On writing WebPlatform Documentation from Linux
One may use VMWare, install Windows and use Internet Explorer to write docs in the online Xopus editor.
The LWP pages can be found at http://www.rug.nl/rc/doelgroepen/medewerkers/LINUXwerkplek.
Recursive download using wget: wget -r --no-passive-ftp --ftp-user=p012345 --ftp-password=passwd -Dwebplatform.rug.nl --no-parent -S --directory-prefix=${HOME}/downloaded/WebPlatform-mirror/ ftp://webplatform.rug.nl//webroot/dev/rc/doelgroepen/medewerkers/LINUXwerkplek/. Single items can be picked using plain ftp.
The WebPlatform uses an ftp server connected to an Oracle database. XML files are validated upon upload, and must pass validation in order to be stored.
The XML schema used is home-made specifically for the WebPlatform. Editors like oXygen can do validation on them, but only partially.
Unfortunately, the schema is stored in multiple files on the server, and only the top-level file is referenced in the header of the XML documents. The top-level schema uses local references to point to lower level files, and these will not be found when validating off-server.
I see false negatives (local validation invalid while file is accepted by server). False positives may also occur.
This makes off-server editing of files unfeasible.
There is no password-less upload, although key-based login is being worked on.
The HTML generated from DocBook can be inserted into an XML template, and this will display properly. However, some features will not work, and I consider this a kludge.
