To the Xalan-C++ Development Team:
I am preparing a full documentation project for Xalan-C++ version 1.11.
This includes a complete rework of the Xalan-C++ web pages.
Findings:
1. The current layout uses unsupportable and undocumented products.
2. The current layout does not scale with web browser resolution.
3. A re-design of the web-page layout is required, but current
content should be readily ported to a new layout.
4. The new layout should accommodate the Apache Software Foundation
trademark requirements, licensing, and legal requirements.
5. The new layout needs a consistent navigation and content presentation
for the on-line user interface.
6. New content should be easily added to the new layout framework.
7. The documentation should be packaged for installation on the
Apache web sites and its mirrors for download by users.
8. The documentation should also refer users on how to download
pre-compiled products and source-code products.
What I Plan:
1. A layout design similar to the pages supporting the ASF web site
for "http://people.apache.org"; as a starting point.
2. A small cosmetic change can be made to the "title" division at
the top of the page to identify the "Xalan-C++ Version 1.11" project
and a chapter title which is subordinate to the project name.
The "title" division for "http://people.apache.org"; scales well
with Mozilla, but scales poorly with Microsoft IE. I hope to fix
this.
3. Related sites navigation can be provided in the "title" division
similar to the current Xalan-C button layout.
4. A left-side navigation capability will be preserved similar to
the current Xalan-C navigation area.
5. A "trailer" or "footer" division will provide copyright information.
6. The "content" division will have two renderings:
a. The "content" division and
b. A selectable full-format web page for printing.
7. JavaScript will be kept to a minimum - preferably eliminated.
8. The posted web pages will be static content using a project
based "css" stylesheet.
9. Future plans will provide printable PDF documentation along
with the on-line HTML content.
10. All tools used for document preparation will be open-source
with reasonably complete documentation.
11. Any document assembly scripts will be part of the distributed
source package.
12. A task outline on preparing and modifying the project documentation
will also be provided.
Current Status:
I am still templating and scripting the HTML page development tools
so that existing and new documents can be readily converted to the
new web-page layout.
I have successfully prototyped the construction of API documentation
using the current versions of "doxygen" and "graphVue" products.
I have successfully created HTML and PDF versions of the API
documentation for Xalan-C++ version 1.11.
There is still much work to validate the structured comments in the
Xalan-C++ (.hpp) source code, and make changes to the structured
comments as necessary. These structured comments are for "doxygen"
and do not impact the actual code being compiled.
I plan to share the layout framework with current version 1.10 documentation
once the prototype is functional. I would also like the documentation
effort to be stored on a temporary branch of the Xalan-C++ SVN repository.
I hope that this documentation effort can help make Xalan-C++ version 1.11
a released product for our user community -- and published on the
ASF website and mirrors for download.
I currently compile Xalan-C++ (1.11) with Xerces-C++ (3.1.1) on Microsoft
Visual Studio (2003, 2005, 2008) and Linux (Debian versions 507. 600).
Sincerely,
Steven J. Hathaway
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