SiSU - FAQ - Frequently Asked/Answered Questions
Ralph Amissah
Copyright (C) Ralph Amissah 2007, part of SiSU documentation, License GPL 3
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ebook, epublishing, electronic book, electronic publishing, electronic document, electronic citation, data structure, citation systems, search
2007-09-16
SiSU - FAQ - Frequently Asked/Answered Questions,
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1. FAQ - Frequently Asked/Answered Questions
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1.1 Why are urls produced with the -v (and -u) flag that point to a web
server on port 8081?
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Try the following rune:
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sisu -W
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This should start the ruby webserver. It should be done after having
produced some output as it scans the output directory for what to
serve.
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1.2 I cannot find my output, where is it?
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The following should provide help on output paths:
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sisu --help env
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sisu -V [same as the previous command]
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sisu --help directory
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sisu --help path
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sisu -U [filename]
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man sisu
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1.3 I do not get any pdf output, why?
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SiSU produces LaTeX and pdflatex is run against that to generate
pdf files.
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If you use Debian the following will install the required
dependencies
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aptitude install sisu-pdf
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the following packages are required: tetex-bin, tetex-extra, latex-ucs
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1.4 Where is the latex (or some other interim) output?
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Try adding -M (for maintenance) to your command flags, e.g.:
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sisu -HpMv [filename]
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this should result in the interim processing output being retained, and
information being provided on where to find it.
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sisu --help directory
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sisu --help path
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should also provide some relevant information as to where it is placed.
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1.5 Why isn't SiSU markup XML
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I worked with text and (though I find XML immensely valuable) disliked
noise ... better to sidestep the question and say:
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SiSU currently "understands" three XML input representations -
or more accurately, converts from three forms of XML to native
SiSU markup for processing. The three types correspond to SAX
(structure described), DOM (structure embedded, whole document must be
read before structure is correctly discernable) and node based (a tree)
forms of XML document structure representation. Problem is I use them
very seldom and check that all is as it should be with them seldom, so
I would not be surprised if something breaks there, but as far as I
know they are working. I will check and add an XML markup help page
before the next release. There already is a bit of information in the
man page under the title SiSU VERSION CONVERSION
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sisu --to-sax [filename/wildcard]
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sisu --to-dom [filename/wildcard]
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sisu --to-node [filename/wildcard]
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The XML should be well formed... must check, but lacks sensible
headers. Suggestions welcome as to what to make of them. [For the
present time I am satisfied that I can convert (both ways) between 3
forms of XML representation and SiSU markup].
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sisu --from-xml2sst [filename/wildcard]
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1.6 LaTeX claims to be a document preparation system for high-quality
typesetting. Can the same be said about SiSU?
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SiSU is not really about type-setting.
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LaTeX is the ultimate computer instruction type-setting language for
paper based publication.
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LaTeX is able to control just about everything that happens on page and
pixel, position letters kerning, space variation between characters,
words, paragraphs etc. formula.
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SiSU is not really about type-setting at all. It is about a
lightweight markup instruction that provides enough information for an
abstraction of the documents structure and objects, from which
different forms of representation of the document can be generated.
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SiSU with very little markup instruction is able to produce
relatively high quality pdf by virtue of being able to generate usable
default LaTeX; it produces "quality" html by generating the html
directly; likewise it populates an SQL database in a useful way with
the document in object sized chunks and its meta-data. But SiSU
works on an abstraction of the document's structure and content and
custom builds suitable uniform output. The html for browser viewing and
pdf for paper viewing/publishing are rather different things with
different needs for layout - as indeed is what is needed to store
information in a database in searchable objects.
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The pdfs or html produced for example by open office based on open
document format and other office/word processor suits usually attempt
to have similar looking outputs - your document rendered in html looks
much the same, or in pdf... sisu is less this way, it seeks to have a
starting point with as little information about appearance as possible,
and to come up with the best possible appearance for each output that
can be derived based on this minimal information.
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Where there are large document sets, it provides consistency in
appearance in each output format for the documents.
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The excuse for going this way is, it is a waste of time to think much
about appearance when working on substantive content, it is the
substantive content that is relevant, not the way it looks beyond the
basic informational tags - and yet you want to be able to take
advantage of as many useful different ways of representing documents as
are available, and for various types of output to to be/look as good as
it can for each medium/format in which it is presented, (with different
mediums having different focuses) and SiSU tries to achieve this
from minimal markup.
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1.7 How do I create GIN or GiST index in Postgresql for use in SiSU
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This at present needs to be done "manually" and it is probably
necessary to alter the sample search form. The following is a helpful
response from one of the contributors of GiN to Postgresql Oleg
Bartunov 2006-12-06:
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"I have tsearch2 slides which introduces tsearch2 <
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FTS in PostgreSQL is provided by tsearch2, which should works without
any indices (GiST or GIN) ! Indices provide performance, not
functionality.
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In your example I'd do ( simple way, just for demo):
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0. compile, install tsearch2 and load tsearch2 into your
database
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cd contrib/tsearch2;
make&&make&&install&&make installcheck; psql DB
< tsearch2.sql
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1. Add column fts, which holds tsvector
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alter table documents add column fts tsvector;
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2. Fill fts column
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update document set fts = to_tsvector(clean);
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3. create index - just for performance !
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create index fts_gin_idx on document using gin(fts);
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4. Run vacuum
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vacuum analyze document;
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That's all.
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Now you can search:
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select lid, metadata_tid, rank_cd(fts, q,2)as rank from document,
plainto_tsquery('markup syntax') q where q @@ fts order by rank desc
limit 10;
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1.8 Where is version 1.0?
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SiSU works pretty well as it is supposed to. Version 1.0 will
have the current markup, and directory structure. At this point it is
largely a matter of choice as to when the name change is made.
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The feature set for html,1 LaTeX/pdf and opendocument is in
place. XML, and plaintext are in order.
1. html w3c compliance has been largely met.
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html and LaTeX/pdf may be regarded as reference copy outputs
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With regard to the populating of sql databases (postgresql and sqlite),
there is a bit to be done.
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We are still almost there.
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Endnotes
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