Falappa.Net

I’ve been helping the italian translator of the user manual of the GIMP recently.

The manual, as usual in the open source world, is written using XML DocBook "source files" that are then processed to produce output in several formats (HTML pages, PDF documents etc.).

Being a Java Developer this is a brief tutorial on how I’ve set up my environment to make use of my favourite IDE in a "non programming" task:

1. Install Eclipse SDK version 3.2 and enhance it with the Web Tools Platform (WTP) conprising the two modules Web Development Tools (WDT) and JavaEE Development Tools (JDT)
2. Open the preferences and setup CVS client settings as suggested on the GIMP developer site: notably set level 3 compression
3. Open the CVS exploring perspective and connect to the gnome cvs repository
4. Check out the gimp-help2 module
5. Exit Eclipse
6. Open a terminal, change into /gimp-help2 directory and launch ./autogen.sh –without-gimp that creates and invokes configure script trough autogen and automake gnu system
7. Relaunch eclipse
8. Switch to the Resource perspective and refresh the gimp-help2 project (context menu on project icon in resource explorer)
9. Customize the General/Editors/Structured text editor preference to suit the GIMP user manual style guide: tab-size 8, show print margin 78
10. Customize the Web and XML/XML files/XML source preference to suit the GIMP user manual style guide: indent using spaces, indentation size 2, line width 78
11. Optionally add some XML templates
12. Customize the Web and XML/XML catalog preference to add a local XML docbook xml-schema file (to avoid requiring internet connection for validation and to improve performances)
13. Customize the Project properties/Builders preference adding an external program builder invoking make in the project directory with a refresh after execution only in manual builds
14. Define a working set limited to source files to speed-up certain cvs operations and to narrow your work scope