[TYPO3-doc] DocBook: first sample manual

[Thomas Schraitle]

Hi François,

Friday 18 February 2011

> [...]
> I tried changing the links as Tom advised, but I'm a bit skeptical. I
> understand that what you propose is less verbose, but then the link is
> not really visible in the editor, because it's just a link tag with no
> link text.

I've tested it in oXygen 12.1 and indeed there is no link text. However, your 
problem can be easily solved: oXygen supports an "author view" which is a kind 
of WYSYWYG view rendered through CSS. In oXygen it's really simple to add an 
additional CSS rule to the frameworks/docbook/css/links.css file:

 link:after
 {
   content:" [" attr(xlink|href) "]";
 }

With that simple CSS rule your links are displayed like this:

 <para>Link with text: <link
        xlink:href="http://typo3.org/">typo3.org</link>
 </para>
 => [X] typo.org [http://typo3.org/]

 <para>Link without text: <link 
         xlink:href="http://typo3.org/"/></para>
 => [X] [http://typo3.org/]

In oXygen the [X] is a small little picture depicting a chain.

Well, I don't know if you use oXygen, but I guess it might be similar to other 
XML editors which renders the XML file through CSS.

I'm going to report this to the oXygen team...


> Of course if you're in a simple text editor, you can see the
> link, but in a tool like XMLEditor, it's very easy to miss the link.
> What do you think?

Right, without a text a link can be easily missed. However, I think with the 
above solution it shouldn't be an issue anymore. :)

However, keep in mind, the way how your DocBook file is displayed in your XML 
editor is just a "hint". It makes (hopefully) your life easier if you can't 
stand the bare XML code. It's nothing more as a hint.

As such, it is *very likely* that the rendering of your XML editor is 
different than what you'll get after transformation from the DB stylesheets. 
These are totally independant processes and goes beyond simple link issues. :)


Cheers,
   Tom