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DeveloperX
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Joined: 04 May 2003
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Location: Decatur, IL, USA

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:10 am    Post subject: [quote]

Hajo wrote:
An idea: use XML and then generate the other format by XSLT transformations from the XML input. That way you have to maintain only one source.


good idea.......only one problem........I wouldn't know how to do the XSLT transformation...thing...what is that anyway??

I like the idea of only having to maintain 1 source..

If you know how, can you help, or explain it a little more?
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LeoDraco
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:30 am    Post subject: [quote]

Alternatively, you could also just keep the book in a tex-file. Beyond having tex to pdf conversions, there are also tex to HTML conversions.

[EDIT]: On the other hand, the XSLT thing would probably be more scalable, as I have this suspicion that an xsl can generate non-xml files. According to a search on yum, xsltproc (obviously, an XSLT processor) comes with libxslt, which, apparently, is confirmed by the library's homepage. Beyond finding more information over at w3c, you could probably find the libxslt package for your favorite build of unix. (And don't use Windows as an excuse: I would be surprised if cygwin didn't come with libxslt. (And, upon inspection, it does appear as if cygwin does come with it.))
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Hajo
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:00 am    Post subject: [quote]

DeveloperX wrote:
Hajo wrote:
An idea: use XML and then generate the other format by XSLT transformations from the XML input. That way you have to maintain only one source.


good idea.......only one problem........I wouldn't know how to do the XSLT transformation...thing...what is that anyway??


So far I didn't try it by myself, but my colleages use XSLT in one of our companies projects, so my knowledge is second hand knowledge.

XSLT is a language that allows to describe transformations from XML to (I believe all kind of) output formats. XSL transformers are available readily, you just have to specify the transformation itself.

This page has a good introduction to XSLT I think:
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/ling/ws04/xml-tutorials/xslt-intro.htm

In our current project (not my private projects, my daily work) we have testplans as XML sources and two transformations to excel sheet and HTML available. But I wasn't involved in the creation of the style sheets.
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DeveloperX
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:54 pm    Post subject: [quote]

Hmmm...........after looking at those links.....I'm not so sure that I can do that. Not making excuses, just don't fully understand the process..and that cygwin thing isn't exactly something I want to spend alot of time figuring out.

We'l see what become my final decision.....gotta write the chapters first, lol. Have been very busy.
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DeveloperX
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:46 am    Post subject: [quote]

Okay, I have decided on my method of distribution.

PDF.

I wrote a php script to create the pdf files.
As I write the pages, I'll post them in pdf form online.
I'll let you guys know when the first chapter is ready.

One question, what 2 colors do you think is easiest on the eyes?

black on white
blue on white
white on black
white on navy
yellow on navy
yellow on black

Let me know before I start creating the pages.
Thanks.
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Hajo
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:46 am    Post subject: [quote]

Black on white should be the best.

If the screen is very bright, black on grey or a slighty brownish white can be more pleasant for the eye.

Almost all technical doumentation that I got as PDF is pure black on white.

My personal favorite: light grey text on brownish background with green contrast color. Reminds me of earth, plants and nature. But readability is not so good ;)

Someone said it looks like military - unfortuantely they use green/brown a lot too, and I was very unhappy about the wrong association of my carefully chosen colors :(

I wanted peace, not war!


Last edited by Hajo on Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:49 am; edited 1 time in total
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DeveloperX
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Joined: 04 May 2003
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Location: Decatur, IL, USA

PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:47 am    Post subject: [quote]

Hajo wrote:
Black on white should be the best.

If the screen is very bright, black on grey or a slighty brownish white can be more pleasant for the eye.

Almost all technical doumentation that I got as PDF is pure black on white.


I agree with you, all PDFs I have are black on white.
I think that is what I will be using.
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