[gentoo-soc] Progress Report - Setting Beacon Afloat

["Nandeep Mali" <n9986.mali@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

This report is slightly overdue because I thought that I should
complete some small tid-bits and include them here as well. I have
been writing this report for two days now, adding stuff as I am done
with it.

1. Starting of the last week was very frustrating as I was compiling
an XSL for GuideXML to HTML transformation which took up a lot of
time. Gentoo repository does have an XSL (very detailed!) written by
nesyx but that wouldn't serve the editing purpose that we need. So I
crafted a new one which is more concise and includes 95% of the
GuideXML formatting (so far and evolving as I go along). An even
bigger nightmare was making the reverse XSL, i.e. HTML to GuideXML. I
have the structure completed and only need to fill in the blanks along
the way. Seeing the XSLT was quite rewarding considering the amount of
time it took. I even added support for anchors (chapter/section
numbering) for referencing other parts of the document using
hyperlinks.

2. Next was my tryst with a Rich Text Editor. I tried many available
out there but none gave the flexibility needed. For instance I have to
handle the validity of GuideXML, not allowing certain tags inside
another, blah blah. So I went ahead and re-invented the wheel creating
GuideXML's own Rich Text Editor. Again I have the framework ready and
am just filling in the buttons so to speak. The Rich Text Editor
handles the creation of new chapters/sections along with re factoring
of their ids, i.e their chapter/section numbers. Hence if I insert a
new chapter then all chapter numbers will update accordingly. This was
done keeping in mind the DOM tree that I'll be making next which, you
guessed it, helps in focusing to a chapter/section immediately.

Another thing I had to tackle was the user input. It is almost
impossible to completely prevent the user from inserting/creating
trash html in a rich text editor. So I am handling most of the user
inputs manually like overriding the default actions of the ENTER, DEL,
etc. keys. Also different browsers generate different HTML in an
editable area. So I have to make the reverse XSL very flexible.

3. This was small work but I managed to get a database wrapper running
and completed a feature of auto-saving of files (like Gmail,
WordPress). These are not plugged in yet as the most vital link
between everything is the XSL.

4. My domain name expired on 23rd and I was kinda lazy to renew it but
will be done by weekend hopefully. I shall put up a demo of almost
useable Beacon by then. You can even start editing your docs by then!

Kind Regards
Nandeep Mali
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