Creating and Using XML-Based Internal Documents?

Richard Emberson asks: "Once again into the breech...or at least the ground floor in a new startup. This time around, I would like to have all of the Engineering documentation internally online: a unified, internal, CVS-ed, web-based, development organization document tree covering the engineering process, methodology, coding standards, nightly build/test reports, FAQs, new hire information and help pages and the documentation for each project. Recently I've written documentation (on Linux of course) using the Apache XML-stylebook tags, stylesheets, and Ant-base publishing - and I like it. So my questions are: Has anyone done this and, if so, how were the links between documents managed?" Does your workplace use XML in its internal documentation? If so, how well does your system work, and what advice would you pass on to anyone else attempting something similar?

"If you start out with only one project (product), how do you structure it so that when new projects come into existence they can easily be integrated? Are there documentation templates out there upon which I can base the various development documents (like requirements, product development plan, design, coding walk-thru standards, etc.) and not have any of this swell too be so large that no one will be able to produce, maintain or read it?"

Comments

Why Are You Asking Me?

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It sounds to me like you're already a step ahead of the rest of the world, for the most part.

My workplace uses a hodge-podge of formats including "special" ASCII text files, Framemaker, HTML and Microsoft Word. Needless to say, it's a mess. No open, standard, consistent tools to examine all of our documentation. Yeah, you can grep HTML, but the others are a pain. And don't even think about automatic script language based conversion among these formats.

I suspect you're more advanced in your thinking than 90% of the places out there. Why not continue with your thinking and let the rest of us know what you decide?