Re: Windows CHM format for the documents

> The source format of DocBook SGML is a whole lot more widely usable on
> most of the platforms on which PostgreSQL runs, so I would hope that
> your software has some sort of "batch mode" that can accept HTML (or
> something like HTML) and transform it into .chm files.  The preference
> would only be likely to swing in your direction if PostgreSQL became
> more prevalent on Windows than on Unix.

Yes, exactly like that, it has the ability to import documents from many
different formats. There is an PHP API for importing documents into the
"internal format" (=database), and it's quite straightforward to write
plugins for different types of documents. I just made a plugin for the
Postgres documents a couple of days ago, it eats the HTML that is in
PostgreSQL site. Also it has the ability to import long html files.

Then, the software can "export" the documents in different formats as well.
The formats supported are:
- Long HTML files
- PDF (with a table of contents)
- CHM
- More can be written, ie. if you want to offer the documents the same way
as they are now on the web, that is not a big task.

Also there is the possibility to view on the web while they are in the
"internal" format.

As Postgres documentation are most probably written in quite a (highly?)
collaborative way, I think my software would be good to help you to maintain
those documents.I think Andreas just mentioned that maintaing is a bit
difficult, and this might help you. There is one type of multiauthoring
support implemented which means:
- An instructive chapter locking
- The "editing history" can be seen for every "topic", ie. who as edited a
topic and when.

What comes to keywords discussed, they can be maintained in the "index"
section. Keywords can also be read from the file by a plugin.

I'm not sure if it would be a bad thing to give up DocBook, but I cannot see
anything but benefits from using this other type of document development...

This software is now "almost ready", so it lacks small things that will be
done a in near future. I'm not asking money naturally (I shouldn't even
mention this) but to see my software in action would be enough.


A couple of urls:

Editing:
http://www.visiomode.com/help/help/
username: pg
password: 1a2s3d
(don't try to import pg documents now, please, but instead try to edit the
current one)

Viewing:
http://www.visiomode.com/help/help/starthelp.php?doc=1&grp=5


Thanks,
Ilkka