Subject:
New version 2.0 of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO
From:
"Chris Karakas" ####@####.####
Date:
22 Feb 2004 23:42:04 -0000
Message-Id: <20040223.yPx.67504400@www.karakas-online.de>
Dear list members,
please forgive me if I am missing anything and writing to the wrong address. I don't
have CVS access and, anyway, the document is so big that it is probably better to
announce it here first:
This is to inform you that a new version (2.0) of the PHP-Nuke HOWTO is available
now. It is over 500 pages of material, a real book on PHP-Nuke!
See it online at:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/
Download the format of your choice (HTML, PDF, PS, TXT, RTF, SGML, LYX) at:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/formats.html
Notice that the PHP-Nuke HOWTO is also available as a module that you can install on
your PHP-Nuke site:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/EN-Book-Nuke.tar.gz
(but this is only of interest to you if you run your own PHP-Nuke site).
Some statistics:
28 Chapters
500 pages
100 Images
2500 Index entries (that's almost a 30-page Index!)
1000 references to external sources
1500 cross-references
400 HTML files
3000 hours of work
Probably we can't call this a HOWTO anymore, but rather a Guide!
No matter how you call it, this is not just another version of just another HOWTO:
it breaks some records on complexity, size and features and sets new standards on
LDP's technical documentation. Let me draw your attention to some of the highlights:
- Scope: Practically every aspect of PHP-Nuke is treated. The document itself points
to 1000 external sources, whose solutions, discussions or information have been
consulted and/or included.
- Presentation: Have a look at the HTML version:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/
and browse a little around. It's made out of DocBook SGML, but with a CSS
specifically tailored to DocBook - it also pleases the eye!
The PDF is a gem of itself containing bookmarks, thumbnails, hyperrefs,
cross-refs, images, embedded (Computer Modern) fonts for optimal viewing *and*
printing etc.
- Size: 500 printed pages, hundreds of images, 400 HTML files.
- Link structure: 1000 external links, 1500 internal links (cross-references), 2500
Index entries make this the most inter-linked information source of LDP! Especially
the Index is not something you see everyday:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/i20165.html
- Have a look at all the changes in version 2.0:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/credits-version-2.0.html
and ask yourself how long it would take you to write *only* that chapter!
- SGML: Have a look at the SGML file:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/EN-Book.sgml
Do you think a writer can fire up his favourite text editor in SGML mode and start
writing it, from start to finish?
- CPU: My 700MHz Pentium needs almost 2 hours to produce all formats. I guess it
will also strain your SGI box a bit, am I right Greg? ;-)
As you see, this document stands on its own. It was created from LyX, with the help
of my LyX-to-X scripts, as described in
http://www.karakas-online.de/mySGML/
, another 200-page document - but that's the subject of another post of mine. For
the moment, please replace the old version with the new one and start reviewing it
for language errors or whatever else the new LDP guidelines demand (I am not current
on this, as I was barely reading the list the last two months).
A note for Greg, or anybody else who would like to compile the SGML source:
Get the tar archive for SGML from the Formats section:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/formats.html
The SGML tar archive is:
http://www.karakas-online.de/EN-Book/EN-Book-sgml.tar.gz
Extract it to your local working directory. If you don't want any BMP images (I know
you don't ;-) , but I have to include them for the sake of completeness, due to the
RTF target), just do:
rm -f EN-Book/images/*.bmp
and you are quite a few Megs lighter! :-)
You may want to go to the formats section (in the SGML file) and correct the links
to the various formats (they will have to point to other directories, since on
ibiblio, contrary to my own site, the HTML files are held separately from the PDFs,
for example). Sorry for not doing it myself, but I was very busy with all other
details. Maybe I come up with an automatic solution to this in future versions.
To compile the document:
You need to tell Jade (or whatever SGML parser you use) to *include* the
output.print.png entities, when you render a format that is going to need png. The
same holds accordingly for the other formats (include output.print.pdf for PDF,
output.print.eps for PS and output.print.bmp for RTF). For Jade, you would have to
pass "-i output.print.png" on the command line to achieve this. Otherwise, *no*
extension will be chosen and you will not see *any* image.
For example, if you are using sgmltools, you have to type:
sgmltools -b onehtml -s your-no-chunks-html-stylesheet.dsl -j "-i output.print.png"
EN-Book.sgml
to produce "one big HTML file". To produce PDF, again with sgmltools, you would type:
sgmltools -b pdf -s sgmltools-pdf -j "-i output.print.pdf" EN-Book.sgml
You will see two warnings about a closing LISTITEM that is not open and one about
missing the bibliography.sgml entity/file. There is no bibliography at the moment
and the LISTITEM warnings are harmless - not a big deal, so my scripts do not
attempt to correct this - just ignore them.
For a document of its size and complexity, it is astonishingly error-free, isn't it?
Enjoy! :-)
Chris
--
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
http://www.karakas-online.de
