Who Can Use Tópico?

Casual user

Casual users are mostly interested in publishing original content to the web or CD-ROM without worrying to much about the underlying complexity of fitting all this stuff together. For a casual user, publishing a collection mainly involves the following steps:

1. Create a new collection;
2. Organize topics through the tree view control;
3. Edit and markup your content with the editor;
4. Set the options for each topic (menu, links to sub pages, ...) ;
5. Select the options for the publication (navigation, breadcrumb, ...);
6. Select a Publishing Package;
7. Click the publish button.

In their typical workflow, casual users might want to tweak a few CSS styles, based one of the default or a custom publishing package created by a web developer.

Professional user

A professional user actively modifies the layout and look of a publication. While the casual user will be mainly working on the content of the collection, a power user could also:

• Modify stylesheet rules;
• Create new custom styles;
• Modify templates layout;
• Create new topic templates;
• Send parameters to templates;
• Reuse content;
• Use some of the more advanced (and time saving) features;

In their typical workflow professional users might want to tweak a few XSLT templates, based one of the default or a custom publishing package created by a web developer.

Web developer

Web developers are expected to know enough about XML/XSLT/CSS/JS/HTML to be able to customize Tópico to solve a particular publishing challenge. In particular, a web developer could:

• Create new templates and stylesheets;
• Create new publishing packages (including new menu styles/scripts);
• Integrate the raw XML (or HTML) files with another solution; ⁽²⁾
• Use the different customization options offered by Tópico

⁽²⁾ Such solution could be, but is not limited to, a dynamic web site.

The skillset required to use Tópico ranges from being able organize topics and write content to being able to write new stylesheet, templates, scripts and organize them into custom publishing packages.

Everyone can use Tópico and the more you learn about web standards the more you'll be able to take advantage of the publishing workflow it offers.

First time users will quickly get up to speed on stylesheets after reading some tutorials on CSS and with just a bit more practice, you'll be able to markup and then format your content as you want.