ScrollServer Initial Release

[David Merrill <david lupercalia net>]

I am happy to announce the initial public release of ScrollServer, a
Python based http server that provides access to a scrollkeeper
database with any web browser.

ScrollServer is in very early development, but it is already useful.
It has been tested on RedHat 7.1 and Debian Woody. Reports of success
or failure on other systems greatly appreciated.

The current version is 0.4, and it is available from SourceForge at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scrollserver, or you can get the
bleeding edge code by anonymous cvs from the Linux Documentation
Project CVS.

I'm working towards a 1.0 release which will implement basic
functionality. It will be usable in text browsers but attractive in X.
It will serve all documentation formats supported by ScrollKeeper. It
will provide browsing by document title or topic.

In later releases searching will be powerful but easy. It's a
classic trade off, but I'm going to try. It will probably mean writing
my own DocBook-aware search library, allowing for semantic searches.

There are more ambitious goals in the long term. Eventally,
ScrollServers will be able to talk to one another, and to share
information with each other. One ScrollServer will `publish' a
document or five hundred, and another will `subscribe' to the
`publication'. This is mainly for the benefit of the Linux
Documentation Project and others who provide more general Linux
information.

Eventually a reader might be able to rate a document, and have their
comments sent to the publisher (i.e., the other ScrollServer) and also
to the author of the document, which can be extracted from the
DocBook.

Sound like an interesting project? I'm looking for Python, XML, XSLT,
XLink, SOAP, and DocBook hackers as well as translators.

Regards,

-- 
Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david lupercalia net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org