Simple Interface For Plugin Installation and Upgrade Problem: Manual Installation Process
Installing a plugin takes two or three steps, depending upon the platform and installed software.

1. Unzip the plugin package
2. Copy the generated directory into the “demo” or “plugins” folder
3.  Run the integrator task
   

Steps 1 and 2 may be combined on many platforms, if the user knows how to “target” the unzip of a directory appropriately.

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I'm coming around to the idea that we can't handle all of the dependency tracking with a specialized map. But, I'm wondering if we can come up with an approach that still leverages maps for the dependencies they express and supports the continuum of approaches.

Proposal: We introduce a new kind of XML document that identifies the source files belonging to an information set. The basic structure is very simple:

<infoset>
    <data ...> ... </data>
    ... more data about this infoset ...

    <source href="filename" modified="2006-5-2 20:05:01">
        <data ...> ... </data>
        ... more data about this source ...
    </source>

    ... more sources ...

</infoset>

The <data> element would be the same as DITA 1.1 for cognitive reuse if nothing else.

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This scratch pad for the Incremental builds main page.  Like a Wikipedia discussion tab, this page accumlates notes for the design.

2006-4-29 erikh

Maybe pointing out the obvious, incremental builds of plain-old Java can be managed by comparing the timestamp on the source and compiled file only because the runtime JVM handles the integration.

Unless we have a viewer that can provide equivalent integration at runtime, DITA XML modules have to integrate at build time.  That integration has to resolve:

• Dependencies created by xrefs, conrefs, and links within the topic

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A natural complement to topic orientation, in which topics are made independent of one another, are various organizing methods for topics.

The DITA map offers authors several ways to organize topics, but users who encounter a DITA map may not wish to access their topics the way the author of the DITA map expected.

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