LiveDTD

[Forwarded by Michael Smith]

Today on the DOCBOOK-APPS mailing list, Bob Stayton announced that he is making available a DTD-to-HTML utility that seems similar to Earl Hood's "dtd2html" program. The full text of his message follows.

If you work with complex DTDs, then you should take a look at LiveDTD, the free utility program I'm making available today at:

http://www.sagehill.net/livedtd

LiveDTD is a perl script that turns the text of a DTD into a hypertext document. It parses the DTD files and generates a copy with HTML markup inserted. The markup enables you to quickly browse the DTD by following links. It works with both XML and SGML DTDs.

If you have ever worked with a highly parameterized DTD like DocBook or TEI, you know how much the indirection makes you jump around in the DTD to find where something is really defined. It gets worse if you add a customization layer, because then you have more than one declaration for the same name. You have to track down the "live" one through the marked sections and customization modules. This program does that for you. In fact, I originally wrote it to keep from going crazy managing a customization layer for DocBook.

It is easier to demo than to explain, so try cruising the live version of Eve Maler's DTD for the XML Specification at:

http://www.sagehill.net/livedtd/xmlspec.

Click on an element name in the left frame and it jumps to the declaration. Follow the links in the content models to other names. Click on the "+" next to a name in the left column and see where that name is used in the DTD.

Browsing DTDs this way over the internet can be slow because DTD files that are big get even bigger when you add HTML markup. I recommend you go to the downloads page and download the converted DTDs for local browsing. Better yet, download the program itself to run on your favorite DTD. Especially if you have a customization layer.

Please send all suggestions and bug reports to me at my home email address.

Bob Stayton bobs@sagehill.net

If you just want to grab LiveDTD-generated hyperlinked versions of any of the latest DocBook DTDs (instead of generating them yourself with LiveDTD), Bob has made them available at:

http://www.sagehill.net/livedtd/download.html

You may remember that Bob has also written a DocBook XSL tutorial:

http://www.egroups.com/message/xml-doc/461

Michael Smith          mailto:smith@xml-doc.org
XML-DOC                http://www.xml-doc.org/
see also: Logopoeia    http://www.logopoeia.com/

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

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