STXDocument

STXDocument is a web-managable object that contains information marked up in the structured text format.

When an STXDocument is created or edited, the structured text it contains is parsed into a Document object. This object realizes the read-only Document Object Model (DOM) interface. Because this is a popular standard interface, it is very easy to create tools or use existing tool to manipulate structured information.

STXDocument is a wrapper object around the new StructuredTextNG sytem. It allows editing with:

Through the web textarea editing
HTTP PUT
FTP
xml-rpc call to manage_edit

The STXDocument Product comes complete with help screens and API Documentation.

Download it at http://www.zope.org/Members/karl/STXDocument/STXDocument .

Usage

The main scope of this product is to facilitate the production of a Zope book. Needs:

Publish the book in DocBook for O'Reilly
Publish the book in HTML and PDF for on-line viewing
Be able to develop in a format that was easily revision controlled
Work with an easy syntax (not staring at raw SGML in an emacs buffer).
Be able to view differences visually (ediff!)

Giving these needs, we decided earlier this year to author the book in structured text. Thankfully, Jim had just got done putting the finishing touches on StructuredTextNG, which had lots of features needed.

STXDocument are pretty easy to use. Their user interface is almost identical to DTML Methods and Documents. Example:

Create a new STXDocument with the id foo

Edit the document to contain:

      Structured Text

        is an

 elegant way to write words

 in many formats

    Now you can visit foo and get an html rendering of
    the Structured text in the document::

      <html>
      <head>
      <title>Structured Text</title>
      </head>
      <body>
      <h1>Structured Text</h1>
      <p>  is an</p>
      <ul>
      <li>elegant way to write words</li>
      <li>in many formats</li>
      </ul>
      </body>
      </html>

    This is the default view of an STXDocument, in
    other words, going to 'http://localhost/foo'.  The
    same output can be seen by calling the outputHTML
    method 'http://localhost/foo/outputHTML'.

    Calling the outputDocBook method will return the
    contents of the structured text rendered as a
    chapter in a DocBook Book
    'http://localhost/foo/outputDocBook'::

      <chapter>
      <title>Structured Text</title>
      <para>  is an</para>
      <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>elegant way to write words</listitem>
      <listitem>in many formats</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
      </chapter>