Hi techtonik,
I bet you've already noticed some commits to XSL templates. I've
made an update resulting in latest XSL DocBook templates 1.66.1 and
xCHM files compile successfully again. Main htmlhelp.xsl was started
from scratch again to make it current with latest DocBook XSL sources
and keep redundant customizations at minimum. Now it inherits htmlhelp/
DocBook templates instead of operating on it's separate copy of them
in htmlhelp-db.xsl.
Now I'm reviewing and integrating old markup rules into new
template to make upcoming xCHM version look exactly as the previous
xCHM 12. It will take some time to do this.
Good. Your contributions are valuable :)
In version 12 it was one page with a short abstract only. In
version 13 and latest sources there are also credits with authors and
editors. This division makes additional expandable "book" in TOC with
all bookmarks leading to the same page. I do not know if it confuses
users, but for me such division is useless and make manual look more
like hardcopy books, where you do not need to look at these pages as
long as you don't interested in that kind of information. But that's
not true for xCHM version where this attention can decrease usability
because frequently accessed information is located among similar
graphical markup.
I'm writing this with a great respect to all manual developers,
editors, authors and contributors, because I think PHP manual is a
major part of PHP success on windows platform. That's why I'm asking
about what will be the best way to include information about people,
who contributed to PHP docs in xCHM version. I have some proposals:
1. Leave as is
Default way some may easily agree with because of simplicity in
implementation (which should not be the goal, right?). That way
we will have structure like
Preface
Authors and Contributors
Authors and Editors
User Note Maintainers
as the third item of the manual TOC. Decreases usability by
adding additional burden for users reading additional book title
and perhaps contents to locate needed manual part.
I had a hard time to undestand the point. These TOC items are expandable from the Preface hierarchy, and by default they are not expanded. Or am I mistaken?
Goba
