Hello,

Does anyone know, if there is a (nice) way of editing DTD Docbook files (index.docbook)?

With "nice way" it is meant, that it should be editable like in OpenOffice or Kword, where you see the results directly...
In other Words: It should be like Khelpcenter, but with editing features...

thanks

Hey pano, I have thought about this too. I have suggested that the documentations for each application be contributed "wiki-style" and be maintained and updated in real time. That way, when a user pulls up a help file or an app's documentation they can be reasonable assured they are getting the most recent documentation. Also, any user could help update documentation. The way the KDE team is doing it now is disjointed at best. khelpcenter should operate in the same way as a kpart and should simply open the wiki page for the documentation. I have thought about this for a long while. Think I might just work on it at the beginning of the new year. Let me know if you are interested.

to be honest...
That sounds *great*!

This would really make things easier...

Wiki-style can always be contributed by writing stuff on userbase.kde.org

For the offline docs there is currently no specialized editor, my guess is that most authors just use one of the usual editors with syntax highlighting.

Since the hard part is writing good content, active contributors of the documentation project have repeatedly said that even plain text contributions are welcome and that they will take care of the proper reformatting.

Cheers,
_

To answer the initial question, there is unfortunately no WYSIWYG editor for DocBook. It has been attempted in the past on the Linux and Windows platform, but neither succeeded. In the past, a majority of the contributors used Kate with the DocBook/XML plugin (not in KDE 4 yet I don't think, anyone up for fixing that?). Both Emacs and Vim have great DocBook/XML setups as well.

One thing to note, is that with the script 'meinproc' which is, or should be, installed with every KDE installation, can quickly build out your index.docbook file into HTML so you can see what it looks like.

Code: Select all

meinproc index.docbook

Also take a look at the KDE Documentation Project mailing list -> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-doc-english. It is a low traffic list and has many people there to help even further if you would like.

I am starting to think that maybe some sort of forum->mailing list gateway for documentation and/or other projects might be helpful. It is hard trying to get long time users into these forums to help, but I will try to push people here to keep an eye out. Also look me up on IRC #kde-docs as nixternal if you want further help. Thanks![/code]

@nixternal

thanks for the tip about meinproc!

nixternal wrote:

Code: Select all

meinproc index.docbook

Small correction: the command above is for KDE 3, while you need:

Code: Select all

meinproc4 index.docbook

for KDE 4.