This page explores the current thinking related to how data is published. It is aimed at publishing technicians. As such it may be a discussion that is more technical than the average user will need to or want to engage in.
Content to be published is normally archived in XML files: USX.xml for Scripture and Lift.xml for dictionary data. There is also a xLingPap xml format for grammatical write ups but there is currently no xml format for interlinear text.
It is a fairly straightforward process to transform usx xml into xhtml. xhtml is a representation of what will be published. It’s focus is on format rather than on content. For a complete publication, the content xml file has to have figures, maps, table of contents, title page, cover page, glossary(ies) and perhaps other content added to it to make a complete publication.
If it is a diglot publication, another language will be added. Although Pathway does not currently handle this, the concept would be for the xhtml file to have the content for both usx xml files put together. (probably paragraph by paragraph or section by section).
Pathway takes this content and prepares the Open document (ODM and ODT), Pdf, TeX or jar / jad, or whatever format is needed by the backend process.
Processing of Lift xml is more complicated because the dictionary content contains internal references to content in another section of the xml file. These references often must be elaborated into a user readable reference before the content is published. So a guid reference for a part / whole lexical relationship is expanded such that if wheels are a part of a car, the lexical relation may say parts: wheel.
Since the processing of the LIFT xml to the xhtml output format requires a lot more input from the user and a lot more processing, this process is currently handled by the Fieldworks Language Explorer. The Configuration allows the user to customize the conversion process and Flex outputs both the xhtml file and a css (cascading style sheet) giving the styles of the output content.
