Mike, and anyone else interested on the list,
With respect to my current project, one of my goals from the beginning
has been an intuitive environment for literate programming. Just as you
have done, I also identified Norm's XWEB format as a good starting
point, and further identified the XMLmind XML Editor (XXE) as a superb
XML editing environment that could be used for literate programming with
XWEB due to its extraordinary extensibility.
I have constructed what is essentially a prototype XXE configuration for
XWEB. I'll address some of your questions below with respect to this
configuration. I've attached the configuration package to this email;
to install it simply unzip it in your local XXE config directory
(~/.xxe2/config/ or similar).
I'd gladly accept any feedback and try to answer any questions, although
as I said it is a prototype and part of a larger system that is still
under development. I intend to publicize the whole system when it is
complete.
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 09:11:21AM -0500, Mike Maxwell wrote:
> However, while the freeware version of XMLMind does a fine job with text
> (and probably lots of other things), it doesn't seem to know about
> literate programming, and in particular it doesn't know about Walsh's
> extensions for literate programming.
XXE is originally distributed with a set of configurations tuned to
several XML languages. Usefully, two of these are DocBook and XHTML.
It does not surprise me at all that one of these is *not* XWEB.
However, XXE can provide a useful interface to any XML language for
which a configuration is available.
> (But when I search for "src:fragment" etc. in the files in XMLMind's
> config and docs directories, I get approximately a quarter bazillion
> hits. So XMLMind uses literate programming somehow, although I'm not
> sure I understand what these directories are for. I also see a couple
> msgs in the archive of this mailing list about xsl support for Walsh's
> extensions, so maybe I'm missing something.)
Your confusion here is most certainly understandable. XXE takes
advantage of Norm Walsh's venerable DocBook XSL Stylesheets as part of
its *DocBook* configuration. This XSL package was developed, however,
using Norm's XWEB Literate Programming system; as a result,
documentation for the system has been automatically formatted[0] using
the tangle operation. Artifacts of the process still exist in the
distribution, which is what you're seeing.
> So, my questions:
>
> Is it possible to tell XMLMind (either the freeware version or the pay
> version) about Walsh's literate programming extensions? The 'Help' says
> that the dlg box to add a namespace is "not displayable for
> non-namespace aware documents", and that "XXE [= XMLMind XML Editor] is
> not namespace aware for a document using a DTD as its grammar." Does
> this matter, so long as their is not a namespace collision?
Absolutely. Norm has provided a DTD which describes the structure of
XWEB in DocBook; my XXE configuration updates this DTD slightly. The
namespaces issue is always an interesting one. Lexically, you can
completely describe a namespace-compliant document using DTDs. This is
currently what the XWEB DTD does - it adds src:fragment and src:fragref
elements at appropriate places within DocBook. Thus, compliant
documents form a superset of DocBook representing source code embedded
in DocBook documentation.
> I tried inserting the xmlns:src attribute into the <article> tag, as per
> Walsh's article. But this gives an error 'element has no attribute
> "xmlns:src"'. I presume this is because XMLMind (and DTDS in general?)
> is not namespace aware. If so, just how are you supposed to add an
> extension like Walsh's?
Unless you have a DTD which allows such an attribute, it will be a
validity error. Thus, Norm has provided a DTD which does allow exactly
that attribute.
> If I had a schema for DocBook, rather than a DTD, would it be "namespace
> aware"? (IIUC, I would need the non-free version of XMLMind to use
> schemas.)
You do understand correctly. An XML Schema (or RELAX NG schema when
they become supported in XXE - woohoo!) for XWEB in DocBook would be
significantly more flexible than the DTD - which is quite brittle. Such
namespace awareness is only supported in XXE Professional.
> Other ideas welcome... what I think would help most is a _small_ but
> _complete_ sample showing 'fragment' and 'fragref' embedded into a
> DocBook doc, which will load into XMLMind and validate. That's what I
> thought the sample code in Walsh's paper was, but it doesn't seem to be
> stand-alone (and of course the URLs and such like are old).
Install my configuration, then create a new document using the template
named "Template" under the "Literate Programming in DocBook" section.
That should get you going.
Take care,
John L. Clark
[0] http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/reference.html
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