SilkPage User Guide

SilkPage comes in two bundles:

To install SilkPage you only need to unpack the SilkPage distribution file. Unpacking the download file should result the directory structure shown in Section 3.3, “SilkPage Directory Structure”. Once unpacked, you can test the SilkPage installation by running the config target as shown in Example 1.1, “Installing SilkPage”.

   config:
     [echo] SilkPage (VERSION)
     [echo] user.name: jhe
     [echo] os.name: Linux
     [echo] temp.dir: /tmp
     [echo] DocBook Website installed ? true
     [echo] DocBook XSL installed ? true

    

Refer to Appendix C, Command Line Options for detailed information about SilkPage command line options. For troubleshooting, refer to Q & A D.3, “Installation”.

This section gives an overview of the SilkPage directories and the files they contain. Assuming the SilkPage software is installed at silkpage-VERSION, here are some of the most important directories:

                              [siklpage-VERSION] - $SILKPAGE_HOME
                                     |
          +-------------+------------+------------------------+
          |             |            |                        |
        [cfg]         [docs]      [share]                   [src]
                                     |                        |
        catalog.xml           +------+-----+       +----------+----------+
                              |            |       |          |          |  
        tidy.properties     [lib]      [tools]   [css]      [xml]      [xsl]
     

    

To begin, you need to have your Website basic skeleton. To create the skeleton of your Website, you need to run the SilkPage with the scratch target. When running the SilkPage with the scratch target, you also need to provide a site.id as shown in Example 2.1, “Create Site Scratch”.

                    [coolsite] - $SITE_HOME
                         |
          +--------------+-------------+------------+----------------+
          |              |             |            |                |
   build.properties   build.xml      [src]        [img]            [cfg]
                                       |                           catalog.xml
                      +----------------+----------------+        
                      |                |                |
                    [css]            [xml]            [xsl]
                    coolsite.css       |              config.xsl
                                     [en]             param.xsl
                                     index.xml        rdf.xsl
                                     about.xml
                                     layout.xml
                                     sitemap.xml
                                     glossary.xml
                                     contact.xml
                                     contact-send.php
                                     contact-sent.xml
                                     search.xml
                                     feeds.xml
                                     projects.xml
                                     docs.xml

      

After generating the scratch version of your Website, you need to layout your Website and define your required structure. The site layout feature provides a mapping between the XML source files and the generated HTML files. The XML source files can be stored in multiple directories. Note that, the physical location of the XML source files do not reflect the site logical hierarchy. The dir attribute of the tocentry element can be used to create any set of directory structure for the HTML output. As shown in Section 1.1.1, “Scratch Website Directory Structure”, there is a scratch layout file (layout.xml) generated for your Website that can be used as the basis to define the structure of your Website.

<!DOCTYPE layout PUBLIC "-//Norman Walsh//DTD Website Layout V2.4.0//EN"
"http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/Website/2.4.0/schema/dtd/layout.dtd">
<layout>
<config param="footlink" value="sitemap" altval="Sitemap"/>
<config param="footlink" value="aboutContact" altval="Contact"/>
<config param="title" value="SilkPage"/>

<copyright>
<year>2004</year>
<holder role="aboutLicense">SilkPage</holder>
</copyright>

<headlink rel="icon" href="graphics/gif/silkpage_icon.gif" type="image/gif"/>
<style src="css/silkpage.css" type="text/css"/>

<toc page="index.xml" filename="index.html">
<tocentry page="about/index.xml" dir="about" filename="index.html">
<tocentry page="about/colophon.xml" filename="colophon.html"/>
<tocentry page="about/contact.xml" filename="contact.html"/>
</tocentry>
<tocentry page="docs/index.xml" dir="docs" filename="index.html"/>
<tocentry page="downloads/index.xml" dir="downloads" filename="index.html"/>
</toc>

<notoc page="sitemap.xml" filename="sitemap.html"/>
</layout>

      
                                   [root_dir]
                                       |
          +--------------+-------------+---------------+---------------+
          |              |             |               |               |
      index.html     sitemap.xml    [about]          [docs]        [downloads]
                                    index.html       index.html    index.html
                                    colophon.html
                                    contact.html

   

Once your Website structure and layout is defined, you need to create the corresponding pages in XML. That is your Website content. A SilkPage page is written using DocBook and Website elements. For each Web page there is a corresponding XML file. Each page consists primarily of three sections:

<?xml version="1.0">
<!DOCTYPE  webpage ...>
<webpage id="home">
  <config param="rcsdate" value="$Date: 2006/04/17 16:26:47 $"/>
  <head>
    <title>SilkPage</title>
    <summary>An XML based Publishing Framework for Web</summary>
    <keywords>Markup, web standards, W3C, XML, XSL, CSS, XHTML</keywords>
  </head>
</webpage>

        

<?xml version="1.0">
<!DOCTYPE  webpage ...>
<webpage id="home">
  <config param="desc" value="The home index page"/>
  <config param="rcsdate" value="$Date: 2006/04/17 16:26:47 $"/>
  <head>
    <title>SilkPage</title>
    <summary>An XML based Publishing Framework for Web</summary>
    <keywords>Markup, web standards, W3C, XML, XSL, CSS, XHTML</keywords>
  </head>
  <para>
    SilkPage is an XML based Web publishing framework that has evolved from
    the Docbook Website. With strong foundations in XML, it is a publishing 
    framework with a focus on web standards and usability. 
    SilkPage provides a framework for publishing structured and standrad 
    compliant websites in XML. It is particularly suited to publish personal
    websites, though it is by no means limited to them.
  </para>
  <sidebar>
  <variablelist>
    <title>Key Features</title>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Conent Management</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          XML based content management.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>WaSP Compliant</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
           Web Standards (WaSP) compliant XHTML output in addition to XML and
           PDF outputs.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Content Feeds Support</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Integrated XML and RSS feed generation.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Separate Presentation Model</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Customization via XSL and CSS customization layers.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Cross Platform Support</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Cross platform support via industry standards.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>
  </sidebar>
</webpage>

        

<para>
SilkPage is an XML based Web publishing framework that has evolved from the
<ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook">Docbook Website</ulink>.
With strong foundations in XML, it is a publishing framework with a focus on
web standards and usability. It's mainly used to 
publish personal and Websites. Refer to the SilkPage
<olink targetdoc="docs">User Guide</olink> for more information.
</para>

In the above example, a ulink is used to link to the DocBook Website. However, to link to the main index page of the documentation, a olink is used. Note that you don't have to do anything special to the page you're linking to. The only important thing is a valid entity id, in this case docs.

SilkPage allows stylesheet customization for a particular Website. That is customizing with XSL as well as CSS stylesheets. These customizations are integrated to SilkPage via themes. SilkPage provides two types of themes:

A feed is a wrapper for pieces of regularly and sequentially-updated content such as news headlines, articles, weblog posts, and so on. Atom and RSS are the two flavours of XML feeds. They are both supported by SilkPage. Once integrated into your site, a news reader application such as Bloglines, RSSOwl, or even FireFox can be used to automatically check your list of feeds. This enables your visitors to know what's new on your site.

      
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/"
         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

<channel rdf:about="http://www.markupware.com/">
  <title>MarkupWare Projects</title>
  <link>http://www.markupware.com/projects/</link>
  <description>MarkupWare project portfolio</description>
  <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
  <dc:rights>Copyright &#169; MarkupWare</dc:rights>

  <items>
    <rdf:Seq>
      <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.markupware.com/projects#silkpage"/>
    </rdf:Seq>
  </items>
</channel>

<item rdf:about="http://www.markupware.com/projects#silkpage">
  <title>SilkPage Project</title>
  <link>http://silkpage.markupware.com</link>
  <dc:date>2004-09-04</dc:date>
  <description>
    SilkPage is an XML based Web publishing framework that has evolved from 
    the Docbook Website. With strong foundations in XML, it is a publishing 
    framework with a focus on web standards and usability. SilkPage provides 
    a framework for publishing structured and standard compliant websites in 
    XML. It is particularly suited to publish personal websites, though it 
    is by no means limited to them.
  </description>
</item>

</rdf:RDF>

    

      

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>MarkupWare Projects</title>
  <subtitle>MarkupWare project portfolio</subtitle>
  <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" 
        href="http://www.markupware.com/projects/"/>
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" 
        href="http://www.markupware.com/feeds/projects.xml"/>
  <id>http://www.markupware.com/feeds/projects.xml</id>
  <updated>2006-01-26T11:26:54+01:00</atom:updated>
  <author>
    <atom:name>MarkupWare Team</atom:name>
  </atom:author>
  <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
  <dc:rights>Copyright &#169; MarkupWare</dc:rights>
 
 <entry>
   <title type="text">SilkPage</title>
   <id>http://www.markupware.com/projects#silkpage</id>
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" 
         href="http://silkpage.markupware.com/"/>
    <published>2004-12-20T20:19:41+01:00</published>
    <updated>2005-07-15T23:34:34+01:00</updated>
    <content type="text">
      SilkPage is an XML based Web publishing framework that has evolved from 
      the Docbook Website. With strong foundations in XML, it is a publishing 
      framework with a focus on web standards and usability. SilkPage provides 
      a framework for publishing structured and standard compliant websites in 
      XML. It is particularly suited to publish personal websites, though it 
      is by no means limited to them.
    </content>
  </entry>
</feed>

      
    

RDF is the World-Wide Web, specification, data (RDF). A specification being developed in 2000 by the W3C as a foundation for processing meta-data regarding resources on the Internet, including the World-Wide Web. SilkPage generates RDF (along with a link pointed to the generated RDF) for each page of your Website based on the XML content of the page. The label of the RDF link can be changed by setting the value of the configuration parameter sources.rdf.

Sitemap is an important help for your Website visitors to find their way around your site. SilkPage generates and maintains your Website sitemap. A config element should be added to the layout.xml in order to have the sitemap generated (See Example 2.2, “Site Layout”). SilkPage maintains and provides a link to your Website sitemap.