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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?"

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. XSLT by dorker · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It's called XSL and XSLT. Read up on it.

  2. Re:XML by danboy · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It's also good to point out that while HTML is a mark up language and therefore good at displaying data that XML will be displayed using XSL, Similar to the way HTML can be displayed using CSS.