AurigaDoc

Quote from official site:

What Is AurigaDoc?

AurigaDoc is a java-xml-xsl based documentation tool for writing xml documents and converting them to other open formats like HTML(single and multi page), DHTML, PDF, PostScript, Formatting Object(FO), RTF, Java Help and HTML Help(.chm). AurigaDoc is a not an xml editor.

The idea is to keep a single document source(as xml) and convert it to various formats using XSLT.

Check out the output, download their own manuals from http://aurigadoc.sourceforge.net/ Looks like a great tool to use, would allow to export to a lot of standard help/manual type of document. I have downloaded and created a really simple document, it really works as advertised.

The main advantage I see is that their XML format is basically a subset of XHTML, plus a header and a couple of proprietary tags for internal linking, sectioning, etc.

The renderer would basically just be a stripped down version of the one that outputs XHTML at this moment, plus the header.

I really want to write a renderer for this format, I just need guidance at the top level, I can't get a real grasp of where to start from. Something like:

• download devel version (is that functional, btw?)
  • As far as I've seen, it's functional. You'll need to install darcs (which I've had success with on Linux and Winodows) to get the absolute latest devel version or just use a snapshot.
• duplicate renderer_xml.php
  • basically yes. you may find the files inc/parser/wiki.php and inc/parser/spamcheck.php help provide insight into writing your own renderers. Technically you should probably inherit from the base renderer in inc/parser/renderer.php
• add a link like doku.php?action=dorender&renderer=xml
  • May be it's more sensible, for now, to expose your renderer via a seperate script, so you don't have to start worrying about doku.php e.g. aurigadoc.php?id=wiki:syntax. To me this even sounds like a script that would be used from the command line (vs. downloading the generated XML)
• etc.

> Considering the last release the project could be dead

By looking at the forums you can clearly see that the project is not dead. Actually the author is pretty active there. There are a lot of mature projects that have very long update cycles. — Adrian

Furthermore you need java for this: It's an java-xml based documentation tool. (clemens)

I really works, why would Java be a bad thing? I installed it and got it going in about 10 minutes (on Windows), absolutely no issues – I imagine the linux version would work just as well — Adrian

XML is language agnostic. In this case clients would need the Java app installed but cant see the problem there. Recommending something similar here - use Python on the client

I need to know what file to add, what to change, where to specifiy the existance of the new renderer, and how to actually call it to generate some output.

1. – Adrian Tanase 2005-04-19

I'd recommend think in terms of add new scripts instead of changing anything. You'll probably want to re-implement some of what you see here, in particular the p_get_instructions() function and p_render function.

I'm looking at these files and they are changing under my eyes . the other day there was no p_render, just p_render_xhtml. Would it be safe to assume that in a couple of days making a new parser would be as easy as inheriting from Doku_Renderer and then calling something like …?do=export_aurigadoc? I've seen the following lines in inc/actions.php:

  // try to run renderer #FIXME use cached instructions
  $mode = substr($act,7);
  $text = p_render($mode,p_get_instructions(rawWiki($ID,$REV)));

and they sound very encouraging. Of course, following your suggestion I would later call them from a separate script. You make a good point about calling them from a shell file to generate output. Obviously I'm going to automate the process of generating all those “manuals”.

I'm still having problems using the snapshots though. I can browse the code, but when put to use, I get errors like “Fatal error: Call to undefined function: format_link_wiki() in /var/export/http/test.reflex.ro/doku/inc/html.php on line 23”