Gentoo’s Guide XML in Drupal
I’d like to see the ability to use Gentoo’s Guide XML documentation standard in Drupal. For what I’d like to do with the site, this would really kick ass. While Drupal’s article module is nice for presenting guides on the web, the data is pretty much stuck in that format. Using XML to markup the data would allow tons of flexibility in how it can be rendered.
I’ve been trying to figure out how this could be implemented. I think it would be best as a module. As I see it, it would probably be either a new node, or a some kind of input filter. Maybe both. Unfortunately, I’m not too knowledgeable on XML or creating modules for Drupal. Either of them can not be that hard to learn though.
I would assume that the data would be stored in database backend, as is the case for all of the data Drupal uses. As a filter, it would use existing node types, but store everything as Guide XML markup. When it goes to display the data, it would then apply the XLST to display for the correct medium (web, print, pdf…). Maybe an admin screen for importing/exporting xml files. Then files could be composed offline and simply imported. Though this would be fine for a single user (not to be mistaken as visitor) website, I think that might go against the collaborative features (i.e. book revisions) of using Drupal as a true CMS.
Maybe this would be better served as an enhancement to the book module. Simply adding the XML filtering to it would get me what I want. Is it possible to create a filter for a specific node type? Utilize the book module with the article module tied to the book taxonomy terms and overlay the Guide XML filter. Eh? The filter could add display options to each book node to pass the filter the info it needs to display it correctly. Use or incorporate the Drupal PDF filter to add PDF capabilities.
I think this may be easier than I think. I believe all of the information (DTD, CSS and XLST) needed to use Guide XML is available from Gentoo. I’ll check out drupaldocs.org on how to create a filter module.
Of course, it seems like drupaldocs.org is doing something similar to what I want to do. I think I remember reading about a docbook module for Drupal, which could negate this whole mind rambling I’m having. This could be important, as Jonathan Chaffer seems to played a part in or wrote the API module that drupaldocs.org uses.
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