Re: Converting DocBook assembly to Web Help uses a URL naming scheme which defeats bookmarking pages

Bård P. T. wrote:
> We have now used XMLmind for a while. We publish updated web-help based 
> documentation at a regular basis. The only criticism we have received is 
> that for every version of the Web-help, the URLs are updated. Since our 
> documentation is quite large, some of the users bookmark pages they use 
> often. With the naming scheme of the web-help produced by XMLmind (we 
> use Docbook assembly and output to web-help), the bookmarks fail if we 
> introduce a new chapter: the numbering scheme chNN.html is not suitable 
> for permanent bookmarks.

Yes, that's right.



> 
> Is there a way to add permalinks?

Sure. It's a built-in feature of the DocBook XSL stylesheets. See 
parameter use.id.as.filename

http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/html/use.id.as.filename.html

We systematically use parameter use.id.as.filename = 1 for our own 
documents. For example:
---
xxetool convert -p toc.section.depth 4 -p olink.doctitle yes \
         -p current.docid configure -p chunk.section.depth 2 \
         -p use.id.as.filename 1 \
         -p suppress.navigation 1 \
         -pu target.database.document ../common/doc_wh.sitemap \
         -p wh-collapse-toc yes \
         -p wh-user-header wh_resources/header.html \
         -p wh-user-footer wh_resources/footer.html \
         -p wh-user-css wh_resources/header_footer.css \
         -p wh-user-resources wh_resources/header_footer_files \
         docb.toWebHelp doc.xml -u ../../doc/configure/wh
---

Result here: 
http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/configure/wh/index.html



> 
> Can we change or configure how the urls are generated so that instead of 
> chNN.html a word/string is used, taken from for example xml:id?

Once you have added parameter use.id.as.filename = 1 to XXE 
(http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/help/conversion_parameters_editor.html) 
or to your scripts invoking xxetool convert 
(http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/xxetool/using_it_to_convert.html), 
please remember to specify meaningful xml:ids on ALL element part, 
chapter, section, etc, and NOT on element part/title, chapter/title, 
section/title, etc.

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