of the code in the order it will come out. It is a lot easier to edit when it is already in order.
But it wouldn't be too hard in our language scripting for new sections being added to be placed at the end of the master files, and then we can run another script to re-order the XML file via XSLT.
The only skill/knowledge that is needed for doing hard code XML is for creating your own XSLT and XML Schema documents.
Once you have those, and I can create them when I have a bit of time, you can feed them to existing tools, and use WYSIWYG XML editors.