ThotBook mini-FAQ

What is ThotBook?

ThotBook is (will be) a visual editor for DocBook, based on ThotLib. ThotBook will allow users to visually edit DocBook documents using a graphical interface and will allow them to import/export their work into structured DocBook SGML/XML. ThotBook will help to produce valid structured DocBook documents without having to learn the DocBook syntax. ThotBook will respect document structure, as opposed to "WYSIWYG" editors, which produce (mostly) unstructured documents.

What is the ThotLib?

ThotBook is based on ThotLib, which is a toolkit for manipulation and edition of structured documents.

ThotLib work on an internal representation of the document structure, and uses user-interfaces specific to each document structure, possibly providing several views of a single document (whole document, table of contents, etc.). Documents thus composed can be exported using filters.

It is currently in use by Amaya, the W3C's HTML/XHTML/MathML/SVG editor/browser.

The ThotLib has initially been developed at INRIA, together with ThotEditor, and is now further developed by the Amaya team at W3C.

What is ThotEditor?

ThotEditor is a generic editor based on ThotLib. It is able to manipulate all document structures defined for ThotLib, along with their presentations and export filters. It is used as a testbed for the DocBook document structure we will used in ThotBook, and one of our tasks is to bring ThotEditor in sync with the new ThotLib, which was developed for Amaya.

The development of ThotEditor has stopped in 1997 as the development team focused on Amaya, an HTML document editor and browser.

What is the license of ThotBook ?

ThotBook is under the GPL. Some parts of its code are still copyrighted INRIA.

Where can I get ThotBook ?

There is no public release at the moment, but you can try the CVS version. Since it is the devel version, it may or may not work properly.

You may prefer to play with ThotEditor to experiment with the DocBook structure and presentation.

How does it look like ?

There are some screenshots of the presentation structure of ThotEditor and ThotBook. The editor is far for being finished yet, but we are working on it.

How can I help?

First of all, you may subscribe to the development mailing-list to discuss with developers and share your ideas. We need contributors for the editor and for development of DocBook structures.