References

This reference section provides you with more information on the origins, design goals, best practices and tools that were instrumental to the developement of Tópico.

Design goals

Here are a some of the design goals that are behind the development of the Tópico personal publishing system:

• Desktop based (light weight, offline use);
• Easy to install (for all types of users);
• Easy to use for casual users (customization by a developer);
• Flexible (not only for online web sites);
• Easy to customize (for professional users);
• Standard based (as much as possible);
• Leverage other excellent tools (XStandard compoenent and specialized editors);

With the above goals in mind, a choice has been made to use valid XHTML 1.0 Strict topic source files. This approach allows for a very light weight system that can be easily installed and run by most users on almost any Windows desktop.

Tópico is built around the following components:

• A custom map file containing the collection (or site) information (structure, metatada, ...); ⁽¹⁾
• Simple XHTML topic files;
• Transformation templates designed with XSLT 1.0;
• Stylesheets defined using CSS 2.1;
• Unobstrusive JavaScript files that are attached to the published pages;
• A custom .NET application that connects those files through a flexible user interface.

⁽¹⁾ Tópico ships with a transformation stylesheet that publishes different file type (nested lists, scripts).

Ultimately, Tópico provides personal publishers with one of the the best investment they can make for their possible (or probable) CMS future. Since it's built around subsets of widely used standards, Tópico collections can always be migrated to other platform when the need arises.