Much has been happening lately with Kino development in preparation for the imminent 1.0 release. One of these is to improve the online help documentation. Actually, I expect this activity to extend throughout the Kino 1.0.x lifetime. I have seen a couple of good online supplements including this one. Also, some have asked about translating help into other languages.

What is really needed for the 1.0 release is a framework for online collaboration of the development and translation of the help. At first, I felt a wiki would be good, but then decided to base something on the FOSS standard of docbook XML. Eventually, I found DocBook Wiki, installed it, and kicked the tires. It works mostly good. I have run into a couple of bugs and problems, and I wanted a couple of minor customizations. These have been a comfortable tasks because I like the coding of this web app; it is quite clean and well structured.

Kino's docbook wiki is now online and ready. I have already integrated its outputs into Kino CVS for the 0.9.4 release. A French translation is in progress. One nice thing about this integration is that while running under GNOME, help should open in yelp using docbook xml directly, while under other desktops, it displays as HTML in a web browser.