Whatever XML/XHTML format is used is should be capble of producing (using some simple transform):
1. An index 2. A table of contents 3. A glossary 4. The body of the help text in xhtml or xml + xsl stylesheet. This transform can be performed at help compile time or runtime or a combination. 5. The uses we haven't figured out yet. (Tutorials?, Assistants?, ???) Basic XHTML does not fit unless you start adding a lot of class attributes. This quickly becomes complicated as glossary entries need to be separated from (and linked to) the main help. Index entries ditto. The whole thing will quickly degenerates in to a hard to maintain mess. DocBook does have this capability but is way too complicated. The answer is to select a subset of useful tags from DocBook which are sufficient to the task. I'm betting that 50 tags would do the job. This has the advantage that the tag documentation already exists. A Help Writers guide would be all that would be required.
