path: root/data/doc/manuals_generated/sisu_manual/sisu_faq/plain.txt

SISU - SISU INFORMATION STRUCTURING UNIVERSE / STRUCTURED INFORMATION,
SERIALIZED UNITS - FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED/ANSWERED QUESTIONS,
RALPH AMISSAH
******************************************************************************

1. FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED/ANSWERED QUESTIONS
--------------------------------------------

1.1 WHY ARE URLS PRODUCED WITH THE -V (AND -U) FLAG THAT POINT TO A WEB SERVER
ON PORT 8081?
..............................................................................

Try the following rune:


* sisu -W


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.


1.2 I CANNOT FIND MY OUTPUT, WHERE IS IT?
.........................................

The following should provide help on output paths:


* sisu --help env


* sisu -V [same as the previous command]


* sisu --help directory


* sisu --help path


* sisu -U [filename]


* man sisu


1.3 I DO NOT GET ANY PDF OUTPUT, WHY?
.....................................

*SiSU* produces LaTeX and pdflatex is run against that to generate pdf files.


If you use *Debian* the following will install the required dependencies


* aptitude install sisu-pdf


the following packages are required: tetex-bin, tetex-extra, latex-ucs


1.4 WHERE IS THE LATEX (OR SOME OTHER INTERIM) OUTPUT?
......................................................

Try adding -M (for maintenance) to your command flags, e.g.:


* sisu -HpMv [filename]


this should result in the interim processing output being retained, and
information being provided on where to find it.


* sisu --help directory


* sisu --help path


should also provide some relevant information as to where it is placed.


1.5 WHY ISN'T SISU MARKUP XML
.............................

I worked with text and (though I find XML immensely valuable) disliked noise
... better to sidestep the question and say:


*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


  sisu --to-sax [filename/wildcard]


  sisu --to-dom [filename/wildcard]


  sisu --to-node [filename/wildcard]


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].


  sisu --from-xml2sst [filename/wildcard]


1.6 LATEX CLAIMS TO BE A DOCUMENT PREPARATION SYSTEM FOR HIGH-QUALITY
TYPESETTING. CAN THE SAME BE SAID ABOUT SISU?
..............................................................................

*SiSU* is not really about type-setting.


LaTeX is the ultimate computer instruction type-setting language for paper
based publication.


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.


*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.


*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.


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.


Where there are large document sets, it provides consistency in appearance in
each output format for the documents.


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.


1.7 HOW DO I CREATE GIN OR GIST INDEX IN POSTGRESQL FOR USE IN SISU
...................................................................

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:


"I have tsearch2 slides which introduces tsearch2
<http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/wiki/tsearch2slides>


FTS in PostgreSQL is provided by tsearch2, which should works without any
indices (GiST or GIN) ! Indices provide performance, not functionality.


In your example I'd do ( simple way, just for demo):


*0.* compile, install tsearch2 and load tsearch2 into your database


  cd contrib/tsearch2; make&&make&&install&&make installcheck; psql DB &lt;
  tsearch2.sql


*1.* Add column fts, which holds tsvector


  alter table documents add column fts tsvector;


*2.* Fill fts column


  update document set fts = to_tsvector(clean);


*3.* create index - just for performance !


  create index fts_gin_idx on document using gin(fts);


*4.* Run vacuum


  vacuum analyze document;


That's all.


Now you can search:


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;


1.8 WHERE IS VERSION 1.0?
.........................

*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.


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.

html and LaTeX/pdf may be regarded as reference copy outputs


With regard to the populating of sql databases (postgresql and sqlite), there
is a bit to be done.


We are still almost there.


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DC Title: _SiSU - SiSU information Structuring Universe / Structured
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DC Creator: _Ralph Amissah_


DC Rights: _Copyright (C) Ralph Amissah 2007, part of SiSU documentation,
License GPL 3_


DC Type: _information_


DC Date created: _2006-09-06_


DC Date available: _2006-09-06_


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DC Date modified: _2007-09-16_


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*Generated*


Document (metaverse) last generated: _Sun Sep 23 04:11:02 +0100 2007_


Generated by: _SiSU_ _0.59.0_ of 2007w38/0 (2007-09-23)


Ruby version: _ ruby 1.8.6 (2007-06-07 patchlevel 36) [i486-linux]_



==============================================================================

	title:  SiSU - SiSU information Structuring Universe / Structured
               information, Serialized Units - FAQ - Frequently Asked/Answered
               Questions

	creator:  Ralph Amissah

	rights:  Copyright (C) Ralph Amissah 2007, part of SiSU documentation,
               License GPL 3

	type:  information

	subject:  ebook, epublishing, electronic book, electronic publishing,
               electronic document, electronic citation, data structure,
               citation systems, search

	date.created:  2006-09-06

	date.available:  2006-09-06

	date.issued:  2006-09-06

	date.modified:  2007-09-16

	date:  2007-09-16





==============================================================================
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