Late last year I indicated that the Company that I work for has an application for taking S1000D Data modules and producing a hard copy publication, or a PDF version of one. At that time I thought that I could quickly have something available for public view, using the S1000D Bike Pack example files as the source.
Little did I know that the Company's web site was in the throws of being redesigned which meant that I could not get any resources to provide me with the means to make it available. I have now overcome that by various means.
What is it that is being made available?
What we have done is to take the Bike Pack provided as examples at Issue 2 Change 3 (don't groan too loudly, it is the only S1000D material that we can publicly use) and put it through the Mekon Eclipse BookBuild application to produce a PDF file of the publication. There are obviously several different ways of putting the Bike Pack together to get a "proper" story and which route is taken depends on the individual doing the building and also the end requirement.
Suffice it to say that I have only produced one book (in both SGML and XML) just to give an idea of what can be achieved.
The application has the ability to convert all the cross referencing, both standard xref and refdm, into hypertext links. They are fully resolved. The refdm entry is converted into text which indicates the Section/Volume (if these are being used), Chapter and Para/Step if appropriate. The mechanism which allows the refdm to point to a target in the destination DM is also enabled.
I hope that these files will help to give and example of "look and feel" which can be achieved. Please let me know what you think.
By resolving all of the cross referencing elements some have likened the result of the BookBuild Process to a simple IETP. Currently we are not resolving links to hotspots on CGM graphics but of course we are looking to correct this deficiency.
How do I get it the example files?
To get these files you will need to visit the Mekon site, specifically the part which is associated with the Aerospace and Defence section. You can then look at details about Software that we produce.
Failing that you can directly to the Eclipse BookBuild Web page by following this link.
At the moment these files are only for the S1000D Issue 2.3 Bike Pack. I am already working on samples for the S1000D Issue 3 set.
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